Greenlandic folk belief grew from Kalaallit and other Greenlandic Inuit understandings of a landscape in which the sea, weather, animals, mountains and even ordinary objects could possess an inua, an inner being or life essence. Historical records from West Greenland, East Greenland and the far north preserve different versions of these ideas, so no single set of beliefs represents every community. The approximately 40 traditions documented here include older taboos, omens, protective practices and supernatural beliefs recorded in Greenlandic oral tradition, ethnography and museum collections; many belong primarily to historical Inuit religion rather than the everyday convictions of Greenlanders today.
Greenlandic oral narratives did more than describe supernatural beings. They taught hunting conduct, explained dangerous landscapes, connected newborn children with deceased relatives and gave meaning to unusual events in the sky, sea and weather. Christianisation changed this spiritual landscape profoundly, while figures such as qivittoq, Sassuma Arnaa and the tupilak remained familiar through storytelling, art and family memory.
Sky, Weather, and the Living Cosmos
Northern Lights as a Ball Game of the Dead
One recorded West Greenlandic explanation of the aurora says that souls in the upper land of the dead played ball at night with a walrus head. Their celestial game produced the moving Northern Lights, connecting a striking winter phenomenon with the continued existence of the dead.
The Sun and Moon Were Once Human
Older Greenlandic Inuit stories describe the Sun and Moon as beings who had originally been human. Maliina became the Sun, while her brother Aningaaq became the Moon, placing familiar human relationships within an explanation of the sky.
Aningaaq Chases Maliina Across the Sky
In a Greenlandic version of the Maliina and Aningaaq story, Maliina flees her brother after discovering his identity. They rise into the heavens, where Aningaaq, the Moon, continues to pursue Maliina, the Sun, without ever catching her.
Broken Taboos Could Disturb the Moon
Eighteenth-century accounts from Greenland record a belief that violations of taboo rules could trouble the Moon. Storms and prolonged rain might then be interpreted as consequences of the disturbance rather than simply changes in weather.
Silap Inua Watched Human Conduct
Silap Inua, associated with air, weather and the surrounding world, could be angered by improper behaviour. One historical example concerns throwing stones while restrictions connected with a recent death were in force.
An Earthquake Could Signal Sila’s Anger
Some early Greenlandic accounts interpreted an earthquake as an expression of anger from the spiritual force associated with Sila. This was a cultural explanation for an unsettling natural event, not a geological prediction.
The Sky Was Imagined as Needing Support
Historical accounts preserve stories about a pillar supporting the sky or world. One angakkoq reportedly warned that such a support was deteriorating, while other accounts credited spiritual specialists with preventing the sky from falling by securing its support.
Souls, Names, Dreams, and the Dead
Everything Could Possess an Inua
Older Inuit thought in Greenland did not restrict spiritual existence to humans. Animals, rocks, wind and other parts of the environment could possess an inua, while accounts even extend the idea to experiences such as hunger, laughter and sleep.
Tools and Clothing Could Have Souls
Historical West Greenlandic descriptions go beyond living creatures and report that tools, boats, arrows, clothing and even the soles of footwear could possess souls. An object’s spiritual identity was imagined in a form corresponding to the object itself.
The Soul Could Travel During Dreams
Dreams were sometimes explained as journeys of the soul. In older West Greenlandic belief, a person’s soul might leave the sleeping body and travel to distant places, giving dreams a spiritual rather than purely imaginary character.
A Stolen Soul Could Cause a Person to Waste Away
Historical accounts attributed some severe illnesses to loss or theft of the soul. An angakkoq might be expected to recover or replace it; without restoration, the affected person was believed to weaken and eventually die.
The Dead Could Remain in Contact With the Living
Greenlandic historical sources describe ghosts of deceased people as beings capable of appearing to or interacting with living relatives and community members. Ideas about exactly where a soul went after death varied between accounts.
Serratit Could Address the Dead
Early records mention serratit, charms or special verbal formulas, in connection with communication with deceased people. Such practices belonged to an older spiritual system in which words could have effects extending beyond ordinary conversation.
