Graah relates a curious instance[27] proving how difficult it is for an onlooker to determine what are really the lady’s sentiments. An able-bodied young rowing-woman in his boat, an East Greenlander named Kellitiuk, was one day seized and carried to the mountains by one of her countrymen named Siorakitsok, in spite of the most violent resistance on her part. As Graah believed that she really disliked him, and as her friends affirmed the same thing, he went after her and rescued her. A few days later, as he was preparing to set forth on his journey again, and the boat had just been launched, Kellitiuk jumped into it, lay down under the thwarts, and covered herself with bags and skins. It soon appeared that this was because Siorakitsok had just landed on the island, bringing his father with him to back him up. While Graah’s back was turned for a moment, he jumped into the boat and dragged the fair one out of her hiding-place. Convinced that her brutal wooer was really repulsive to her, Graah thought it his duty to rescue her. When he came up, the suitor had already got her half out of the boat, and his father stood by on shore ready to lend a hand. Graah tore her from his grasp, and recommended him instead to try his luck with ‘Black Dorothy,’ another of the rowing-women, whom he would have been glad to get rid of. The baffled bridegroom listened to him quietly, ‘muttered some inaudible words in his beard, and went away with wrathful and threatening looks.’ The father did not take his son’s fate much to heart, ‘but helped us to load the boat,’ says Graah, ‘and then bade us a no doubt well-meant farewell.’ When they were about to start, however, Kellitiuk was nowhere to be found, although they shouted and searched for her all over the little island. She had evidently hidden herself away somewhere, and they set off without her; so it appears that she had, after all, no irreconcilable antipathy to Siorakitsok.
Among the heathen Greenlanders, divorce is as simple an affair as marriage. When a man grows tired of his wife—the reverse is of rarer occurrence—he need only, says Dalager, ‘lie apart from her on the sleeping-benches, without speaking a word. She at once takes the hint,’ and next morning gathers all her garments together and quietly returns to her parents’ house, trying, as well as she can, to appear indifferent. How many husbands at home could wish that their wives were Greenlanders!
If a man takes a fancy to another man’s wife, he takes her without ceremony, if he happens to be the stronger. Papik, a highly respected and skilful hunter at Angmagsalik, on the east coast, took a fancy to the young wife of Patuak, and, towing a second kaiak behind his own, he set off for the place where Patuak lived. He went to his tent, carried off the woman, made her get into the second kaiak, and paddled away with her. Patuak, being younger than Papik, and not to be compared with him in strength and skill, had to put up with the loss of his wife.[28]
There are cases on the east coast of women who have been married to half-a-score of different men. Utukuluk, at Angmagsalik, had tried eight husbands, and the ninth time she remarried husband No. 6.[29]
Divorce is especially easy so long as there are no children. When the woman has had a child, especially if it be a boy, the bond is apt to become more lasting.
On the east coast, if a man can keep more than one wife, he takes another; most of the good hunters, therefore, have two, but never more.[30] It appears that in many cases the first wife does not like to have a rival; but sometimes it is she that suggests the second marriage, in order that she may have help in her household work. Another motive may also come into play. ‘I once asked a married woman,’ says Dalager, ‘why her husband had taken another wife? “I asked him to myself,” she replied, “for I’m tired of bearing children.”’
The first wife seems always to be regarded as the head of the household, even if the husband shows a preference for the second.
Polyandry seldom occurs. Nils Egede mentions a woman who had two husbands, but both she and they were angekoks.[31]
On the introduction of Christianity, these primitive and simple marriage customs were of course abolished on the west coast of Greenland, where people are now united with religious ceremonies as in Europe. The bride, too, is no longer required to offer so determined a resistance.