Ethnographical collections from East Greenland. 409 



hunter has struck the seal, the detached head remains in the wound 

 under the skin of the animal, like a sort of fish-hook, and there 

 turns round like a toggle, when the animal in seeking to escape down- 

 wards tightens the line. The harpoon head remains in constant 

 connection with the man or his float by means of the line, while 

 the wounded animal is seeking to escape. The line passes through 

 a transverse hole in the harpoon head, where it is doubled up 

 into a closed loop or bight, whilst the other end is attached to the 

 float (in the kaiak harpoon) or is simply held in the hand (ice- 

 harpoon). These harpoons, which are used by all Eskimo in sealing 

 from kaiak or ice, have the common principle, that the head leaves 

 the shaft when the animal has been struck. This is the principle 

 of the true harpoon. The false harpoon, which is only known 

 from East Greenland, has a hinged toggle head of a special type; it 

 is hinged on to a transverse axis, round which it turns, at the end 

 of a very long wooden shaft. Such a harpoon is, for example, the 

 East Greenlander's ituartit weapon, used in the two-man sealing on 

 the ice. 



Following G. Holm's description of the East Greenland harpoons 

 (pp. 46 — 47) ^) I shall call the two nearly related types of kaiak har- 

 poons the knob-harpoon and the feather-harpoon (figs. 103 and 104). 

 The designations are based on the different forms of the bone 

 weight, which is fixed at the butt end of the wooden shaft and 

 which regulates the moA'ement during the flight through the air 

 (figs. 108 and 115). For the same reason the use of the throwing 

 stick is somewhat different for these kinds of harpoons. Common to 

 both types is the characteristic 'loose shaft' {eemaq, West Greenland 

 igirnaq), a movable shaft, often of narwhal tusk which forms a neck 

 or joint ^) (fig. 119) between the loose harpoon head and the true 

 shaft. The latter (figs. 112 to 113) is of wood, but has a short bone 

 foreshaft (i. e. a small bone or ivory cap on the end surface, figs. 

 109 and 110). — Other sealing weapons of Greenland of types re- 

 lated to the harpoon are the ice-harpoon and the lance. The ice- 

 harpoon (fig. 116) does not have the loose shaft. On the other hand, 



^) The description of Otto Fabricius (1810 and 1818) of these weapons — har- 

 poons and bladder darts, which he calls Harpun-pile (harpoon-darts) and Kaste- 

 pile (casting darts) and lances, bird darts etc. — is classic, somewhat generalized 

 but full of exact descriptions of the details. With regard to the harpoon (1. c. 

 pp. 130 — 131 and 139), he accepts Cranz' description but at the same time 

 points out that the figures are misleading ("he has drawn all the nails and straps 

 on the wrong side of the weapon"). Fabricius' description is restricted to West 

 Greenland, especially the central and southern parts; it can only in part be 

 considered as appl3'ing to East Greenland, where the culture differs in many 

 details from that of the other coast. 



2) O. Mason (1900) p. 199, cf. 237. 