A Deceased Relative Could Return Through a Name
A well-documented Greenlandic naming tradition links newborn children with people who have died. Giving a deceased person’s name to a baby could be understood as allowing part of that person’s identity to return and keeping the relationship within the family.
A Name Could Carry Abilities and Protection
In older name-soul belief, receiving a deceased person’s name did not merely preserve a memory. Qualities associated with the namesake, along with protective relationships and amulets connected with that person, could accompany the child who received the name.
Rebirth Was Not Limited to Humans
Greenlandic descriptions of the older Inuit worldview include reincarnation involving animals as well as humans. Life was therefore understood through recurring relationships among beings rather than as a process concerning human souls alone.
Certain Dead Were Said to Reach a Sunny Lower Land
An older West Greenlandic account says that men who died while kayaking and women who died in childbirth could reach a pleasant realm beneath the earth where there was sunshine and plentiful seals. This was one historical version of the afterlife rather than a universal Greenlandic doctrine.
Another Land of the Dead Lay Above
Other souls were described as living in a colder realm above the earth, with tents, berries and ravens. The coexistence of several afterlife descriptions shows that Greenlandic oral traditions did not preserve one fixed map of what happened after death.
Sea Animals, Hunting, and Taboo Rules
Sassuma Arnaa Governed the Sea Animals
Sassuma Arnaa, the Mother of the Sea, is one of the best-known beings in Greenlandic Inuit mythology. She lived beneath the sea and was understood as having authority over seals, whales and other marine animals on which coastal communities depended.
Human Rule-Breaking Could Withhold the Animals
When hunting failed or hunger threatened a settlement, some older traditions connected the shortage with broken social or ritual rules. Sassuma Arnaa could retain the sea animals rather than allowing them to return to waters where hunters could encounter them.
The Angakkoq Could Restore Balance With the Mother of the Sea
A well-known story sends an angakkoq on a dangerous spiritual journey to Sassuma Arnaa. In several versions her tangled or dirty hair is tended, the cause of the community’s wrongdoing is confronted and the captive sea animals are released again.
A Hunted Seal Could Be Offered Fresh Water
Respect did not necessarily end when an animal had been killed. One documented Greenlandic practice involved offering a seal fresh water, expressing the idea that correct treatment of game helped preserve a proper relationship between hunters and the animals they relied upon.
Game Was Said to Give Itself to a Worthy Hunter
Older hunting belief did not attribute every successful catch solely to technical ability. An animal could be understood as allowing itself to be taken by a morally responsible, diligent hunter who treated animals correctly before and after the hunt.
Fish and Caribou Could Require Separate Ulu Use
Taboo rules varied between Greenlandic regions and families. One documented example says that a woman might avoid using the same ulu, the curved women’s knife, for fish and caribou because different kinds of game were expected to remain ritually separate.
Different Meats Could Be Kept Apart
Some regional food taboos required different types of meat to remain separate during preparation or cooking. Such rules formed part of a broader system for showing respect to animals rather than ordinary modern food-safety practice.
Ignoring Hunting Taboos Could Ruin the Next Catch
The consequences of breaking animal-related rules could extend beyond a single meal. In pre-colonial Greenlandic Inuit belief, disrespect toward game could result in poor hunting afterward, linking community survival with correct treatment of animals.
A Respectful Hunter Could Find Abundant Game After Death
One Greenlandic moral tradition promised a favourable afterlife to a hunter who had observed the rules surrounding animals throughout life. He could reach a place where game remained plentiful, reflecting the close connection between ethical conduct and hunting fortune.
A Greedy Hunter Faced the Butterfly Punishment
A striking counter-image concerned the disrespectful or greedy hunter. One tradition says that in the land of the dead his hands would be tied behind his back and he would have to catch butterflies with his mouth, a deliberately humiliating reversal of hunting skill.
