Chapter 13

[125]See Arnasen,Íslenzktar Þjóðsōgŭr, ii. 160-304, translation by Powell and Magnússon (London, 1866), pp. cxlvi, and 101-231. MaurerIsländische Volkssagen, p. 240; Carl Andersen,Islandske Folkesagn, 2nd ed., p. 258.

[126]P. Egede,Efterretninger om Grönland, p. 172; Tylor,Primitive Culture, i. 391; Tobler,op. cit., p. 238; Liebrecht inThe Academy, iii. (1872), 321.

[127]P. Egede,Continuation af Relationerne, p. 97; H. Egede,Grönlands Perlustration, p. 117.

[128]Compare Liebrecht,Zur Volkskunde, p. 332, and the authorities there cited. See also Moltke Moe inLetterstedtske Tidsskrift, 1879, pp. 277-281.

[129]H. Egede,Grönlands Perlustration, p. 117; P. Egede,Continuation af Relationerne, p. 47; Rink,Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 471;Meddelelser om Grönland, part 10, pp. 290, 342.

[130]Rink and Boas,Journal of American Folklore(1888?) p. 124.

[131]F. Liebrecht,Zur Volkskunde, 1879, pp. 17-25; J.C. Müller,Geschichte der americanischen Urreligionen, pp. 134, 65.

[132]P. Egede,Continuation af Relationerne, pp. 32, 80;Efterretninger om Grönland, pp. 127, 106. H. Egede,Grönlands Perlustration, p. 117.

[133]Tylor,Primitive Culture, i. 355; A. Lang,La Mythologie(Paris, 1886), pp. 204, 206; Smithsonian Institute,Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1879-80, p. 45. The choice between day and night in the Greenland form of the myth may possibly be borrowed, directly or indirectly, from the biblical cosmogony.

[134]Christaller inZeitschrift für afrikanischen Sprachen, I. 1887-88, pp. 49-62. Compare also Bleek,Reineke Fuchs in Afrika(Weimar, 1870): Tylor,op. cit., p. 355; A. Lang,op. cit., p. 203.

[135]Hans Egede,Grönlands Perlustration, p. 117; P. Egede,Continuation af Relationerne, pp. 20, 60. As to washing in urine (see p.29), I may remark that it seems to have been a custom of untold antiquity. We find allusions to it even in the sacred writings of the Parsees. Thus it is said (Vendidad, 8, 13) that corpse-bearers shall wash themselves with urine ‘not of men or women, but of small animals or beasts of draught.’

[136]P. Egede,Continuation af Relationerne, p. 16; H. Egede,Grönlands Perlustration, p. 121; Rink,Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 236; Holm,Meddelelser om Grönland, part 10, p. 268.

[137]A. Lang,Custom and Myth, p. 132; Tylor,Primitive Culturei. 288.

[138]Compare Rink,Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, pp. 237, 440. Danish ed. suppl. p. 44. Liebrecht inGermania, vol. 18 (1873), p. 365.

[139]Holm,Meddelelser om Grönland, part 10, p. 142.

[140]This myth is so strikingly like the Greenland legend that there can scarcely be a doubt of their having sprung from the same source. Among the Khasias to love your mother-in-law is the direst sin, while among the Greenlanders it is worst to love your sister.

[141]Tylor,Primitive Culture, i. 354. See also A. Lang,Myth Ritual, and Religion, i. p. 128.

[142]P. Egede,Efterretninger om Grönland, pp. 150, 206.

[143]Holm,Geografisk Tidsskrift(Copenhagen, 1891), xi. 16. The idea that rain is due to the overflow of a lake in the over-world may possibly be traceable to more southern regions, where agriculture and artificial irrigation are practised, and where accordingly the mountain lakes have been dammed up. In the Greenland myth there is also mention of the lake being closed by a dam. (Compare Egede and Cranz.)

[144]See Schwartz,Die poetischen Naturanschauungen, i. pp. 138, 259; ii. p. 198; Schmidt,Das Volksleben der Neugriechen, i. p. 31;Belgisch. Museum, v. p. 215; Ign. Goldziher,Der Mythos bei den Hebräern, p. 88.

[145]This idea recurs in several parts of the world. Compare Christ’s forty days’ solitude in the wilderness.

[146]So in original (Trans.).

[147]Holm,Meddelelser om Grönland, part 10, p. 131.

[148]Angekoks, too, might be of either sex, but women seem always to have been in the minority among them.

[149]Holm,Meddelelser om Grönland, part 10, p. 135; Rink,Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, pp. 53, 151, 201, 461; N. Egede,Tredie Continuation af Relationerne, pp. 43, 48; P. Egede,Efterretninger om Grönland, p. 18, &c.

