The women, however, find shopping at least as entertaining. As the time for opening the stores approaches, they are to be seen, even in the winter snowstorms, standing in groups along the walls and waiting for the moment when the doors of Paradise shall be flung wide and they can rush in. Most of them do not want to buy anything, but they while away the hours during which the store is open, partly in examining all the European articles of luxury, especially stuffs and shawls, partly in flirting with the storekeepers, and partly in exchanging all sorts of more or less refined witticisms and ‘larking’ with each other.
The rush is particularly great every summer, after the arrival of the ships with cargoes of new wares from Europe. Then the stores are literally in a state of siege the whole day long. Like their European sisters, the Eskimo women are fond of novelties of all sorts, so that as soon as they arrive the stores do a roaring trade in them. The main point, so far as I could understand, is that the wares shall be new; the use they are to be put to is a minor consideration.
[CHAPTER XII]
MENTAL GIFTS—ART—MUSIC—POETRY—ESKIMO NARRATIVES
The Greenlanders are endowed with good mental faculties and great inventiveness. Their implements and weapons, as we have seen, afford a striking proof of this. The missionaries, too, especially at first, found only too ample opportunity to judge of the keenness of their understanding, when they were so foolish as to let themselves be drawn into discussions with the heathen angekoks. When the missionaries were cornered, however, they had often arguments in reserve which were much more forcible than those of the natives. They wielded, as my friend, the master carpenter at Godthaab used to say, ‘a proper fist,’ and to its persuasions the peaceable Greenlanders could not but yield.
To prove that their natural parts are good, I may mention that they learn to read and write with comparative ease. Most of the Christian Eskimos can now read and write, many of them very well; indeed, their faculty for writing is often quite marvellous. Even the heathen Eskimos learn to play dominoes, draughts, and even chess, with ease. I have often played draughts with the natives of the Godthaab district, and was astonished at the ability and foresight which they displayed.
All our ordinary branches of education they master with more or less readiness. Arithmetic is what they find most difficult, and there are comparatively few who get so far as to deal competently with fractions; the majority have quite enough to do with addition and subtraction of integers, to say nothing of multiplication and division. The imperfection of their gifts in this direction is no doubt due to age-old causes. The Eskimo language, like most primitive idioms, has a very undeveloped system of numerals, five being the highest number for which they have a special word. They count upon their fingers: One, atausek; two, mardluk; three, pingasut; four, sisamet; five, tatdlimat, the last having probably been the original word for the hand. When an Eskimo wants to count beyond five, he expresses six by saying ‘the first finger of the other hand’ (arfinek or igluane atausek); for seven he says ‘the second finger of the other hand’ (arfinek mardluk), and so forth. When he reaches ten he has no more hands to count with, and must have recourse to his feet. Twelve, accordingly, is represented by ‘two toes upon the one foot’ (arkanek mardluk), and so forth; seventeen by ‘two toes on the second foot’ (arfersanek mardluk), and so forth. Thus he manages to mount to twenty, which he calls a whole man (inuk nâvdlugo). Here the mathematical conceptions of many Eskimos come to an end; but men of commanding intellect can count still further, and for one-and-twenty say ‘one on the second man’ (inûp áipagssâne atausek). Thirty-eight is expressed by ‘three toes on the second man’s second foot’ (inûp áipagssâne arfinek pingasut), forty by ‘the whole of the second man’ (inûp áipagssâ nâvdlugo), and so forth. In this way they can count to a hundred, or ‘the whole of the fifth man’; but beyond that his language will not carry even the most gifted Eskimo.
This is, as will be easily understood, a somewhat unwieldy method of expression when one has to deal with numbers over twenty. In former days there was seldom any need to go further than this; but the introduction of money and trade has, unfortunately, rendered this more frequently necessary. It is therefore not surprising that, in spite of their remarkable power of resistance to foreign words, the Greenlanders have begun more and more to adopt the Danish numerals, even for the smaller numbers. By their aid they have now got so far that they can count to over a hundred, which they call untritigdlit[47]; but I strongly suspect that they have still a difficulty in forming any distinct conception of so high a number. A thousand they call tusintigdlit.[48]