Ethnological Sketch of the Angmagsalik Eskimo. 79 



attention to the fact that he no longer had any parents, and that I 

 must therefore give him something. 



He informed me that he too might not eat entrails etc., for a 

 whole year, 'for his dead mother would not like it'. After having 

 informed me about their mourning observances and the funeral, he 

 wound up by saying that 'they were ashamed to speak about their 

 dead', and therefore I must pay him for it. 



When we visited Ukutiak and Pisak in their tent a few days 

 later, we found them in very good spirits. Ukutiak was very much 

 charmed with his new wife, whom he kept caressing in an extra- 

 ordinarily intimate manner. 



We have, however, seen cases of truly deep grief amongst the 

 Angmagsaliks. Honest old Ilinguaki had in the course of the winter 

 lost several of his nearest relations, who were also friends of ours. 

 When I met him in the spring he said to me in the most natural 

 and heartfelt manner possible that no doubt I had heard of his 

 grievous losses; he had wept so much over them that he could 

 now weep no longer. 



The widely diffused custom of not naming the name of the 

 deceased was also observed in Angmagsalik. When the period of 

 mourning is at an end, the name of the deceased is no longer 

 named; accordingly, when two people have had the same name, 

 the surviver is obliged to change his. If the deceased has been 

 called after an animal, an object or a notion, the word for this 

 animal, object or notion is changed. In this way the language under- 

 goes important alterations, as the new designations are adopted by 

 the whole population. It may be presumed, however, that the old 

 appellations crop up again, when the dead person has fallen into 

 complete oblivion.^). 



^) In Angmagsalik we have not heard any other grounds than those which have 

 been given for prohibition against, or fear of, pronouncing names. On the 

 southerly part of the East coast, on the other hand, the people have a dread 

 of calling the ill-omened glacier by its right name, Pnisortok, especially when 

 they are about to pass it. While the passage of the glacier is taking place 

 they may not, so thej^ say, speak, nor laugh, nor eat, nor use tobacco, nor 

 look at the glacier. Some objects which had belonged to a dead man were 

 left on shore before the glacier was to be passed. This is the only place 

 where we have heard of sacrifices taking place. During the passage the 

 offerings, consisting of small beads or other things which are especially valued, 

 are cast into the sea. Above all the word Puisortok ('the place where some- 

 thing emerges') must not be named. The glacier is called instead: Apusinek 

 ('the place where there is snow'). This glacier lies right out at sea. It is 

 sometimes necessary in order to pass to go close in under it, as the pack-ice 

 blocks the passage further out. Presumably the reason why the natives have 

 conceived such a dread of the glacier, is that an accident may once have 



