strength and skill, had to put up with the loss of his wife.[1]
There are cases on the east coast of women who have been married to half-a-score of different men. Utukuluk, at Angmagsalik, had tried eight husbands, and the ninth time she remarried husband No. 6.[2]
Divorce is especially easy so long as there are no children. When the woman has had a child, especially if it be a boy, the bond is apt to become more lasting.
On the east coast, if a man can keep more than one wife, he takes another; most of the good hunters, therefore, have two, but never more.[3] It appears that in many cases the first wife does not like to have a rival; but sometimes it is she that suggests the second marriage, in order that she may have help in her household work. Another motive may also come into play. 'I once asked a married woman,' says Dalager, 'why her husband had taken another wife? "I asked him to myself," she replied, "for I'm tired of bearing children."
- ↑ Holm, Meddelelser om Grönland, pt. 10, p. 96.
- ↑ Holm, Meddelelser om Grönland, pt. 10, p. 103.
- ↑ Dalager states that, in his time, on the west coast, 'scarcely one in twenty of the Greenlanders had two wives, very few three, and still fewer four; I have, however, known a man who had eleven.' — Grönlandske Relationer, p. 9.
