light soul. Tarrak in the Greenland language means both shadow and reflection, so that the original word for soul meant all these three things. According to Cranz,[1] some of the Greenlanders believed that man had two souls: his shadow and his breath (compare above, pp. 216, &c). The general belief in Egede's and Cranz's time seems to have been that the soul was most intimately connected with the breath. For instance, the angekok used to blow upon a sick man in order to cure him or give him a new soul.
It is worth noting that Hanserak, a native catechist from West Greenland who accompanied Captain Holm on his journey along the east coast (in 1884–85), stated in his diary (written in Eskimo), with reference to the Angmagsaliks' belief in the soul, that 'a man has many souls. The largest dwell in the larynx and in the left side, and are tiny men about the size of a sparrow. The other souls dwell in other parts of the body and are the size of a finger joint. If one of them is taken away, its particular member sickens.'[2] Whether this belief has ever been widespread among the Eskimos does not appear from other sources of information.
The soul is quite independent, and can thus leave the body for any time, short or long. It does so
