Inuit way of life

Reincarnation was part of the Inuit way of life, and this included humans and animals. When a name was given to an infant, the characteristics of the name and any helping spirits would follow.
KONRAD NUKA GODTFREDSEN, 2012

Inuit tales played a crucial role as a cohesive force that told the Inuit how the world was created and how everything was interlinked. People were connected to each other by family ties, but also through a name soul. Each human being consisted of a body (timeq), a soul (tarneq) and a name (ateq). If a person died, it was therefore important that the next newborn child was named after the recently deceased, so that the name – and its special abilities and amulets – could live on. This tradition still thrives to some extent in present-day Greenland.

However, humans were not the centre of Inuit life, for humans were merely one of many relatively equal beings, and therefore everything had an inua, which is a life essence or inherent being. The word itself translates as ‘its essence’, and inua was found in all living creatures (humans and animals), natural elements such as rocks and the wind, in a stone and even in laughter, hunger and sleep.

Just as religious writings prescribe good and bad morals, oral tradition served to pass on vital lessons and admonitions for socially acceptable behaviour. In addition, the tales gave rise to social gatherings and togetherness both during the long, dark winter nights and during the annual aasiviit (summer camps) where people from near and far gathered.

Maliina, Aningaaq and Sassuma Arnaa

One of the recurring tales among Inuit in Greenland, northern Canada, Alaska and as far east as Siberia is the tale of Maliina and Aningaaq. They were siblings but the boy Aningaaq fell deeply in love with his sister, Maliina. When his sister to her horror realises that she has been sleeping with her brother in the dark, she flees the settlement in shame. She manages to grab a piece of glowing moss from the blubber lamp, her brother does the same, but in his moss there are only embers. In their flight, they both rise to the heaven, and so we see in the sky the Moon (Aningaaq) chasing the Sun (Maliina), though he will never catch up with her.

This anorak belonged to the four-year-old boy Tertaq, and it features no less than 80 amulets sewn on the outside and inside. The amulets, which include the skull of a wolverine, a whole raven, polar bear claws and more, were meant to protect the boy from spiritual attacks, but some of the animals’ unique properties could also infect the boy. It was unusual, however, for a costume to have so many amulets, so Tertaq’s father understandably demanded a good price from polar explorer Knud Rasmussen: the polar explorer’s pencil, which could »capture stories in lines«, and a lock of his hair. In 1924, when the costume was collected, not all Inuit could read and write.
ROBERTO FORTUNA/NATIONALMUSEET, KØBENHAVN

Another common story is about Sassuma Arnaa (in early literature called Mother of the Sea or the Sea Woman). In this tale, a (according to the father) marriageable daughter is presented with a number of suitors, whom she rejects as she is able to support herself, i.e. go hunting. However, her father will not tolerate this, so one day he pushes his daughter over the side of his boat. As she clings to the boat, he cuts off her fingers, so that she sinks to the bottom of the sea, while her severed fingers transform into the myriad animals of the sea and she becomes ‘Mother of the Sea’ (Sassuma Arnaa). Since then, when hunting went wrong or settlements experienced famine, it was attributed to man’s rule-breaking, and it was now the task of an angakkoq (spiritual adviser) to make a spirit journey to Sassuma Arnaa in an attempt to appease her and negotiate with her to restore the balance of the world.

Angakkoq, amulets and tupilak

On a spirit journey to the unseen world, the angakkoq had to draw on the spiritual strength of its helping spirits (toornat). These spirits had been overcome by angakkoq during its apprenticeship, when spirits could be negotiated with. However, if an angakkoq apprentice had to give up its training, it could become an ilisiitsoq: one who used its understanding of the spiritual world for misdeeds. People without spiritual training, on the other hand, had to protect themselves with amulets and tattoos.

The amulets had a dual function. They were meant to protect the wearer from harm, but at the same time the wearer could acquire a desired ability from the animal which the amulet consisted of. The snowy owl gave you better eyesight, while the polar bear gave you strength and the common eider made you a faster kayaker. If you were born with ailments, your survival depended mainly on whether the settlement had plenty of food resources and whether you were spiritually protected and empowered.

One feared creature was the tupilak, created to harm another human. A tupilak could consist of many different parts from animals and possibly hair from the person you wanted to hurt. When the creature was awakened, its creator would command its mission. Whereas the original tupilak was a mischievous creature, today the beautifully carved tupilak is sold in souvenir shops as a lucky charm, and thus the object now has a new meaning.

Taboos and rituals

The Inuit rituals offer deep insight into the Inuit way of life. In addition to a host of taboos surrounding life transitions such as menstruation, birth and death, the Inuit performed a number of rituals when interacting or even negotiating with the game or animals. The hunt was not attributed to the hunter’s years of training and skills, but rather to the persuading of the animal to ‘give itself’ to the hunter, his family and the settlement. The hunter achieved this by being moral and hard-working, by making the hunting tool so that the animal could recognise itself in it and by the hunter showing respect after the death of a seal, for example, by offering the seal fresh water to drink.

A lifetime of abiding by these rules would see a good hunter in the land of the dead with an abundance of game. The disrespectful and greedy hunter, on the other hand, went to the land of the dead where he had to catch butterflies with his mouth because his hands were tied behind his back – a cruel fate from an Inuit perspective.

Further reading

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  • Asta Mønsted

    (b. 1985) Ph.D. in Prehistoric Archaeology, National Museum of Denmark.