Ethnographical collections from East Greenland. 



461 



Those which do not combine these characteristics, have at least one 

 of them; fig. 157a is triangular in section. — These plugs are used 

 in closing the narrow wounds caused by the toggle heads of the 

 ice harpoon {sämmia and ittuarteen) or of the lance provided with iron- 

 heads. The plug (the bone and wood one alike) is pushed like a pin 

 through the edges of 

 the wound, the skin 

 of the edges being 

 drawn together and 

 stretched up the plug. 

 After having been 

 stuck through the 

 folded-up edges of the 

 wound, a thong is 

 wound round the 

 skin under the plug, 

 so that the wound 

 is tightly closed. 



In South Green- 

 land the small wound-plugs are not known, probably because there 

 is no hunting on the ice. But both kinds of wound-plug are known 

 from North-west Greenland, made of wood and of bone^). 



Fig. 168 a from the "dead house" is a 

 wooden wound-plug of special interest, partly 

 owàng to the ornamented head, carved into 

 the resemblance of a human face, partly because 

 it was recognised by old people at Ammassalik 

 belonged to a definite person, who 



Fig. 163. 



be d e 



Drag-line toggles. Nualik. (Amdrup coll.) ^/з. 



as 



having 



had journeyed away northwards half a genera- 

 tion previously and never returned ^). It has 

 thus been the equivalent of a historic document, 

 throwing light on the identity of the thirty 

 bodies found in the "dead house" at Nualik. 



A little further north Amdrup found a wound- 

 plug of bone (Skærgaard Peninsula) and Ryder 

 two of the same kind in Scoresby Sound ^). The 

 2nd German North-Pole Expedition found in 

 Franz Josephs Fjord, still further north, two plugs of wood (length 

 7 and 9 cm.) which probably have been wound-plugs*). 



a b 



Fig. 164. Drag-line 

 handles, Nualik. (Am- 

 drup coll.). 2/3. 



') Pfaff's collection in Stockholm Riksmuseum. 



2) Amdrup (1909) p. 310. 



3) Ryder (1895) pp. 319—320, fig. 18. 



*) Seen in the Museum für Völkerkunde, Rerlin. 



