variants, three brothers make the attempt one after the other, and she kills the first two of them.[1] Even at first sight this Scandinavian group of stories seems suspiciously like the Greenland legends, the scratching and washing especially reminding us strongly of the hair-combing; but when we also find that Arnarkuagssak is unknown to the Alaskan Eskimos, the connection seems to be clear. According to one Greenland legend she was the daughter of a powerful angekok who, being overtaken by a storm, threw her out of the woman-boat to save himself. She clung on to the gunwale, whereupon he, one by one, cut off her fingers and her hands. These were transformed into seals and whales, over which she obtained dominion; and when she sank to the bottom, she took up her abode there for good. Among the Eskimos of Baffin's Land the same legend is told of a woman named Sedna, who has, however, become a different being from Arnarkuagssak. The latter seems to be unknown on the Mackenzie river. 'If it should appear,' says Dr. Rink, 'that the Greenland myth is not known in Alaska either, we must conclude that it was invented during the course of
- ↑ Communicated by Moltke Moe, from his unpublished collection of folk-tales. See also a tale reported from Flatdal in Fedraheimen, 1877, No. 18; a Hardanger tale (watered down) in Haukenæs's Natur, Folkeliv og Folketro i Hardanger, ii., 233. Danish variants in Kl. Berntsen, Folke-Æventyr, I. (Odense, 1873) p. 116; Et. Kristensen, Jyska Folkeminder, v. 271 .
