The soul is quite independent, and can thus leave the body for any time, short or long. It does so every night, when, in vivid dreams, it goes hunting or joins in merrymakings and so forth. The soul can also remain at home when the man is on a journey, a notion which Cranz believes to arise from home-sickness. It can also be lost, or stolen by means of witchcraft. Then the man falls ill and must get his angekok to set off and fetch his soul back again. If, in the meantime, any disaster has happened to it, for example if it has been eaten up by another angekok’s tornarssuk, the man must die. An angekok, however, had also power to provide a new soul or exchange a sick soul for a sound, which, according to Cranz, he could obtain from, say, a hare, a reindeer, a bird, or a young child.
The strangest thing of all is that the soul could not only be lost in its entirety, but that pieces of it could also go astray; and then the angekok had to be called in to patch it up.
Among the Greenlanders of the east coast, according to Holm, a third element in addition to these two enters into the composition of man: to wit ‘the name’ (atekata). ‘The name is as large as the man himself, and enters into the child after its birth, on its mouth being damped with water, while at the same time the “names” of the dead are spoken.’ Among all the Greenlanders, even the Christians, the first child born after the death of a member of the family is almost always called after him, the object being to procure peace for him in his grave. The East Greenlander believes that the ‘name’ remains with the body or migrates through different animals,[58] until a child is called by it. It is therefore a duty to take care that this is done; if not, evil consequences may follow for the child to whom the name ought to have been given.
This belief is remarkably similar to one which (as Professor Moltke Moe[59] informs me) is current in Norway: to wit, that the dead ‘seek after names.’ A pregnant woman dreams of one or other departed relative who comes to her (’seeking after a name’), and after him she must call her child; if not, she is guilty of an act of neglect, which may injuriously affect the child’s future.[60] The same superstition is also found among the Lapps. Among the Koloshes in North-West America, the mother sees in a dream the departed relative whose soul gives the child its likeness. Among the Indians also the naming of children is made to depend on a dream.[61]
In Greenland, as everywhere else, the name is of great importance; it is believed that there is a spiritual affinity between two people of the same name,[62] and that the characteristics of a dead person are transmitted to one who is called after him, who, moreover, is specially bound to defy the influences which have caused his predecessor’s death. Thus the name-child of a man who has died at sea must make it his special business to defy the sea in his kaiak—a notion which is also found among other races, for example, the Indians.
The Greenlanders are very much afraid of mentioning the names of the dead. On the east coast, according to Holm, this fear goes so far that when two people have borne the same name the survivor must change his; and if the deceased has been named after an animal, an object, or an abstract idea, the word designating it must be altered. The language is thus subjected to important temporary changes, for these re-christenings are accepted by a whole tribe.[63] The same custom is very widely diffused among the Indians of North America and of Patagonia, among the Samoyedes in Asia, and the Gipsies in Europe. It is also found in Eastern Africa, in Madagascar, Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea, and the Society Islands. When Queen Pomare of Tahiti died, the word po (night) was dropped from the language, and mi took its place.[64]
The fear of mentioning the names of the dead is also found in Europe—in Germany, the Shetland Islands,[65] and elsewhere—and, no doubt, among us in Norway as well. In Greenland, as among some native races in America and in the Sunda Islands,[66] sick people who bear the same name as one who is dead change it in order to cheat death.
The East Greenlanders are also afraid to speak their own names. Holm says that when they were asked what they were called they always got others to answer for them. When a mother was asked ‘what was the name of her child, she answered that she could not tell. The father likewise refused to say; he intimated that he had forgotten it, but that we could learn it from his wife’s brother.’[67]
Among the Indians, the name plays a great part; they even try to keep it secret, and therefore a man is often called by a nickname.[68] Among many races, custom forbids the mention of the names of relations, as, for instance, a husband’s, a mother-in-law’s, a son-in-law’s, the names of parents, or the name of the king. This potency of the name goes to considerable lengths amongst certain races. When the King of Dahomey, Bossa Ahadi, ascended the throne, he had everyone beheaded who bore the name of Bossa.
The fear of mentioning names is common to humanity; we find it in many of our legends,[69] and it prevails among us even to this day, especially upon the west coast.[70] It may probably be traced to the fact that the name and the thing are apt to melt into one. People come to think that when once the name is known the thing[71] is known as well, so that the mention of its name comes to exercise an influence upon the thing itself. A man may thus lose his strength by revealing his name. Therefore, too, we may suppose that dead people do not like to be called by their names, and that to name them may be a means of summoning them from their graves or of disturbing them in their rest. The Greenlanders dare not even speak the name of a glacier (puisortok) as they row past it, for fear lest it should be offended and throw off an iceberg.[72] A similar notion is very prevalent among the Indians and others, who dare not speak the names of places or of rivers.[73]