XIV 



or repeated for me in a different form from the one which would 

 have been used in the course of ordinary conversation. But at 

 any rate I have aimed at as faithful empirical observation and 

 reproduction as possible. 



Most of these notes and records I took down on my sledge- 

 journeys, in the huts of the natives, sitting on the edge of the 

 stump-bed, with no other desk but my knee to rest the paper 

 on. The dim daylight from the window and the flame of the 

 train-oil lamp in the hut made it just possible for the pen to 

 find its way over the paper. At that time I could give no atten- 

 tion to the contents and connection of what I was hearing 

 since I had to concentrate it all on the phonetical side of the 

 words so that i could get an accurate reproduction of them ; 

 most of the words I repeated to myself as I wrote them down. 

 1 refrained as much as possible from stopping the narrator or 

 the singer in order to have him repeat a word, but I often let 

 him repeat the whole so that I could revise my record. When 

 I noted down melodies to the songs, I used my violin, ^hich 

 was tuned after the tuning-fork that I always carried with me. — 

 Thus 1 collected in the course of a year a considerable pile of 

 paper filled with specimens of the Greenlandic language both 

 in prose and poetry. In style and spirit at least, they are real 

 Eskimo, even if there should be some few corruptions due to 

 the narrator, or some mistakes which I have made on account 

 of the haste in which I had to write them down. 



With respect to the books which have been published in 

 the Greenlandic language so far, I consider them in part, but 

 only in part, fit to learn the language from. Anyone who wants 

 to have the pure Eskimo language by itself will either be very 

 careful in using, or altogether shun, the translations, especially 

 when they have not been made by natives but by foreign mis- 

 sionaries. For the latter have generally been so impressed with 

 the power of the language to form new expressions that they 

 have themselves in abundant measure employed this power in 



