398 W. Thalbitzer 



and whales are now relatively rare^). The fjord seal is caught on 

 the winter ice; in the middle of winter especially these are taken 

 through their breathing holes in the ice, but in spring they can 

 often be overtaken when they creep up on the ice at the side of 

 the opening made by themselves. 



The chief weapons in the kaiak (before the introduction of the 

 European gun) were the harpoon and lance. Both are still used. 

 The KAIAK HARPOON is a combination of a dart and a fixing appar- 

 atus, a dart with a loose head attached by a long, flexible line (the 

 harpoon line) to the air-filled sealskin-float. The head penetrates in 

 under the skin of the animal, which in its flight drags out the har- 

 poon line, until the sealskin-float at the other end is thrown into 

 the water and checks the speed of the animal. The kaiak lance is 

 the death-dealing weapon that follows, a bone dagger at the end of 

 a wooden shaft, by means of which the hunter stuns or kills the 

 animal as it comes up to [the surface to breathe^). If the animal 

 does not die at once, the man gives it the death-blow by means of 

 a hand-lance or small dagger of bone. When the seal is dead, the 

 hunter loosens the skin from the blubber through a hole, blows it 

 up and binds the edges of the hole together round a plug. He 

 attaches the towing-strap through a strip made in the skin of the 

 seal by two parallel cuts and fixes the other end under one of the 

 cross-straps of the kaiak ^). The forepaws of the seal are bound 

 together and the towing bladder is attached to the seal to prevent 

 it from sinking and thus he drags it along the surface of the water 

 by the side of or behind the kaiak to his house or tent. 



The methods of hunting seals (Phoca foetida) on the winter 

 ICE in the East Greenland fjords are quite the same as those known 

 from the large fjords in North-west Greenland^). 



Nipparteq 'standing (?) on the watch' or naalatteq 'listening', 

 (fig. 129) is the name given to the hunting method, or rather 



^) The Greenland seal has also greatly decreased in the numbers, according to the 

 old Akernilik; even the crested seal is less common than in his young days. 

 The famine 3'ears whicii have so often recurred during the last generation, 

 have been mainly due to the decrease of these seals. The smallest kinds of 

 whales (white whale and narwhal) are still caught from the kaiak. 



2) Rink (1890) p. 192. Solberg (1907) p. 64. 



'■'-) In West Greenland, according to O. Fabricius (1810), the towing of the seal is 

 carried out by means of a set of dilïerent straps whicli are attached round the 

 body of the animal like a harness. 



^) Hans Egede, Perhistration (1741) Cap. VII (pp. Г)8— 59).* H. Hink, Nordgi-ønland 

 (18.5'J; Part 1, pp. IIU et seq., II, pp. 16.S et seq. A. H. (Andreas Hansen) in 

 Atuagagdliutit 1899, pp. 97—103. 0. Fabricius' description of the ice-hunting 

 weapons fl810, pp. 145 — 146) is very short and incomplete. The^' were first 

 accurately described by (}. Holm in (1888) pp.77 — 79, in tliis volume pp. .")(l— 51. 



