Kthnographical collections from East Greenland. 705 



The song about Oongortoq 



Bg (Pingel, Julianehaab) Dg (Rink, Arssuk) 



Look at that fool QaLLunaq going out When we started from the south there 



of the house imprudently, approaching the Kitsissut islands 



Look at that fool Oongortoq who goes under shelter of our boat looking like 

 out imprudently carrying his son a small iceberg — 



under his arm! look! out of the door came Ungortoq 



In this way I shall manage to avenge with his small son under his arm; 



myself on you. shading his eyes with his hand 



The KalaaLLit (Eskimo) approach at spying out over the sea, 



full speed, he said: "How often have I not warn- 

 Their heads are smooth, ed you 



Their heads are shining. and said, the KalaaLLit would come, 



these people with the bald, round 



heads!"!) 



To Bg we have the following note. The speaking person is the Eskimo, whose 

 brother Oongortoq had killed. That their heads were smooth and shining is 

 explained thus by the present Greenlanders, that they were ready for war, for 

 it is said that in olden times it has been the custom among them to cut ofi 

 some of their hair or at any rate make it wet before they went out to fight^). 



Kitsissut {'the westernmost', in Dg) is the name of several groups of islands, 

 one south of Julianehaabsfjord at 60° N. lat., another north of the same fjord 

 between this and Arssuk, and a third right up near the Godthaabsfjord. The 

 words of the song point expressly to the southernmost of these groups of islands. 



According to our main sources (C^ and D^) this event took place near Qa- 

 qortoq, i. е. about 8 English miles north-east of the present Julianehaab, where 

 the largest ruins of a Greenland church from the middle ages are still to be seen. 

 The name means the 'white', because, it is said, the church was whitewashed, 

 at any rate it has been light coloured (built of hght stones with white mortar 

 between)^). To the Eskimo this was nothing else but a special kind of house 

 and it is not improbable, that the Norsemen have sought shelter in it as their 

 last haven of refuge, when they had been driven away from their farms or have 

 felt themselves too exposed there. At several places in the neighbourhood 

 there are ruins of large farms from the Icelanders' period. It may be supposed, 

 that Oongortoq has been the lord of one of these. Opposite the church out 

 in the fjord lies the island ATcpaitsivik (D), the same place that is called Arpatsi- 

 vih on the chart. Here lay in olden times an Eskimo settlement with perhaps 

 only one, possibly several houses. The name of the island probably means 

 "the place of attack"^), called so naturally from a hostile attack that has once 

 been made here. The relations between the two neighbours of different race 

 was first through many years quite peacable and the young men of both peoples 

 sometimes even vied with each other in shooting with arrows. But when an 

 Eskimo accidentally shot one of the Norsemen the hostilities broke out afresh 

 and continued for a long time. They began one winter night, when the Norse- 

 men crossed the ice and killed most of the Eskimo in their houses. Only two 



^) The description of the Skrælings in the song as a people with bald (round) 

 heads might possibly refer to an old-time Greenland mode of dressing the hair 

 like the mode known from Labrador and the western regions (see p. 601). 



2) Pingel (1838-39) pp. 241—242. 



3) Clemmensen (1911) p. 314. GrønL histor. Mindesm. Ill, p. 821. 



^) Grønl. histor. Mindesm. Ill, p. 820; Kleinschmidt, Ordbog, p. 41. 

 XXXIX 45 



