180 W. THALBITZER. 
THE INTERPRETATION 
“Through the iron bars of human 
speech, the human soul can look 
forth but a very little way.” 
BEATRICE GRIMSHAW: From Fiji to 
the Cannibal Islands (pag. 235). 
The picture of Eskimo spirit and genius in these products must 
necessarily — through the translation into our languages — become 
a kind of reflection with European features. For we have no other 
means of comprehending the heterogenous object than forcing it into 
the mirror of our own soul — and language — and there, by means 
of analogy endeavouring to understand the foreign soul and the 
suppositions from which the image emanated. Maybe we shall never 
succeed in penetrating so deeply or so to get behind the phenomenon 
as to encompass the innermost mind and thought of the foreign race. 
And even if we suspect what the Eskimo soul perceived in his low 
hut, his family, his game, his land and his sky, how find expressions 
for the most intimate in his spirit? 
Quite apart from this there are the difficulties of the direct 
interpretation. 
Each text set down by me was as a rule revised immediately 
after the recording; while recording it I sought for explanations that 
I noted down the same moment, often embracing a preliminary 
interpretation of the poem. Sometimes, later, in the course of the 
year I would return to individual points that troubled my mind as 
doubtful, and at times I would inquire thereabout of the countrymen 
of my informant without his (or her) knowledge, always at once 
noting down the results. In order to attain fuller results variations 
of the texts were recorded at other settlements, in Sermilik or the 
easterly islands. | 
All these records were taken down on slips of equal size arranged 
by contents in accordance with my card-index system. They made, 
however, only a sort of raw material which after my return to 
Europe required renewed study and needed fining down before it 
was fit for publication. Since 1906 I have therefore again and again 
revised my translation of these texts, sometimes alone and at other 
times with assistance. The greatest help in the interpretation I de- 
rived from the indefatigable, ever willing JOHAN PETERSEN, colonial 
manager at Ammassalik from 1894 and for over 20 years. I sought 
his advice first on the spot among the natives, later on in Copenhagen 
when he stayed there on leave in the winter 1910—11. Familiar since 
childhood with the language of the southerly Westgreenlanders he 
