The Government has, fortunately, prohibited the sale of brandy to the Greenlanders. Europeans, however, are allowed to order it from home, and may treat the Greenlanders with it. It is very common to let them have a dram when they are serving as rowers on board the boats of Europeans travelling in the summer-time, and after any bargain has been concluded with them. It has furthermore been wisely ordained that the kifaks, or those who are in the employ of the Danish Company, get each his dram every morning; while the hunters, who ought to be more capable and better men than the kifaks, cannot obtain any without either entering into the service of the Europeans or selling something to them.
They are passionately fond of brandy—women as well as men—not, as they often confided to me, because they like the taste of it, but because it is so delightful to be drunk; and they get drunk whenever an opportunity offers, which is, happily, not very often. That the intoxication is really the main object in view appears also from the fact that the kifaks do not greatly value their morning dram, because it is not enough to make them drunk. Several of them, therefore, agreed to bring their portions into a common stock, one of them drinking the whole to-day, the next to-morrow, and so on by turns. Thus they could get comfortably drunk at certain fixed intervals. When the authorities discovered this practice, however, they took means to stop it.
Unlike their sisters here in Europe, the Eskimo wives, as a rule, find their husbands charming in their cups, and take great pleasure in the sight of them. I must confess, indeed, that the Eskimos, both men and women, seemed to me, with few exceptions, considerably less repulsive, and, of course, considerably more peaceable, in a state of intoxication than Europeans are apt to be under similar conditions.
When the Europeans first came to the country, the natives could not at all understand the effects of brandy. When Christmas approached, they came and asked Niels Egede when his people were going to be ‘mad’; for they thought that ‘madness’ was an inseparable accompaniment of the feast, and the recurring paroxysm had become to them a landmark in the almanack. They afterwards ascertained that it was due to this liquor, which they therefore called silaerúnartok—that is to say, the thing which makes men lose their wits; but now they usually call it snapsemik.
[CHAPTER VII]
CHARACTER AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS
When I see all the wrangling and all the coarse abuse of opponents which form the staple of the different party newspapers at home, I now and then wonder what these worthy politicians would say if they knew anything of the Eskimo community, and whether they would not blush before the people whom that man of God, Hans Egede, characterises as follows:—‘These ignorant, cold-blooded creatures, living without order or discipline, with no knowledge of any sort of worship, in brutish stupidity.’ With what good right would these ‘savages’ look down upon us, if they knew that here, even in the public press, we apply to each other the lowest terms of contumely, as for example ‘liar,’ ‘traitor,’ ‘perjurer,’ ‘lout,’ ‘rowdy,’ &c., while they never utter a syllable of abuse, their very language being unprovided with words of this class, in which ours is so rich.
This contrast typifies a radical difference of character. The Greenlander is of all God’s creatures gifted with the best disposition. Good-humour, peaceableness, and evenness of temper are the most prominent features in his character. He is eager to stand on as good a footing as possible with his fellow-men, and therefore refrains from offending them and much more from using coarse terms of abuse. He is very loth to contradict another even should he be saying what he knows to be false; if he does so, he takes care to word his remonstrance in the mildest possible form, and it would be very hard indeed for him to say right out that the other was lying. He is chary of telling other people truths which he thinks will be unpleasant to them; in such cases he chooses the vaguest expressions, even with reference to such indifferent things as, for example, wind and weather. His peaceableness even goes so far that when anything is stolen from him, which seldom happens, he does not as a rule reclaim it even if he knows who has taken it. ‘Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again’ (Luke vi. 30).