378 



the legs stretched out, swaying her body to and fro, sometimes 

 rapidly sometimes more slowly, from side to side and tortuous- 

 ly, whilst she kept her hands comparatively still and only now 

 and then moved her elbows in to her sides. She stared out 

 in front of her quite regardless of the surroundings, and sang 

 or screamed, occasionally changing the tone, iah-iah-iaha-ha . . .; 

 now and then she interjected a sentence, e. g. that now the 

 Danish had at last come to them, and again the great happi- 

 ness this gave her now in the glad summer-time and so on. 

 Her two small children sat and played about her, whilst the 

 members of the tribe scarcely looked at her during the attack; 

 they seemed to be very well acquainted with such things. She 

 recovered quite suddenly and only some hectic, red spots on 

 her cheeks indicated anything unusual. Without so much as 

 looking about her or betraying a sign of anything unusual she 

 began, literally in the same moment, to give her youngest 

 child milk and then went quietly on to chew a skin. Accord- 

 ing to Knud Rasmussen's experience this attack was com- 

 paratively mild; in other cases the sick person may have a 

 lust for destruction, and men frequently become very dangerous 

 to their surroundings. 



The songs of the Polar Eskimos strike one as being very 

 monotonous especially in the beginning, but they improve on 

 closer knowledge, and according to Chr. Leden ^ they are of 

 very considerable musical interest from the historical side. The 

 rule is, that every man or woman who has the ability to sing 

 — for there are also unmusical Polar Eskimos, just as there 

 were a few who said that they had no notion how to draw — 

 themselves make up the melodies or "songs without words", 

 which they sing. It is the exception for any one to sing the 

 melodies of others. 1 shall not express any opinion here as 

 to the difference between the songs of the men and the women ; 



1 On p. 267, line 12, Chr. Refsaas should also be Chr. Leden. 



