Kuanak, a South Greenland angakok, faced mystical and perilous adventures during his spiritual journeys. Surviving attacks by supernatural beings and near-death encounters, he escaped through the sea and earth, emerging at home. On another flight, his drum moved on its own, signaling his distress after falling unconscious outside. He later endured an undersea ordeal, aided by his grandmother’s magic, eventually returning to life with the help of chanting elders.
Source:
Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo
by Henry Rink
[William Blackwood and Sons]
Edinburgh and London, 1875
► Themes of the story
Underworld Journey: Kuanak’s ventures beneath the sea and earth, encountering supernatural beings and challenges, align with the motif of a journey into realms beyond the ordinary world.
Supernatural Beings: Throughout his adventures, Kuanak interacts with various mystical entities, including an amarsiniook and his grandmother’s spirit, highlighting the theme of engagement with supernatural beings.
Transformation: Kuanak undergoes significant physical and spiritual changes during his ordeals, especially when he is revived from a near-death state through magical means, embodying the theme of transformation.
► From the same Region or People
Learn more about the Inuit peoples
Abridged version of the story.
Kuanak, an angakok in South Greenland, started for a flight, having previously had his feet and his head tied together. While passing along between two high rocks, an amarsiniook rushed out from the mountain-side and wanted to take him into his hood. He made his escape by dropping into the sea, and proceeding onwards beneath the surface of the sea and the earth, finally emerged from the floor of his own house. Another time, when he had gone off on a flight, his drum, which he had left in the house, was lifted up by itself, and soared about in the room till at length it stopped and fell down. At that same moment a voice was heard from without, and hastening to look whence it came, they found him in an almost dying state lying upon the snow, an old skin-cover from a kayak having frightened him and caused his downfall.
► Continue reading…
Kuanak was once capsized by a seal he had just harpooned; but being an anghiniartok, his senses again returned, and he found himself at the bottom of the sea, in company with his grandmother. She tied his kayak-jacket close to his body, leaving no part of it uncovered, and then supplying him with a piece of skin by way of kayak, she pushed him upwards. When he emerged from the water he first betook himself far out to sea, and thence made the land again, but happened to touch at an inhabited place, where somebody was emptying out the urine-tub, which scared him away from the shore. He tried to land on another place, but here a woman, dressing her hair on the beach, scared him away. If he had a third time taken fright, he would never have returned to the land of the living. But he happened to land at Pisugfik, where a couple of old men were sitting playing at dice. They at once knew him to be an anghiniartok; and on merely touching his naked body, he dropped down senseless; but on their chanting a magic lay, he revived. They then brought him back to his homestead, where his relatives, who had already finished their days of mourning and nearly forgotten him, were gladly surprised at hearing the crew of the boat that brought him home intuning Kuanak’s song.
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Dreamtime Whispers 