The constellation Aagjuuk we have read about and Sivulliit (also spelled e.g. as Sivulliik) is a constellation with two stars too. (2 + 2 = 4) An important myth describes Aagjuuk as a small orphan boy (lonely of course!) forever running around the 'house' owned by an old woman who hunts him with a stick (wood, bone or what?) in her (bony) hand, an old woman who has killed her daughter-in-law by locking her into a crack far up in the mountain. The 'rear coat-flap of thy mother' at the time 'when they [sic!] were on the point of returning' reminds me of the flipper of the turtle at the rear end of the year. This coat-flap was made of sealskin and the seal then corresponds to the turtle. The Inuit saw the sun as female, the moon as male. And indeed refraction makes the sun at those high latitudes unreliable. |