341 



be sure, but a partial one. For most of the features which 

 are peculiar to the northern culture are at present unknown 

 to the people of Ammassalik. Out of the old-fashioned and to 

 some extent characteristic harpoon heads of the Northeners, 

 there is only one, the specimen assumed to be a harpoon head 

 for sealing on the ice, which has a near relation to the south. 

 The mysterious wooden implement with harpoon-shaped head, 

 the club-shaped bone foreshafts for harpoons (inv. Amd. 73 — 

 /01, the needle-cases, the drum handles of bone, the old- 

 fashioned patterns of the ornaments incised in ivory are not 

 known at Ammassalik. Nor indeed, for obvious reasons, are 

 the bows and arrows, which have been found frequently to the 

 north; however, the Ammassalik Eskimo refer to these weapons 

 in their tales. The other implements accentuate a difference 

 which exists between the culture of the north and south, and 

 which is presumably due to the circumstance that the two 

 Eskimo groups were separated for a considerable length of 

 time, to some extent owing to the natural obstacles which lay 

 between them. Amdrup was the first European to experience 

 the serious character of these obstacles on his expedition. 



The Ammassalik Eskimo have indeed in their traditions only 

 a very dim recollection of other Eskimo north of the northern- 

 most point of the coast which they know by personal experience. 

 If their ancestors once immigrated to their present district from 

 the north, this must have taken place so long ago that their 

 connection with the families they left behind them in the 

 northern fjords, in Scoresby sound, Franz Joseph's tjord, and 

 further to the north, must have long ceased to exist. After 

 that lime each of these groups must have gone their own way, 

 and new accessions may have taken place from the west coast 

 to either of the groups south and north of the great island. 

 Archæological investigations in the Ammassalik district itself 

 will perhaps one day reveal whether the inhabitants of this 

 recion in older times were more closely in touch with their 



