At first he found it far from easy, for he could not keep pace with the other reindeer when they ran.
“How do you stretch your hind legs at a gallop?” he asked one day.
“Kick out towards the farthest edge of the sky,” they answered. And he did so, and then he was able to keep pace with them.
But at first he did not know what he should eat, and therefore he asked the others.
“Eat moss and lichen,” they said.
And he soon grew fat, with thick suet on his back.
But one day the herd was attacked by a wolf, and all the reindeer dashed out into the sea, and there they met some kayaks in their flight, and one of the men killed Avôvang.
He cut him up, and laid the meat in a cairn of stones. And there he lay, and when the winter came, he longed for the men to come and bring him home. And glad was he one day to hear the stones rattling down, and when they commenced to eat him, and cracked the bones with pieces of rock to get at the marrow, Avôvang escaped and changed himself into a wolf.
And now he lived as a wolf, but here as before he found that he could not keep up with his comrades at a run. And they ate all the food, so that he got none.
“Kick up towards the sky,” they told him. And then at once he was able to overtake all the reindeer, and thus get food.