I was watching a video - apparently a promotional film by the Mack truck company, made in 1956 - about a supply convoy traveling through the Arctic. Suddenly I was confronted with a word I had never heard before: “Wanigans.” Here at 13:15 the narrator says: “you are traveling the Arctic in luxury - the warmth and comforts of the cab. The wonderful meals and a bunk in the wanigans.”
Incredibly, I was actually able to transcribe the word properly on my first Google attempt, and discovered the meaning: “a shelter (as for sleeping, eating, or storage) often mounted on wheels or tracks and towed by tractor or mounted on a raft or boat.” (From Merriam-Webster.)
This site provides even more information on the word. It seems to be sort of an Alaska regionalism. I’d certainly never heard or seen that word, spoken or written, anywhere before. The narrator of that video just throws it right out there without bothering to explain it at all, as if the viewers would just naturally know what he meant.
Would most people in the 1950s know, or would they have been just as confused as me? Or was that video perhaps intended for audiences familiar with the word (recruiting workers from Alaska?) so they felt that no definition was necessary?
To me, a wanigan is a wood box that is carried in a canoe that contains food and cooking supplies. When portaging, you carry the wanigan with a leather tump strap across your forehead with the wanigan on your back.
It gives you a small-critter (not bear proof) place for your food, pot handles don’t dig into your back, and the top is a convenient cutting board for preparing food.
FWIW: I don’t think I ever heard it in the 1950’s in New York State (or since, until just now). It’s possible, of course, that I heard or read it and have since forgotten. I’ve forgotten a great deal of what happened in my first nine years.
You mentioned that it was a film - so there could have been a picture of a wanigan on the screen while the narrator was talking about it, so there would be no need to define it.
There’s a term for that phenomenon, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it is. Can anyone help?
(And no, I had never heard “wanigan” before, at least that I recall. But my speculation as to what it might be, before I read any further, was correct, so it’s possible it was buried somewhere deep in my subconscious.)
