History of the Breed
Origin Stories
During the early 1980s, various mixed breed dogs were imported from North America to England. Although their exact origins are unknown, these dogs were primarily blends of Arctic breeds such as the Alaskan Husky, Alaskan Malamute, German Shepherd, Labrador Husky, and Siberian Husky.
These dogs were then bred with various local wolf-looking mixed breed dogs in the United Kingdom, which included crosses of Alaskan Malamute, Siberian Husky and German Shepherd. Thanks to modern DNA analysis technologies, we now know that some of these Nordic mixes contained Greenland Dog and Samoyed.
Within this broader account, two more specific origin stories have survived. The first reports that the first Northern Inuit dogs were bred in the United Kingdom in the 1980’s by Edwina “Eddie” Harrison, who started to experiment with selectively cross-breeding different kinds of dogs, including some imported from overseas.
There are no clear records as to exactly which breeds she used to create the looks that came to characterize the breed today. Initially the progeny were called “Harrison Wolfdogs” or simply “wolf-look-alikes.”
By the mid-1990s, Harrison’s health was failing, and she was no longer able to look after her dogs as she once had. They were consequently distributed among people who knew her and represent some of the forebears of the current Northern Inuit dogs out of the United Kingdom.
The second origin story credits Julie Kelham with also developing a wolfalike breed during the 1980s, which she called “Northern Inuits”.
Despite these differing origin narratives, dogs emerged that became the early Northern Inuit breed. Further developed in the United Kingdom, it is now considered a British breed of dog.
Kelham founded the Northern Inuit Society. Over time, different breeders have broken away from NIS to establish other breeders’ groups in the UK and other parts of Europ
Globalizing of the Breed
Until 2014, Northern Inuits were bred only in the UK and Ireland, but puppies had been and continue to be exported to countries all over the world including the United States, South Africa, Germany, Switzerland and France.
In 2014, the first litter of Northern Inuits was born in South Africa. In 2015, Sharon O’Garro—owner of Mountain Myst Northern Inuits in Colorado, who introduced the breed to the United States—bred the first American-born Northern Inuit litter.
Public awareness of the Northern Inuit skyrocketed after the breed appeared as the Direwolves in the popular HBO TV series Game of Thrones and then as the wolfdog Rollo in Outlander, a TV series on STARZ.
Sources & Resources
Cage, Johan. 2019. The Northern Inuit Dog. Alska Northern Inuits.
https://susanalska.wixsite.com/alska/untitled-c1kbo
Canadian Eskimo Dog. https://www.wisdompanel.com/en-us/dog-breeds/canadian-eskimo-dog
Crawford, R.D. 2019. Dogs in Canada. The Canadian Encyclopedia. https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/dog
Inman, Laura. 2021. Northern Inuit Dog Facts. Wisdom Panel.
https://www.wisdompanel.com/en-us/dog-breeds/northern-inuit
O’Garro, Sharon. Development of the Breed. Mountain Myst Northern Inuits. https://www.mountainmystnortherninuits.com/history-of-the-northern-inuit
Northern Inuit Dog Guide. The Animal Corner.
