people in the sky.
Created | Updated Jul 31, 2006
The following account of the stars was given by eskimos (inuits) from smith sound in northwest greenland.These people lived so far north that they were able to see the Great bear to the south of the zenith.To them,as to all the inuit,the sun was a beautiful girl who carries her torch though the sky as she is chased by her brother the moon,whose name is aningan. The moon man has a house in which he rests with his demon cousin Irdlirvirisssong,who is a kind of female clown who sometimes comes into the sky and dances to make people laugh.But if anyone such as a visiting angakok is near by,they had best look sideways,for if they laugh she will dry them up and devour thier intestines.The moon is a great hunter,always in front of his igloo.His sledge stands piled high with sealskins.He has a sledge team of spotted dogs which sometimes leave the sky and shoot down to earth like shooting stars.The mother of the sun is the planet jupiter,and she is dangerous to magicians.They have to be wary lest she eat thir livers.Some of the main constellations of stars also have myths attached to them,connected with thier forms.There was once a bear who chased by a fine pack of dogs.They all ran so hard that they left the earth and came up into the sky where they form the pleiades ,which the inuit belive to be nanook the bear and the hunting dogs.Over the heads of the smith sound eskimo a giant caribou looks down-he is the constellation ursa Major.Opposite him,across the sky,are the stones which support a cooking lamp- this is Cassiopeia.Between the two ,onthe edge of the sky ,are threesteps cut in a snow bank linking heaven and earth -these are the constellation Orion sometimes on a dark night the ancesters dance and light fires-this is the joyful bridge of the aurora-perhaps in some way related to thegullabrig,the bridge to the sky described in Norse folk-lore. . . , ,
