Ethnographical collections from East Greenland. 



603 



Women's hair-bands and hair-dressing (qaleq, p. 33). — The Am- 

 massalik women gather their hair onto the top of the head with a 

 narrow skin-band (qalia), which keeps the top-knot (qalicaq, fig. 11) 

 firm. Fig. 328 a shows one of unliaired skin ornamented with light 

 dots; b and с represent two other 

 hair-bands with the hairy side 

 turned outwards and ornamented 

 with stripes (titarneran). In front 

 they are all hung with ammassät- 

 beads (dorsal vertebrae) drawn 

 on strings. The hair-band may 

 also be made of bird's feet sewn 

 together (especially the feet of the 

 black guillemot, which are red) 

 or of red-coloured skin. Some- 

 times they are adorned with beads 

 cut from ptarmigan-wings. The 

 distinction made by the West 

 Greenland women with regard to 

 the colour of the bands of mar- 

 ried and unmarried women (a 

 married woman has a blue band, 

 an unmarried a red unless she 

 has a child, in which case she 

 wears a green) is unknown at 

 Ammassalik. It is a custom in- 

 troduced by the Europeans. 



To dress the hair in a single 

 bunch or 'tuft' is common to all 

 parts of Greenland and a char- 

 acteristic feature of the Greenland- 

 ers. On the east coast this custom 

 had been imitated on a girl's 

 doll found by Nathorst at Cape 

 Franklin (73°30'Lat.) near the 

 entrance to Franz Josephs Fjord ^). 

 On the west coast it can be traced 

 to Cape York 2). Lyon mentions that this Greenland style of dress- 

 ing the hair is also found in the Hudson Straits where the women 



Fig. 328. 



Women's hair-bands. 

 Holm coll.). 1/2. 



1) Stolpe (1906) PI. VI, fig. 19. As for the southern part, see Graah (1832) pp.119— 

 120; as for the West Greenlanders, H. Egede (1829) p. 30. 



2) Steensby (1910) figs. 32, 83 etc.; Mylius Erichsen and Moltke (1906) pp. 235, 338, 

 358, 454 etc. (figures). 



