A widow, escaping a suitor’s persecution, raised her son in isolation near a glacier to despise men. They befriended another solitary woman, surviving through reindeer hunting. Her brother, now an angakok, found them and stayed. After the widow’s death, her son repeatedly revived after burial but ultimately died. His ghost, appearing as fire, confronted the brother, revealing his deeply ingrained hatred for men.
Source:
Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo
by Henry Rink
[William Blackwood and Sons]
Edinburgh and London, 1875
► Themes of the story
Family Dynamics: The narrative centers on a widow and her son living in isolation, highlighting the complexities of familial relationships and the impact of upbringing on personal beliefs.
Conflict with Authority: The widow’s flight from a persistent suitor underscores a defiance against imposed authority and societal expectations.
Supernatural Beings: The son’s posthumous appearances as a ghostly fire introduce elements of the supernatural, reflecting beliefs in spirits and the afterlife within Inuit culture.
► From the same Region or People
Learn more about the Inuit peoples
Abridged version of the story.
A widow, greatly harassed by the persecutions of a man who wanted to marry her, fled to the inland with her little son, whom she educated with the view of making him a hater of the male sex. She built her hut near the border of the inland glacier, and made the acquaintance of another woman, who led the same solitary life on a bare hillock emerging from the glacier. When the son had grown up, his reindeer-hunting secured them ample subsistence. Once they were surprised by the visit of one of her brothers, who told them that, from the time they had disappeared, he had devoted himself to the study of angakok science in order to find out her place of retreat; and having attained the powers of an angakok, he instantly discovered her trace, by means of which he had found her out.
► Continue reading…
He henceforth remained with them. The sister died from old age, and, later on, her son fell sick and died, but revived three times after his mother’s brother had buried him. The fourth time, however, the latter pulled down the house on the top of him, and then left the place. While passing the night in a cave on his way towards the coast, he was overtaken by the ghost of the deceased appearing in the shape of a fire, with a voice saying, that from childhood he had been fostered up to hate the whole male sex, and had the other not been his mother’s brother, he would certainly have killed him.
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Dreamtime Whispers 