Reading Notes: Week 10 "Eskimo Folk Tales" Part B

 

Arctic Fox. Will Brown. (Source: Flickr)

Story 1

    "Papik, Who Killed His Wife's Brother" wasn't a story that particularly grabbed or held my attention until the end. The old woman does turn into a terrifying monster, but what got my imagination going was one of the last lines. "The people of old times thought it an ill thing for men to kill each other."

    At first, I just thought along the lines of how it could be commentary today. Have we truly become so desensitized to violence that we've arrived at the point where we don't care? Surely we're not that far gone. But this was written down in 1921. I think humans have always been this way. We have stories about how murder is a very bad thing and how in the "old days there wasn't this much violence!" But I think every generation feels that way, and I also think we have a tendency to glorify "simpler times" as more non-violent, more peaceful, more harmonious. I wonder if there was even a time like that.

    But the more my mind ruminated on it, my imagination created a world where humanity really is that far gone. In that world, there is an old woman who has had enough and follows in the steps of the old woman from the story: willfully dying so she may come back as a monster seeking vengeance and justice.

    To have an old woman as the protagonist and a monster? I think it would be really interesting to write!

Story 2

    Now this story and the next, I don't have much to talk about. "Ángángŭjuk" caught my attention because it highlighted a thread that runs throughout many of the Eskimo stories. That is the south, the east, and any land that's not coastal or an island is very bad news. I don't know a lot about Eskimo culture, in fact, I know pretty much nothing aside from I like their stories.

    I'm curious about what in their culture and history skews them that way. I'd really like to do research to find out!

Story 3

    "Tungujuluk and Saunikoq" is a story like the last three in my previous Reading post (i.e. a source story). Like the first story I talked about in this post, this one didn't really grab my attention or imagination either until the very end.

"But Saunikoq got up and went away. And then next morning very early, he set out and rowed northward in his umiak. And since then he has not been seen. So great a shame did he feel."

    My mind took hold of these last lines and spun a rudimentary plotline. I could see a quest to find Saunikoq in order to defeat an evil that's reared up at the death of Tungujuluk.

Bibliography

Papik, Who Killed His Wife's Brother from Eskimo Folklore by Knud Rasmussen

Ángángŭjuk from Eskimo Folklore by Knud Rasmussen

Tungujuluk and Saunikoq from Eskimo Folklore by Knud Rasmussen