102 G. Holm. 



There is nothing to prevent a man being both an ilisitsok and 

 an angakok at the same time. He can very well be an ilisitsok 

 without practising the magic arts; if he does perform them, he runs 

 a serious risk of 'going mad', or as we should express it, of talking 

 wildly in delirium. In this case the patient is bound with his 

 hands and feet stretched out on the platform or on the floor, and 

 is gagged. He gets neither food nor drink, and sometimes heavy 

 stones are laid on his chest. He is left in this position till he dies. 

 This treatment is so deepl}^ engrained in the consciousness of the 

 natives, that it may even be set on foot without an angakok being 

 present. The sufferer's torments are often shortened by his being 

 cast into the sea immediately after being bound. The only way 

 in which the patient can escape this treatment, is for him to con- 

 fess that he is an ilisitsok and to name all the crimes, real or 

 imaginär}^, which he has on his conscience, after which he is de- 

 barred from continuing his career as an ilisitsok. But if he is an 

 angakok as well, there is nothing to prevent him going on with 

 that profession. 



The most skilful hunter on the Angmagsalik fjord, Perkitigsak, 

 who had gone through the training without openly proclaiming 

 himself as an angakok, was the sworn enemy of the angakut and 

 lost no opportunity of holding them up to ridicule. When he 

 was afflicted with a boil on his back and afterwards caught fever, 

 angakut appeared from all sides to cure him. When the fever got 

 worse they declared that he was in danger of going mad. We have 

 already described the treatment to which he would be subjected in 

 this eventuality. He then had to confess that he was an ilisitsok 

 and tell a great deal of absurd nonsense about his having sent out 

 four tupileks, who had managed together to kill a score of persons, 

 some of whom were members of his own family^). 



The last tupilek he made in spring. He was just about to 

 harpoon a walrus, when someone else anticipated him and caught 

 it. In his anger he made a tupilek of walrus skin, fragments of 

 the man's game and many other things. It resembled a 

 walrus wearing women's drawers. He created and made it grow 

 in the usual way, after which he sent it forth to kill the man who 

 had taken the walrus from him. One daj' after this he saw a 

 walrus at Ikerasarsuak, and was just about to hari)oon it, when he 

 discovered that it was the tupilek. It made for the shore and went 



'l I can fully endorse Rink'.s opinion in "Supplement til eskimoiske Æventyr og 

 Sagn" page 186: "When illness or death occur unexpectedly, they are always 

 ascribed to witchery, and it is a question whether death in general was not 

 originall}' accounted for in this way". 



