lls the
first two of them.[105] Even at first sight this Scandinavian group of
stories seems suspiciously like the Greenland legends, the scratching
and washing especially reminding us strongly of the hair-combing; but
when we also find that Arnarkuagssak is unknown to the Alaskan Eskimos,
the connection seems to be clear. According to one Greenland legend she
was the daughter of a powerful angekok who, being overtaken by a storm,
threw her out of the woman-boat to save himself. She clung on to the
gunwale, whereupon he, one by one, cut off her fingers and her hands.
These were transformed into seals and whales, over which she obtained
dominion; and when she sank to the bottom, she took up her abode there
for good. Among the Eskimos of Baffin's Land the same legend is told of
a woman named _Sedna_, who has, however, become a different being from
Arnarkuagssak. The latter seems to be unknown on the Mackenzie river.
'If it should appear,' says Dr. Rink, 'that the Greenland myth is not
known in Alaska either, we must conclude that it was invented during
the course of the emigration to Greenland.'[106] 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 folk-lore, and that the
description of the journey to her abode is descended from, or at
least  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 hi