A Description of Greenland

by Hans Egede

The angekkuts can also persuade whom they please, that they have no souls, especially if they are in a bad state of health, pretending they have the power to create new souls in them, provided they pay them well for it, which the ignorant fools are very willing to do. They prescribe to all rules of conduct and behaviour in different cases, which rules none dare refuse to live up to with the greatest exactness imaginable; as for example, if any dies in a house, those of the house cannot, for a set time, do all sorts of work; especially the relations of the deceased are obliged to abstain, not only from certain works, but likewise from certain victuals.

If a patient be under the hands of an angekkok, he must live by rule, which they are accustomed to observe so exactly, that even when we have assisted many of them with our medicaments, they have always demanded what sort of diet they were to keep. Women in childbed are to abstain from working, and from certain victuals, viz. flesh meat, which their own husbands have not taken, or that of a deer, whose entrails are not sound, but damaged. The first week after the delivery they eat nothing but fish, afterwards they are allowed meat. The bones they pick in this state must not be carried out of doors. After the first childbed, a woman is not allowed to eat of the head or liver. They must not eat in the open air. During their lying-in they have their water pails for themselves alone; if any unwittingly should drink of this water, the rest must be thrown away. Their husbands must forbear working for some weeks, neither must they drive any trade during that time: likewise if any body be sick, they do not care to meddle with any trade. They are not allowed to eat or drink bareheaded. They pull off one of their boots, and lay it under the bowl which they eat out of, to the end (as they imagine) that the infant, being a male, may become a good seal catcher. During the infancy of the child, they dare not boil any thing over the lamp, nor let any strangers light a fire with them; and many more fooleries to be observed[39]. It is customary among them for married women to wash and cleanse themselves after their months, that their husbands may not catch a distemper and die. Likewise, if they have happened to touch a dead corpse, they immediately cast away the clothes they have then on; and for this reason they always put on their old clothes when they go to a burying, in which they agree with the Jews, as in many other usages and ceremonies; for example, to bewail the loss of their virginity; to mark themselves upon their skin; to cut their hairs round the head, which the Lord forbids the Jews to do, Levit. xix. When I consider this and many other of their customs, which seem to be of a Jewish extraction, I am not far from acceding to the opinion of a certain famous writer, concerning the Americans; among whom as he found sundry Jewish rites and ceremonies, he took them to descend from Jews, or rather from some of the ten tribes of Israel, who were led into the Assyrian captivity, and afterwards dispersed into unknown countries.—See hereon Espars, 1. iv.

A superstition very common among them is, to load themselves with amulets or pomanders dangling about their necks and arms, which consist of some pieces of old wood, stones or bones, bills and claws of birds, or any thing else, which their fancy suggests to them; which amulets, according to their silly opinion, have a wonderful virtue to preserve those that wear them from diseases and other misfortunes, and gives them luck to good captures. To render barren women fertile or teeming, they take old pieces of the soles of our shoes to hang about them; for, as they take our nation to be more fertile, and of a stronger disposition of body than theirs, they fancy the virtue of our body communicates itself to our clothing.

Concerning the creation and origin of all things, they have little to say, but they think all has been as it ever will be. Nevertheless they abound in fables in regard to these matters. Their tale of the origin of mankind runs thus: at the beginning one man, viz. a Greenlander, sprung out of the ground, who got a wife out of a little hillock[40]. From these are descended lineally the Greenlanders; which may pass for a remnant, though an adulteration from the true tradition of the origin of man. But as to us foreigners, whom they stile Kablunæt (that is, of a strange extraction), they tell a most ridiculous story, importing our pedigree from a race of dogs; they say, that a Greenland woman once being in labour, brought forth at the same time both children and whelps: these last she put into an old shoe, and committed them to the mercy of the waves, with these words; Get ye gone from hence and grow up to be Kablunæts. This, they say, is the reason, why the Kablunæts always live upon the sea; and the ships, they say, have the very same shape as their shoes, being round before and behind.

