The Material Culture of the Eskimo in West Greenland. 193 



4. Ancient appellations are to be found for the oldest, genuine 

 forms of knives, stone knives in particular, and in them the word 

 savik or derivations therefrom do not occur, for instance sdnat, 

 sdnardlit; ancient implements resembling knives are likewise given 

 appellations in which sai>ik is not included, for instance that knife- 

 like implement for removing ice from the kayak: sermiaut and the 

 snow knife: pana, etc. 



5. Newly formed words, also, are interesting in this connec- 

 tion, as they show the idea that lies at the back of them. In this 

 way is formed the word savequta (some iron which is placed on a 

 thing so that it is an essential or integral part of this, or some iron 

 which makes the thing just what it is) from savik and the suffix -qiit, 

 425. It is, for instance, the common term for the gun-lock, but 

 it may also signify the engine in a steamer or motor-boat. 

 In the latter meaning the form usually heard here is saveqiitaussai, 

 in which, in addition, the suffix -ussaq, 458, (something which resembles 

 a thing or is supposed to be a thing) is adopted, so that a fair 

 rendering of the word would now be: "the pieces of iron applied to 

 it which are so essential to it that they just make it into what it is."^ 



On the other hand a scythe is called kwdlut from kivdlorpai, 183, 

 "he cuts a piece off the length of several simultaneously." 



Nor does the fact of the name of the metal being transferred to 

 the man's knife militate against this conception, because it has been 

 beyond doubt first employed for this, just as there is no doubt that 

 if we should deprive our present-day Greenlander of iron, the depriva- 

 tion would nowhere be felt so keenly as in the production of a 

 knife with which to make the rest of the implements. 



How a stone knife was manipulated by the Eskimo. 



In my collection of stone implements from West Greenland there 

 is a considerable number of knives of all possible dimensions, ranging 

 right down to tiny knives of rock crystal, which, according to the tradition 

 among Greenlanders at Disco Bay are assumed to have been used for cut- 

 ting boils. Some have a single-edged, others a double-edged blade, and 

 there are, as with the other stone-implements (harpoon and lance- 

 points, etc.), both polished and unpolished forms amongst them. As, 

 however, I lack literary aid in this respect, I prefer to postpone the 

 description of trhese things to some other occasion, and here to content 



1 It must not be thought that savequtâ has become a fixed term for the 

 gun-lock and savequtaussai ditto for a boat-motor. No, the derivation given 

 above is apprehended and understood by the Greenlanders of today just at the 

 moment the word is spoken, but he can only understand the signification of it — 

 for instance the one given here as an example — from the context of the 

 conversation. 



15* 