Protection, Amulets, and Supernatural Threats
Animal Amulets Could Protect and Transfer Qualities
Greenlandic Inuit amulets were used both for protection and for acquiring desirable traits associated with an animal. Recorded examples connect snowy owl material with better eyesight, polar bear material with strength and common eider material with becoming a faster kayaker.
Tattoos Could Form Part of Spiritual Protection
People without an angakkoq’s specialised spiritual training could rely on forms of personal protection that included amulets and tattoos. Greenlandic tattoo traditions had broader social and aesthetic meanings as well, so their purpose should not be reduced to protection alone.
A Tupilak Could Be Made to Attack an Enemy
The historical Greenlandic tupilak was very different from the carved figures now sold as art. Older accounts describe a supernatural being assembled from selected materials, awakened through ritual and directed against a particular person.
A Tupilak Could Turn Against Its Creator
The Danish National Museum records the feared possibility that a tupilak sent toward an intended victim might fail. If the target possessed greater spiritual strength, the destructive being could reverse direction and attack the person who had created it.
A Qivittoq Could Become More Than Human
A qivittoq is associated with a person who abandons or is driven away from human society and disappears into Greenland’s wilderness. Folklore transformed such an outcast into a dangerous being whose continued existence beyond ordinary community life inspired fear.
Qivittoq Stories Warned Children Not to Wander Too Far
Greenlandic oral tradition also gave the qivittoq a practical teaching role. Children could be warned that venturing too far from the settlement was dangerous because a mountain wanderer might capture them, turning a supernatural story into a boundary-setting lesson.
Angakkut and the Unseen World
Angakkut Worked With Helping Spirits
An angakkoq was expected to acquire one or more helping spirits known as toornat. These beings assisted during journeys and encounters with parts of reality that ordinary people were not thought able to reach directly.
A Deceased Parent Could Become a Helping Spirit
Helping spirits did not always have to be strange or anonymous beings. Historical Greenlandic records state that some angakkut were understood to have deceased parents among their toornat, continuing a family relationship in spiritual form.
Toornaarsuk Could Be Consulted About Misfortune
Accounts of older Greenlandic religion describe consultations with Toornaarsuk concerning illness, poor hunting, accidents and other troubles. The spiritual specialist was expected to discover hidden causes and advise the community on conduct intended to restore order.
Darkness Helped the Angakkoq See Souls
Some recorded angakkoq sessions took place in complete darkness. Within the older belief system, darkness did not prevent spiritual perception; the angakkoq was instead said to see and describe souls and other normally hidden beings during the séance.
A Fart Could Endanger a Séance
One unusually specific historical rule held that farting during a spiritual séance could place both Toornaarsuk and the angakkoq in mortal danger. It illustrates how ritual sessions could be surrounded by detailed behavioural restrictions that participants were expected to observe.
An Angakkoq Could Influence Weather and Hunting Fortune
Historical descriptions credit powerful angakkut with obtaining favourable weather, hastening the arrival of spring and improving seal hunting. These claims belonged to the spiritual authority attributed to the angakkoq and should be understood as cultural beliefs rather than measurable control of natural processes.
Why Greenlandic Beliefs Differ by Region and Period
Greenland stretches across very different environments, and older ethnographic sources distinguish West Greenlandic, East Greenlandic and Inughuit traditions. Even where the same being or idea was known in several places, the details could change. Sassuma Arnaa stories, rules concerning animals, descriptions of the dead and the particular powers attributed to spiritual beings were never completely uniform.
East Greenland preserved many older practices into a later period than much of the west. Historical Ammassalik material, for example, records hunters carrying amulets on sealskin thongs across the chest and back, while museum collections from the region contain early representations associated with tupilak traditions. Such evidence makes regional attribution important when describing Greenlandic folklore.
From Feared Tupilak to Greenlandic Art
The modern carved tupilak should not be treated as identical to the supernatural being feared in older accounts. Historically, the tupilak existed chiefly as an intentionally created spiritual agent and was not simply the small decorative figure familiar today. Museum records from East Greenland show how artists eventually began producing physical representations of beings that earlier accounts described through stories and ritual knowledge.