[150]Compare Carl Andersen,Islandske Folkesagn og Eventyr, 2nd edit. (1877) pp. 144-149. It is interesting to compare these Icelandic tales with the East Greenland legend related by Holm (Meddelelser om Grönland, part 10, p. 303), which is very similar in matter, though of course adapted to the conditions of life in Greenland. Analogous tales are also to be found in Norway, according to Moltke Moe, who has directed my attention to this remarkable similarity.

[151]Rink,Tales and Traditions of the Eskimos, p. 42.

[152]One of the characteristics of the ilisitsoks, as well as of the angekoks, is that they breathe fire. In the mediæval legends, and even in more recent European folk-lore, this faculty was attributed to the Devil, and was often extended to those who had sold themselves to him. The Greenland fire-breathing is probably connected with this mediæval superstition. The ilisitsoks, moreover, when seen by the angekoks during their exorcisms, are observed to be black from the hands up to the elbows—a trait which may also have its origin in the popular European conception of the Devil and his host as black in colour.

[153]Hans Egede,Grönlands Perlustration, p. 116.

[154]Compare Holm,Meddelelser om Grönland, part 10, p. 118.

[155]Holm,Meddelelser om Grönland, part. 10, p. 119.

[156]Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 51; Danish ed. suppl. p. 194.

[157]As regards the greater part of these myths, the theory that they were invented independently in different parts of the world seems quite inadmissible; the coincidences are too numerous and too characteristic. Examples may be cited, indeed, of the same invention having been made independently by different races remotely situated from each other; but they are remarkably rare. On the other hand, it is surprising how certain tools, cultivated plants, and arts or accomplishments have been handed on from people to people over immense tracts of the earth. (Compare Peschel,Abhandlungen zur Erd-und Völkerkunde, 1877, i. p. 468).

[158]Glahn,Nye Samling af det kongelige norske Videnskabelige Selskabs Skrifter, i. 1784, p. 271. Rink,Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, pp. 45, 391, 439; Kleinschmidt,Den grönlandske Ordbog, p. 33.

[159]See Moltke Moe’s Introduction to Qvigstad and Sandberg:Lappiske Eventyr og Folkesagn, p. vii;Nyrop, Mindre Afhandlinger udgivne af det philologisk-historiske Samfund, Copenhagen, 1887, p. 193; Liebrecht,Zur Volkskunde, p. 319.

[160]I must not omit to note, however, that similar conceptions are to be found in different parts of the world. In Tahiti, Oromatus, the mightiest of spirits, is said to have come into existence in this way, and among the Polynesians generally the souls of children are regarded as being especially dangerous. (Compare F. Liebrecht, inThe Academy, iii. 1872, p. 321.) One of my reasons for thinking that the Greenlanders may have borrowed their angiak from the Scandinavians is that, so far as I can ascertain, other Eskimo tribes have no such belief—at least it cannot be common among them. There is no mention of the angiak even among the legends collected by Holm on the east coast. On the other hand, there are several apparently more primitive myths of ordinary children who are turned into monsters. (CompareMeddelelser om Grönland, part 10, p. 287; Rink,Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 258; Danish ed. suppl. p. 125.) One of these, who on the east coast is the child of the moon by a human mother (Meddelelser om Grönland, part 10, p. 281), has on the west coast become an angiak. This is, no doubt, a late recasting of the legend—a theory which is borne out by the fact that variants occur on the west coast in which the angiak is an ordinary child.

[161]Communicated by Moltke Moe.

[162]Rink,Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 126; Holm,Meddelelser om Grönland, part 10, p. 276.

[163]Rink,Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, Danish ed. suppl. p. 119.

[164]P. Egede,Continuation af Relationerne, p. 19;Efterretninger om Grönland, p. 55; Rink,Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 145;Meddelelser om Grönland, part 11, p. 20, Suppl. p. 117.

[165]Castrén,Ethnologiske Foreläsningar, Helsingfors, 1857, p. 182.

[166]Meddelelser om Grönland, part 11, Suppl. p. 117.

[167]C. Andersen,Islandske Folkesagn, 1877, p. 205.

[168]The Iroquois, however, have a legend of seven boys who were transformed into birds and flew away from their parents. They have also a tale of a young man who goes out fishing and comes upon some boys who have put off their wings and are swimming. They give him a pair of wings which enable him to fly away with them; but they afterwards take his wings away from him and leave him helpless. Compare Rink,Meddelelser om Grönland, part 11, p. 21.

