The Material Culture of the Eskimo in West Greenland. 165 



any other root. The word is now only used to denote the European 

 large whale-lance of iron on a short shaft. But possibly it is the term 

 for the old Eskimo whale-lance which has been transferred to this object. ^ 

 One form of lance still exists, however, which strangely enough 

 seems to be quite unknown, since, so far as information goes, it has never 

 been mentioned by those authors who have dealt with the material 

 culture of the West Greenlanders. Yet in certain districts it is generally 

 distributed, and in other districts, where it is not used because there is 

 no reason to do so, it is known to everyone. In accordance with its 

 purpose it might be termed the West Greenland reserve-lance. 



Here, the implement is called savgutartoq, or qajaqatâ. The word savgûtartoq 

 is perhaps just comprehensible for European train of thought, but hardly capable 

 of being translated exactly. According to the Rev. H. Mortensen the derivation 

 is as follows: — 



savik, 316, iron, knife. 



savigpâ, 317, "he puts on something sharp", for instance, "he sets the 

 harpoon on the shaft in order to have it ready for the throw." 



The word comprises, moreover, the suffixes -u«, 458," the means wherewith" 

 or -upâ, 457, which indicates, among other things, that the action expressed in 

 the main word is for the benefit of some part otherwise unconcerned ; and also 

 -tarpoq, 450 "what is usual," "what frequently," "what sometimes." 



Thus the word becomes an intransitive noun-participle of a verb savgü- 

 tarpâ, and may perhaps be freely rendered by "that thing which sometimes by 

 being set upon another thing makes this sharp." 



Words of kindred origin which are not to be found in Kleinschmidt's diction- 

 ary either, are for instance savgutaq, that piece of the harpoon line, which reaches 

 from the harpoon and down to the eyelet of bone, and which is buttoned to a 

 peg on the harpoon-shaft ; savgutarfik "the place where one puts on something 

 sharp," that is before going out to the open sea, the name of a small island in 

 Disco Bay. 



The word qajaqat is derived from qajaq, a kayak, and the suffix -qat, 

 qaiâ, 424, "his with — ," "his in the company of" and Mr. G. Kleist thinks that 

 it is meant to express that the implement shall be a necessary safeguard for each 

 individual man to carry when he goes out singly on dangerous hunting in contra- 

 distinction to when several go together. A free rendering of the word is "the 

 thing which he usually has with him when in thç kayak." 



The reserve-lance (Fig. 24) consists of an ellipsoidal piece of hard 

 and strong bone, preferably ivory, into which an ordinary steel lance 

 blade is fixed with an iron nail. Behind it is well rounded and has a 

 hollowing; at the side of this, two line holes have been bored up through 

 the under edge and out through the side, where they are widened so 

 as to receive the knot of a line which is not too thick, so that this 



^ Fabricius, also, (Zool. Bidrag, p. 77) is in doubt whether the word is 

 original or is a new formation. Perhaps it is derived from qaluvâ, 126, "he bales 

 it out," "he bales the fluid matter out from it," for instance, from a boat or a 

 tub, and thus is only a translation of the Danish (Dutch?) term for the lance 

 — "Lænser", a baler — generally used in Greenland. 



