INTRODUCTION. 



THE COLLECTIONS. — G. Holm's collection was made during the 

 winter he passed at Ammassalik (Angmagsalik) ^) in 1884 — 1885 

 and consisted of 715 objects. Almost all kinds of East Greenland 

 implements and clothes are represented and the collector obtained 

 precise information regarding their use. The collection was described 

 and illustrated by Holm himself in 1888'^) and since then has often 

 attracted the attention of ethnologists. It was the first collection, 

 which systematically represented the culture of a certain Eskimo 

 tribe in Greenland and it was at once evident from Holm's descrip- 

 tion, that the culture of the Ammassalik natives possessed a special 

 character, due essentially to the isolated situation of the locality on 

 the east coast (at 65° 30' N. lat.). Holm called attention to the prin- 

 cipal peculiarities, for example, in their houses, their sledges, weapons, 

 house utensils, clothes, ornaments; he gave the first description of 

 the Eskimo's seal hunting on the ice at Ammassalik, their sealing 

 weapons, and their salmon spears with toggle headed forks along with 

 others with barbed forks, their use of the double hunting bladder 

 along with the single, their method of joining the wooden parts of 

 their boats, the kaiak dress of the hunters and the peculiar harpoons 

 and knives, the working tools of the men and women, drums of 

 the angakut, playthings of the children etc. At the same time Rink 

 made a comparative study of this collection ^). I fully agree with 

 Schultz-Lorentzen's remarks on Holm's East Greenland expedition, 

 that "in the ethnographic field at any rate this one winter with its 

 detailed investigation has yielded more information, than the more 



1) The East Greenland form of this name is Ammattalik or Ammattaling, but in 

 the dialect of central West Greenland it is pronounced Ammassalik, in both 

 dialects with a more intense nasalization of the m sound than is usual in our 

 pronouncing of the m. In Kleinschmidt's orthography the word is given as 

 Angmagsalik. 



2) G. Holm in "Meddelelser om Grønland" X (1888), Enghsh translation in this 

 volume (XXXIX) especially pp. 28-57 and 115—124. 



3) Rink in "Geografisk Tidsskrift" pp. 139—145 (1886). 



XXXIX. 21 



