seem to depend particularly upon the man's good or evil acts.
Egede, however, asserts that to the lovely land under the earth there go only 'women who die in childbirth, men who are drowned at sea, and whale fishers, as a reward for the evil they have suffered here on earth; all others go to the sky.'[1] It seems doubtful whether this was ever a general belief. An exactly analogous idea is to be found among ourselves. An old woman in Telemark said to Moltke Moe, speaking of her son: 'Ah, yes, he is certain enough to have gone straight to heaven; for you know it's said in God's Word that those who are drowned at sea or die in childbirth go straight away to the Kingdom of God.'[2]
From other accounts, in any case, it seems that these are not the only souls which go to the under world. The destination of the soul may partly depend on the treatment of the body. Paul Egede says (Efterretninger om Grönland, p. 174) that 'it was their custom to take people who were sick unto death gently out of bed, and, laying them on the
- ↑ See on the same subject Paul Egede, Efterretninger om Grönland, p. 117. According to some accounts, witches and 'wicked people' go to the over-world.
- ↑ Communicated by Moltke Moe. Compare also J. Flood, Grönland, Kristiania, 1873, p. 10, note. Similar notions are said to be current in Bavaria and in the Marquesas islands. Compare Liebrecht, in the Academy, iii. (1872), p. 321.