Carved tupilaks are now established forms of Greenlandic art and souvenirs. Their modern meaning may include humour, artistic imagination or good luck rather than the hostile purpose attributed to the older supernatural tupilak. The change is a clear example of how a once-feared belief can survive culturally after its original ritual setting has altered.
Qivittoq Stories Still Carry a Greenlandic Sense of Place
The qivittoq differs from many legendary beings because the story begins with an ordinary human being. A person suffering exclusion, conflict or profound separation leaves society for the mountains and wilderness. In the folklore, remaining outside human society long enough changes the wanderer into something dangerous and no longer fully human.
Anthropological work in modern Greenland has found that qivittoq stories did not disappear when the older religious system receded. Encounters and stories may still be discussed, although belief varies greatly between individuals. The figure remains closely tied to Greenland’s physical geography: settlements represent human belonging, while the remote interior becomes the domain of the person who has permanently stepped outside it.
Names as a Living Link Between Generations
Among the traditions documented here, naming has shown especially strong continuity. Historical belief treated the name, ateq, as more than a convenient label, and research in contemporary Greenland has continued to document the practice of naming children after deceased relatives or community members. The modern custom does not require every family to interpret it literally as reincarnation.
The older idea nonetheless helps explain the emotional force of the practice. A child carrying the name of someone who died could renew relationships, preserve memory and soften the separation created by death. In that sense, Greenlandic name traditions occupy a different position from simple luck rituals: they connect folklore, kinship and ideas about what parts of a person may continue after physical death.
📚 Roots of Belief
- Trap Greenland — Inuit Way of Life — Documents Greenlandic Inuit ideas about the name-soul, inua, Maliina and Aningaaq, Sassuma Arnaa, animal amulets, tupilak traditions, hunting taboos and the treatment of seals. (Written by a specialist affiliated with the National Museum of Denmark and published in a Greenland-focused reference project supported by Greenlandic cultural institutions.)
- Trap Greenland — The Inuit Culture, Precolonial Period — Supports regional hunting taboos involving the ulu, separation of meats, animal respect and the use of qivittoq stories to warn children about wandering from settlements. (Authored by heritage and museum specialists, including staff connected with the Greenland National Museum & Archives and National Museum of Denmark.)
- Springer Nature — Martin Luther’s Small Catechism in Greenlandic — Its discussion of eighteenth-century Greenlandic religion draws on early records concerning inua, Silap Inua, the Moon, souls, ghosts, serratit, angakkut, toornat, Toornaarsuk, weather beliefs and séance restrictions. (A scholarly chapter published by J.B. Metzler/Springer Nature with documented historical references.)
- Dartmouth College Library — Ethnology of the Greenland Eskimos, Encyclopedia Arctica — Preserves Therkel Mathiassen’s ethnographic synthesis on Greenlandic souls, dream journeys, afterlife traditions, Northern Lights, helping spirits, the Mother of the Sea and Ammassalik amulets. (A historical scholarly work preserved by the Dartmouth College Digital Library.)
- Oxford Academic / University of Chicago Press — Wandering Spirits: Loneliness and Longing in Greenland — Provides modern anthropological research on qivittoq traditions, Greenlandic naming, partial reincarnation and continuing relationships between the living and the names of the dead. (An academic monograph based on ethnographic research in Greenland.)
- National Museum of Denmark — Tupilak, Ethnographic Collection — Records an East Greenland tupilak representation made in 1905 and museum documentation that a hostile tupilak could pursue its victim or turn against its creator. (An official national museum collection record with documented provenance.)
- Visit Greenland — Greenland’s Myths & Legends — Documents Greenlandic narratives concerning the Northern Lights, Sassuma Arnaa, qivittoq and the historical role of oral stories in transmitting moral rules. (Visit Greenland is Greenland’s official tourism organisation and is owned by the Government of Greenland.)