Ethnographical collections from East Greenland. 539 



woman wants to see one or two of her friends for a gossip, she 

 sends for them to come immediately and drink the soup (correspond- 

 ing to our afternoon tea): pan^na imertorniarseek 'come over and 

 take soup with me' or neekaaleij"'ar imertorniarseek 'come for soup.' 

 This custom has once has been the cause of a bitter juridical drum- 

 fight between two women. One of them heard one day that the 

 other had dog-soup in her pot and as it was her favourite dish and 

 she was an old friend of the house, she paid a visit in the hope of 

 having a treat, but was very disappointed when she was only offered 

 a piece of very dry meat and not a drop of soup. This tragical 

 incident was certainly the main cause of the process which followed, 

 during which the two ladies hurled bad accusations into the face of 

 each other, about which I may refer to Rink'). 



Fox-meat is boiled and is said to have almost the same taste 

 as dog-meat (has no special fox-smell). 



All sorts of birds (ptarmigans, eider-ducks, ducks, sea-gulls, auks, 

 guillemots, wild geese, loons etc.) are boiled but are not very highly 

 appreciated. Ptarmigans are sometimes dried to be cooked later 

 when food is wanted. The only part of the ptarmigan that is con- 

 sidered a delicacy is the half-digested contents {qeeko, qeekoät) of 

 the intestines. Eggs (maniij, plur. mannin) of ail sorts of birds are 

 eaten either raw or boiled ; and even if the egg is so far developed 

 as to contain the young bird, it is eaten with pleasure. 



Shark-flesh is eaten, but is considered inferior to all other meat; 

 it forms part of the food during the starvation-period, when in the 

 darkest months of the winter the seals are scarce or there are 

 none at all. The flesh of the shark is first boiled in sea-water, then 

 either chopped and boiled in fresh water until it becomes a sort of 

 white porridge (the water is pressed out with a spoon), or boiled 

 and cut up into small pieces of the size of a hand. Even the cart- 

 ilaginous parts of the shark are eaten, lightly boiled. Shark's flesh 

 is also eaten in the dried state; the drying takes place in the house, 

 where it makes a nauseous smell. Even the rough hide of the shark 

 is dried and eaten. On the other hand, the long red liver itself is 

 not eaten but its contents of fat, which slowly oozes out of itself 

 in the liquid state, is used as oil for the lamps and is better than 

 seal-oil. 



The blood of the seals is also used as human food; it is poured 

 out into a vessel where it coagulates and is then called aak^"kaaq or 

 aa^'knkaaq; it is afterwards stuffed into a seal-gut or stomach and 

 eaten as blood pudding (unboiled). The coagulated blood may also 



ij Rink (1866) pp. 140-141 (song no. 131) 



