Of musical talent the Greenlanders have a good share. They pick up our music with remarkable ease, and reproduce it, sometimes vocally, for they are very fond of singing, sometimes on the violin, guitar, organ, accordion, or other instruments, which they quickly teach themselves to play upon. This is the more remarkable as their primitive music, which was performed at the drum-dances, is monotonous and undeveloped, like that of most primitive peoples. It employs only a few notes, as a rule not more than five; but it is nevertheless peculiar and not without interest. It is believed to be in the main an imitation of the rushing of the rivers. The East Greenlanders told Holm that when they sleep beside a river they hear the singing of the dead, and this they seek to imitate.
The primitive characteristics of their music have of course been more or less destroyed by their intercourse with Europeans. They have now adopted many European airs, and it produces a quaint and surprising effect, among the mountains and the glaciers, suddenly to hear a snatch of a Copenhagen street song, as for example, ‘Gina, lovely maiden mine, ... won’t you come along?’
The Greenlanders have a great wealth of fairy tales and legends, many of them very characteristic. Nothing affords a better insight into the whole spiritual life of the people, their disposition, feelings, and moods, than the matter of these legends and the manner in which they are told. We find in them a considerable talent for narrative and gift of imagination, along with a grotesque humour, which of course often takes the form of coarseness.
Besides this legendary lore (see next [chapter]) and narratives of exploits and adventures, the Greenlanders had a poetry of their own. The songs were either lampoons, such as they used to sing at the before-mentioned drum-dances, or else descriptions of different objects and events.
When, on the introduction of Christianity, the drum-dance was abolished, the art of versification also fell into disuse or assumed new shapes. Still, however, the Greenlanders make up songs. They are often of a jocose character, the poet setting forth to ridicule, in a more or less innocent manner, the peculiarities of others. I understand that several songs of this nature were composed with reference to members of my expedition. Indeed I have often heard them sung about the settlement of an evening, though I never succeeded in obtaining the text of any of them.
Thanks to the initiative of Dr. Rink, an Eskimo newspaper, Atuagagdliutit, has ever since 1861 been published in Godthaab. It is printed by a native, Lars Möller, who has been to Copenhagen to learn the trade, and who even draws and lithographs pictures for it. It is published twelve times a year, and is distributed gratis to the community, the expenses being borne out of the public funds. Its contents consist partly of translations from the Danish, partly of independent contributions from the natives describing their hunting, their travels, and so forth. Thus a whole new literature has been called into existence.
A specimen of their method of narration was given in ‘The First Crossing of Greenland,’ Vol. II. pp. 217-236. It consisted of the account given by an Eskimo named Silas, in the Atuagagdliutit, of his expedition from Unanak on Godthaab-fiord to the Ameralik fiord to render assistance to the four members of our expedition who had remained behind there in October 1888, after Sverdrup and I had proceeded to Godthaab. The following narrative, from the Atuagagdliutit, is also a good sample of their style. It exemplifies, moreover, the strong hold which their superstitions still possess upon the Eskimo mind, and is thus of interest with reference to the matter of my next chapter. I have to thank Mrs. Signe Rink for her kindness in translating it for me.
At last I send you something which I have long thought of contributing to your ‘Varieties’ column. There is not much in what I have to tell, but what there is I have seen with my own eyes. I refer to the comical customs in connection with the killing of a bear in certain southern districts, which are quite unknown elsewhere. These things took place in the year 1882-83 down at Augpilagtut, a little way from Pamiagdluk.[50] There are two Eskimo houses at Augpilagtut. In one of them lived three seal-hunters with their families, to wit, Benjamin, surnamed Akâtit, Isaac, or Umangûjok, and lastly Moritz; and in the other dwelt Mathæus, who was generally called Ulivkakaungamik, or ‘the full-stuffed,’ from a catch-word he himself was in the habit of using. He was over seventy, but still went hunting very often, and had even killed many bears all by himself.
It happened one Sunday, when all the other hunters had gone to sea, that we who remained behind held a prayer-meeting in Mathæus’s house. When it was over, Benjamin’s son was the first who went out, and he came rushing back again crying, ‘There’s a bear right outside here, eating the blubber.’
I was half frightened, half rejoiced by this news; but old Mathæus positively trembled with delight, and burst forth, ‘Thanks to him who brings such good tidings; I must go out at once and kill the bear.’ I looked at him, thinking that he was going to pick out for himself a good weapon, a long knife or spear. But nothing of the kind! The weapon he had taken scarcely stuck out from his clenched fist. What use can that be, I thought, against the bear’s hide and thick layer of fat. However, the women of the house would not let him attack the bear, and all seized upon him to hold him back, I helping them. The women all untied their top-knots and let their hair spread loose, that the bear might think they were men, and therefore keep his distance. For our heathen forefathers thought that bears had human understanding.