Mangilak, born frail and swaddled in an eider-duck skin, overcame early struggles to become a legendary Greenlandic figure. A skilled hunter and kayaker, he learned a calming spell from a gull and married twice, losing his first wife but gaining wisdom from her spirit. Though baptized, Mangilak retained his angakok powers. His lineage included Akajarok, whose descendants shared his remarkable story.
Source:
Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo
by Henry Rink
[William Blackwood and Sons]
Edinburgh and London, 1875
► Themes of the story
Transformation: Mangilak’s journey from a frail infant to a powerful hunter and angakok (shaman) embodies significant physical and spiritual transformation.
Supernatural Beings: His interactions with his deceased first wife, who provides him with wisdom from beyond the grave, highlight encounters with the supernatural.
Ancestral Spirits: The narrative emphasizes the influence of ancestors and the continuation of spiritual wisdom through generations, as seen in Mangilak’s lineage and the transmission of his story.
► From the same Region or People
Learn more about the Inuit peoples
Abridged version of the story.
Singajuk was a celebrated hunter living in Kangek (near Godthaab). His wife miscarried, and brought forth a poor little wretch of a child, that was swaddled in the skin of an eider-duck, and had to be fostered with the utmost care to keep it alive. This child was called Mangilak, and became one of the most powerful of men. His first deed was killing an ingnersuak. Afterwards he was once caught in a gale of wind at sea, but espying a solitary spot of smooth water and a gull swimming in it, by dint of listening to its voice he learned a spell for procuring a calm; and from that time he was not to be equalled in kayaking. His mother then persuaded him to marry, and he took a wife, who, however, shortly afterwards died.
► Continue reading…
Being almost an angakok, he used to visit her grave and talk with the deceased, and on one occasion she gave him a mussel-shell containing a drink to endow him with angakok wisdom. Mangilak married a second wife, and got a son, called Akajarok, whose daughter became the grandmother of the man who related this story. Akajarok died a Christian. Mangilak also was baptised, but was too full of angakok wisdom to become more than a nominal Christian.
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Dreamtime Whispers 