the emigration to Greenland.'[1] It seems more natural, however, to conjecture, as I have done above, that it descends from the old Scandinavians.
On the whole, then, it seems probable that this Greenland divinity was originally a character in old Norwegian folklore, and that the description of the journey to her abode is descended from, or at least coloured by, European myths and legends, imported by the old Scandinavian settlers; but more original Eskimo elements may also be mixed up in it, having their origin in the west, and resembling the myths of the Indians.
The souls who go to the over-world have to pass the abode of a strange woman who dwells at the top of a high mountain. She is called Erdlaversissok (i.e. the disemboweller), and her properties are a trough and a bloody knife. She beats upon a drum, dances with her own shadow, and says nothing but 'My buttocks, &c.,' or else sings 'Ya, ha, ha, ha!' When she turns her back she displays huge hindquarters, from which dangles a lean sea-scorpion; and when she turns sideways her mouth is twisted utterly askew, so that her face becomes horizontally oblong. When she bends forwards she can lick her
- ↑ Rink, Meddelelser om Grönland, part 11, p. 17. Compare Boas, Petermann's Mittheilungen, 1887, p. 303; Rink and Boas, 'Eskimo Tales and Songs,' in Journal of American Folk-Lore, 1889 (?), p. 127.
