644 W. Thalbitzer 



maritima), on which he had placed the head of a dead child; in the 

 wooden model here these parts are carved all in one piece. 



Fig. 365 b is another model made by Mitsuarnianga from a tupilak 

 he had "once seen in a dream." It is a large wooden doll in the 

 open mouth of which are inserted two teeth of a child, and the 

 eyes of a dead child are stuck into the deep orbits. The whole body 

 of the doll is wound tightly round with a strap of raw-hide; this 

 is probably not quite an original invention of Mitsuarnianga's phantasy 

 but is connected with traditional ideas ^). 



Fig. 365 c also shows a wooden model of a tupilak made by 

 Mitsuarnianga, who himself was sure that he had seen it alive. The 

 real tupilak consisted of the body of a dog with the legs of a fox 

 and a human head. It had originally been made by a man called 

 Pikinak who had been dead for several years when Mitsuarnianga 

 and his companion Perqilaak suddenly one day caught sight of the 

 tupilak while they were rowing along the foot of the Angeen moun- 

 tain in Sermilik. The tupilak was then on the point of creeping on 

 shore dragging behind it two inflated sealing bladders, which were 

 made fast on its back by means of long lines, because it had once 

 been harpooned, unknown by whom. 



In the tales tupilaks are often mentioned. In G. Holm's collection 

 (pp. 280—283) we hear of two old people who made a tupilak of a dead child; 

 they took the jaws of a fox and a ptarmigan, bound them to the child and 

 covered its head with dog-skin, whereafter they "made it living"; on its 

 approach through the house-passage it was therefore sometimes shrieking 

 like a fox sometimes like a ptarmigan. It was caught by the angakut present 

 and proved to be red, as of dried blood, in the corners of the mouth "with 

 the souls of the dead children it has devoured." 2) Another time we hear of 

 a tupilak shaped like a walrus and wearing women's breeches^). 



A typical West Greenland tupilak has been described by Poul Egede as 

 follows*): "made by a witch. She had been seen on the beach with a half- 

 sleeve filled with hair, nails, grass and moss, over which she was murmuring 

 some words. She said to the sleeve: go away and become a tupilak! The 

 ghost immediately sprang into the water and she now used it whenever she 

 wanted to take someone's life." 



A bear carved in wood and designated as a tupilak is illustrated in 

 Boas^j from the western side of Hudson Bay. 



Dolls and idols (pp.63, 115 — 116). — As already mentioned the 

 wooden dolls of the Ammassalik children must be considered in the 



1) One of the three dolls from Baffin Island, Frobisher Bay, illustrated in Boas 

 and representing the masked figures of supernatural beings, is in the same way 

 Avound all over with ground-seal lashings. Boas (1901) p. 141, fig. 170 c. 



'^) Rink (1866) p. 103, in the tale about Tiggak an amulet full of blood is also mentioned. 



3| Holm in Geografisk Tidsskrift VIII, p. 92. 



") P. Egede (1788) p. 218; cf. Glahn (1771), p. 351. 



'n Boas (1901; p. 153, fig. 171. 



