The People of the Polar North/Chapter 40
Old Sabine narrates.
At Itivdlerssuaq, north of Umanaq, there lived once, many years ago, a man who, because he was jealous, watched very closely over his wife. He could not bear for the woman to go out when he himself was not with her, and so when he went out hunting, he used to hide her footwear.
But when, in spite of it all, he had a suspicion that she had been unfaithful to him, he would take his knife and stab her in the legs. This was not so very painful, said the woman; but when he took the two valves of a mussel-shell and pinched pieces of flesh from her legs, then she could not help shrieking with the pain.
As the woman could not stand her husband's ill-treatment, she ran away one day to the hills, when he was out in his kayak. From the cliff she looked out to sea, and called to the mighty white men to help her.
Immediately a great iceberg became visible out at sea and drifted in towards land. When it came nearer it proved to be one of the white men's ships. And then the woman took refuge in it.
When the man came home his wife had disappeared, and he was seized with violent grief, for he was very fond of his wife, who was beautiful, and had a fair, pink body.
He began to look for her, and soon learnt that the white men had come and stolen her from him.
He rowed straight out to the ship, but the sailors had taken away the gangway and all the ropes that hung down. He rowed round the ship in fury, but found everywhere only a steep wall which he could not climb. At last, under the bowsprit, he saw an end of rope that they had forgotten to take away; he seized hold of it and began to swarm up it, hauling himself up by his arms only, and remaining seated in his kayak. But as soon as the sailors saw this, they cut the rope, so that he fell back into the sea.
When he had rowed vainly a few times round the ship he went home and grieved very much over the loss of his beautiful wife.
The next day he heard that the white men had put her on the summit of a high and solitary fjeld near Itivdlerssuaq, and that his wife was then standing there! He went, but could not climb up. From below, he vainly implored his wife to come down. She only replied—
"See now, if you had been content with thrusting your knife in my legs, I would never have left you; it was only when you began to pinch my flesh with mussel-shells that I ran away."
And, as she refused to come down to him, he, who before could not bear for his wife to leave him even for a minute, was quite beside himself with grief at her loss.
When the man came again the next day, the wife had dug herself a hole in the ground. She had hollowed the cave out in such a way that it went through the earth like a subterranean passage.
I have seen this cave myself; when you stood at the southern entrance to it and threw a stone inside, you heard the splash of the stone falling into the sea—if you threw one in from the northern end, you heard it fall on land.
Far in this hole the woman hid herself, so that the man could not find her. He tried to crawl inside, armed with a lamp well supplied with wicks and blubber, but when he had gone a little way the lamp went out. So that day too he was obliged to give up the idea of finding his wife.
The next day the white men came to the husband and said to him—
"See here, if it is really true that you are so fond of your wife, you will be willing to dare a venturesome thing that will give her back to you! Look, we have suspended a rope between the two peaks; you must swarm along it with bent arms. If you can do that, we will give you back your wife."
Up by Iterdlagssuaq there were two very high peaks. The line was suspended between these two. There was a very large lake below; if the man grew tired half-way and loosed his grip of the rope, he would drown in the lake.
When the white men had taken the husband up to the rope, one of them laid out across the rope to show him what he was to do.
"That was splendid! But if a white man can do it, so can I," thought the man.
At one end of the line he saw an axe, and he threw that into the lake, for he was afraid that they might cut the rope after he was well started.
Then he climbed out along the rope and found it easy, for he was very strong; but it was a long way from the one peak to the other.
When he had gone half-way, the white men suddenly began to swing the rope; the man, who almost missed his hold, then swung his legs too round the rope and held fast in that way, although by degrees it made his head swim.
The white men, who could see that he was holding tight, then began to swing the rope very violently. The man still hung out, midway between two peaks; and it was only when the rope began to cut deep into his armholes and make all his muscles slacken, that he lost his hold and plunged headlong into the lake.
This was how the white men killed the husband who was so fond of his wife that he could not even bear for her to leave his house; and afterwards they married his wife.
All the mixed races on the East coast are descended from this woman; and the white men's stay there is the reason why all the people at Anoritôq speak such a strange dialect.