[169]It has hitherto been supposed that there are no traces of such intercourse except in the Eskimo legends (mentioned in Chapter I.), of their encounters with the old Scandinavians, and in the three following words:nîsafor nise (porpoise),kuánekfor kvanne (angelica) andkalâlek(meaning Greenlander). The derivation ofnîsa(old Norse nisa) andkuánekseems probable enough, though some doubt is thrown on the latter by the fact that in Labrador the word is applied to an eatable seaweed.Kalâlekwas supposed to be the same as the Norwegian skrælling—the name given by our forefathers to the Eskimos, which in an Eskimo’s mouth would sound something like kalalek. It is rather surprising, however, to find the same word among the Eskimos of Alaska in the form ofkatlalikorkallaaluch, meaning an angekok or chieftain (Rink,Meddelelser om Grönland, part 11, Suppl. p. 94;Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, Danish ed. suppl. p. 200). It is possible, however, that the word may have been imported into Alaska from Greenland in modern times. Another thing which, as it seems to me, may possibly be a relic of the old Scandinavians, is the cross-bow which Holm found upon the east coast, and which was formerly in use on the west coast also. So far as I know, it is not found among the Indians.

[170]Missionary activity in Greenland, then a possession of the Norwegian crown, was commenced in 1721 by Hans Egede, who to that end set on foot a combined commercial and missionary company in Bergen. This mission was afterwards supported by the Danish-Norwegian Government, and after the separation of 1814, by which Denmark retained the Norwegian possessions of the Faroe Isles, Iceland, and Greenland, by the Danish Government alone. Ten years after Egede’s arrival in the country, Count Zinsendorf, who had heard of his mission, despatched three Moravian brethren to Greenland. These also formed a little congregation, and the German or Hernhutt mission has likewise obtained a footing. It has now a few stations in the Godthaab district, and one or two in the extreme south of the country. The peculiarity of these Hernhutt communities, so far as I could gather, is that in them the natives have sunk to an even greater depth of misery than elsewhere.

[171]Compare Paul Egede,Efterretninger om Grönland, pp. 117, 162.

[172]Niels Egede,Tredie Continuation af Relationerne, pp. 32, 45.

[173]Paul Egede,Efterretninger om Grönland, p. 221.

[174]P. Egede,Efterretninger om Grönland, p. 21; compare also p. 25.

[175]That a man should have a woman-boat, which was formerly the general rule, is now regarded as a conclusive proof of exceptional wealth and capability; for he must of course catch many seals in order to have enough skins for it. Compareantep. 85.

[176]It must be mentioned, however, that accidental circumstances, such as the removal of some good hunters to other places, had contributed in some measure to this great falling off.

[177]An allusion to the well-known nautical superstition.—Trans.

[178]For instance, by causing the natives to wear worse clothes, and to live all the year round in their damp, insanitary houses, where the germs of disease find the best possible soil to flourish in, by introducing European articles of diet, and so forth.

[179]It is strange that the Greenlanders have in great measure escaped syphilis, which is usually one of the first gifts we confer upon those primitive people whom we select as subjects for our experiments in civilisation. It is found only in one place, Arsuk in South Greenland, where they try to isolate it. It is only of recent years that it has been introduced, but from what I hear it appears to have spread, and it seems probable that it will continue to do so, and in course of time affect the whole population.

[180]Just as I am sending this to press there appears Gejerstam’sKulturkampen i Herjedalen, in which the author argues, as I do, that our school teaching has been the ruin of the Lapps, by weakening their interest in the business of their lives.

[181]Crowns, thekronebeing equal to 1s.1½d.—Trans.

Transcriber’s Notes:Apparent printer’s errors have been corrected. Hyphenation has been standardised except where the meaning would be affected e.g. ‘re-cover’. All other inconsistencies are as in the original. Apparent typographical errors have been corrected. s. and d. (currency) all italicised for consistency. Original accentuation has been retained. Original spelling has been retained with some exceptions e.g. secresy to secrecy, song-writting to song-writers, Rosetti to Rossetti, ubringing to upbringing, translater to translator.

Transcriber’s Notes:

Apparent printer’s errors have been corrected. Hyphenation has been standardised except where the meaning would be affected e.g. ‘re-cover’. All other inconsistencies are as in the original. Apparent typographical errors have been corrected. s. and d. (currency) all italicised for consistency. Original accentuation has been retained. Original spelling has been retained with some exceptions e.g. secresy to secrecy, song-writting to song-writers, Rosetti to Rossetti, ubringing to upbringing, translater to translator.

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