The reason why men die, they tell us, is, that a woman of their nation once uttered these words; Tokkolarlutik okko pillit, sillarsoak rettulisavet, Let them die one after another; for else the world cannot hold them. Others relate it in this manner: two of the first men contended with one another, one said, Kaut sarlune unnuinnarluna, innuit tokkosarlutik; that is, Let there be day, and let there be night, and let not men die. The second said, Unnuinnarlune, kausunane, innuit tokkosinnatik; that is, Let there be nothing but night, and no day, and let men live; and after a long contention the first saying got the day. Of the origin of fishes and other sea animals they tell a ridiculous story, viz. an old man was once cutting chips off of a piece of wood; with these chips he rubbed himself between the thighs, and threw them into the sea, whereupon they immediately became fishes. But of a certain fish called hay, they derive his production from this accident, that a woman washing her hairs in her own water, a blast of wind came and carried away the clout with which she dried her hairs, and out of that clout was produced a hay fish; and for this reason they say, the flesh of this fish has got the smell of urine.

They have got no notion of any different state of souls after death; but they fancy that all the deceased go into the land of the souls, as they term it. Nevertheless they assign two retreats for departed souls, viz. some go to Heaven, others to the centre of the Earth; but this lower retirement is in their opinion the pleasantest, inasmuch as they enjoy themselves in a delicious country, where the sun shines continually, with an inexhaustible stock of all sorts of choice provision. But this is only the receptacle of such women as die in labour, and of those that, going a whale fishing, perish at sea; this being their reward, to compensate the hardships they have undergone in this life; all the rest flock to Heaven.

In the centre of the Earth, which they reckon the best place of all, they have fixed the residence of Torngarsuk and his grandame, or (as others will have it) his lady daughter, a true termagant and ghastly woman, to whose description, though already made in my continuation of the relations of Greenland, some time ago published, I shall yet allow a place in this treatise, and is as follows. She is said to dwell in the lower parts of the earth under the seas, and has the empire over all fishes and sea-animals, as unicorns, morses, seals, and the like. The bason placed under her lamp, into which the train oil of the lamp drips down, swarms with all kinds of sea fowls, swimming in and hovering about it. At the entry of her abode is a corps de garde of sea dogs, who mount the guard, and stand sentinels at her gates to keep out the crown of petitioners[41]. None can get admittance there but angekuts, provided they are accompanied by their Torngak, or familiar spirits, and not otherwise. In their journey thither they first pass through the mansions of all the souls of the deceased, which look as well, if not better, than ever they did in this world, and want for nothing. After they have passed through this region, they come to a very long, broad, and deep whirlpool, which they are to cross over, there being nothing to pass upon but a great wheel like ice, which turns about with a surprising rapidity, and by the means of this wheel the spirit helps his angekkok to get over. This difficulty being surmounted, the next thing they encounter is a large kettle, in which live seals are put to be boiled; and at last they arrive, with much ado, at the residence of the devil’s grandame, where the familiar spirit takes the angekkok by the hand through the strong guard of sea dogs. The entry is large enough, the road that leads is as narrow as a small rope, and on both sides nothing to lay hold on, or to support one; besides that, there is underneath a most frightful abyss or bottomless pit. Within this is the apartment of the infernal goddess, who offended at this unexpected visit, shows a most ghastly and wrathful countenance, pulling the hair off her head: she thereupon seizes a wet wing of a fowl, which she lights in the fire, and claps to their noses, which makes them very faint and sick, and they become her prisoners. But the enchanter or angekkok (being beforehand instructed by his Torngak, how to act his part in this dismal expedition) takes hold of her by the hair, and drubs and bangs her so long, till she loses her strength and yields; and in this combat his familiar spirit does not stand idle, but lays about her with might and main. Round the infernal goddess’s face hangs the aglerrutit (the signification of which is to be found in my son’s journals) which the angekkok endeavours to rob her of. For this is the charm, by which she draws all fishes and sea animals to her dominion, which no sooner is she deprived of, but instantly the sea animals in shoals forsake her, and resort with all speed to their wonted shelves, where the Greenlanders catch them in great plenty. When this great business is done, the angekkok with his Torngak proud of success make the best of their way home again, where they find the road smooth, and easy to what it was before.

As to the souls of the dead, in their travel to this happy country, they meet with a sharp pointed stone, upon which the angekkuts tell them they must slide or glide down upon their breech, as there is no other passage to get through, and this stone is besmeared with blood; perhaps, by this mystical or hieroglyphical image, they thereby signify the adversities and tribulations those have to struggle with, who desire to attain to happiness.

CHAP. XIX.

The Greenlanders’ Astronomy, or their Thoughts concerning the Sun, Moon, Stars, and Planets.