402 W. Thalbitzer 



tioned. An Eskimo has many ways of getting over a difficulty and 

 can invent a plan of attack. His decoying sounds and whistling for 

 the seals may vary with individual experience. If two hunters, on 

 their way out to sea, were to catch sight of a rising seal, the one would 

 try to get the seal to look in his direction by whistling, whilst the 

 other approached from behind and gave the animal its death-blow. 

 If a man wandering about happens to spy a seal, which has crept 

 up and gone to sleep on the ice, he steals gently up and surprises 

 it with a blow of his knife, if he is in luck. 



Net-fishing for seals. — The catching of seals in nets is men- 

 tioned as used in former times both at Ammassalik and on the west 

 coast ^). According to one of the legends (only known from East 

 Greenland), Matakatak hunted seals with nets {nigak) which were 

 made of whalebone^). In a variant of the same tale which was 

 given me by Mitsuarnianga, Matakatak had another name Qajaaitseq 

 'the one without a kaiak' (because he did not owe any); he made 

 his nets of thongs of bearded-seal skin which he wove into meshes 

 and set out between the islands. 



I think it highly probable that net-fishing for seals was used 

 in Greenland in old days. Netting is one of the most used methods 

 on the winter-ice in Alaska"'). Old implements for making nets have 

 been found in Greenland and nets were made there for the salmon 

 fishing before the arrival of Europeans, according to Glahn and 

 O. Fabricius*). The same is mentioned by John Davis who based 

 his observations on the "gentle and loving Savages" he came across 

 on the 64th N. lat. of the Greenland west coast (July 4th 1586) in 

 the following words °): 



"They are never out of the water, but live in the nature of fishes, save 

 only when dead sleepe taketh them, and then under a warme rocke laying 

 his boat upon the land, hee lyeth downe to sleepe. Their weapons are all 

 darts, but some of them have bow and arrowes and slings. They make nets 

 to take their fish of the finne of a whale: they do all their things very 

 artificially." 



When the Danish colonisation began in the 18th century the 

 seal fishing with nets had long fallen out of use. But the foreign 

 colonists soon took up again, or introduced anew, the use of nets 

 for catching seals and this way of sealing has since been very 

 important for the production in West Greenland*^) but it is still not 

 much practised at Ammassalik. 



1) Holm in this volume pp. 51 — 52. Cf. (1888) p. 79. 



2) Id. ibid. p. 256. 



») Murdoch (1892) p. 252. 



*) Fabricius П818) p. 269. Glahn (1771) p. 204. 



'•') John Davis (1586) p. 398. 



'■') Rink (1852) pp. 119—124; (1877) pp. 120—121. 



