In the late 1920s, Helge Ingstad spent four years as a hunter and trapper in the Canadian Arctic. When he first arrived in the North, people in the river communities would bet on the arrival of the river boats - when he stopped at Fort Resolution on his way out, the bets were about planes.

The Land of Feast and Famine, originally published in 1931 and re-released by McGill-Queen's after more than forty years out-of-print, is a vivid depiction of Ingstad's adventures. He describes the native companions and fellow trappers with whom he shared both harsh and heart-warming experiences, and relates how he learned first-hand about beaver, caribou, wolf, and other wildlife. He also provides a remarkable body of information about Native medicine.

The arrival of the aviation age opened of the North, irrevocably changing the way of life of the Native people. The Land of Feast and Famine provides a fascinating glimpse of the Northwest Territories in the final days of the fur trading era."