The missionary and the shaman

The second dialogue in the Pooq book of 1857 was also appropriated from the appendix to Poul Egede’s Greenlandic grammar of a century earlier.

In fact, it has nothing to do with Pooq. It tells of the encounter between a missionary and an angakkuq, a shaman. I used the Greenlandic spelling, angakkoq, in what follows.

Angakkoq: Come in, priest!

Missionary: I have endured hardships to come to you. The wind, frost and ice nearly killed us.

Angakkoq: If you had been an Angakkoq you could have stilled the wind.

Missionary: No one can do that except the one who created Heaven and earth and is master of all things.

Angakkoq: Where is he?

Missionary: He is everywhere; he is called God.

Angakkoq: Have you seen him?

Missionary: No. God cannot be seen.

Angakkoq: I thought you had seen him and spoken to him in your country since you talk so much about him.

Missionary: Our forefathers spoke with him and wrote his words in this book. This book is new, but it was copied from the original.

Angakkoq: If the original is in your country, it must look very old. It would serve well for amulets or cures. It must have the same power to heal the sick as the word of God’s son, which you have told us about.

Missionary: It can heal the soul, not the body.

Angakkoq: Can souls be sick too? We are only sick in our bodies. When my body is well, then all of me is well.

Missionary: We say that the soul is sick when someone lives badly, or does harmful deeds.

Angakkoq: Over there sits an old woman whose soul is diseased, because she has killed many with her sharp tongue. She can kill with words alone. Heal her soul!

Missionary: Who says that she kills people with words?

Angakkoq: Angakkut say so. All witches have horns and are black to the elbows. Nobody can see this except Angakkut. (Angakkut is the plural form of the word.)

Missionary: You and all other Angakkut are big liars. They must be angry with her and that is why they tell lies about her.

Angakkoq: In that case there are no sick souls in our house. The rest of us are decent people.

Missionary: All men’s souls are diseased.

Angakkoq: My soul is quite healthy. I have never killed anyone, never stolen anything, not even from Dutchmen. (The Dutch had been whalers off the coast of Greenland.)

Missionary: Those who have evil thoughts also have sick souls.

Angakkoq: We don’t care about that. We don’t know if souls are sick before they come to Heaven, where they are pale and exhausted because of the powerful motion. Do you know that the northern lights are the souls of the dead, playing ball in heaven with a walrus head?

Missionary: I will tell you about heaven, about which people go there and which ones go to the evil Tornarsuk.

Angakkoq: You know nothing about heaven. You have never been there; I have never seen your tracks.

Missionary: Go to Heaven while we watch, then we will believe it.

Angakkoq: I only go there in the winter when it is dark; now it is too light. Let us hear about heaven.

Missionary: Heaven is a delightful, happy and prosperous place, for all those who have known God in life and lived according to his will.

Angakkoq: But what happens to those who have not heard about God and who have lived wickedly?

Missionary: They go to Tornarsuk where they will suffer great torments.

Angakkoq: Many of your people must not believe it, since they lead such bad lives.

Missionary: They do believe it, but Tornarsuk who is the cause of human evil knows a secret way of leading them astray to become worse and worse so that after death they can be unhappy with him.

Angakkoq: He never talks about that to me. When I ask him about a sick person, he only answers on that subject.

Missionary: What you have to say about Tornarsuk is worthless.

Angakkoq: You don’t want to believe me. You say that Tornarsuk corrupted the first people so that both they and their descendants became evil, so that they must be flung to the place of torments. We did not know about that. Nobody told us.

Missionary: That is why the king sent me to inform you. If you now do not want to believe me, you will come to Tornarsuk.

Angakkoq: Why didn’t God create two more people and destroy the first couple, so their descendants could become good?

Missionary: It has been arranged this way for all their corrupt descendants. If they will accept God’s loving invitation and live according to his will, they can still become just as fortunate as they would have been if they had not broken God’s command.

Angakkoq: It wasn’t our ancestor who sinned, but yours, for it happened in your country.

Missionary: We all have the same ancestor, and therefore we are all alike in evil both outwardly and inwardly.

Angakkoq: Your people are worse. Maybe the Tornarsuk in your country is worse than the one in ours.

Missionary: Tornarsuk is the same everywhere. Among all of us he finds people who are willing to bargain with him to their perdition.

Angakkoq: But why doesn’t God kill him? Why does he allow him to rob him of so many people?

Missionary: We can compare Tornarsuk to the executioner in our country. When wrongdoers or evil people are to be punished or lose their lives, he gets a command from the great lord to do it.

Angakkoq: Then does the executioner induce them to do wrong, so that he will later be able to deprive them of their lives?

Missionary: No, then he himself would be punished. But listen my dear friend. You are an old man; you believe you will die. But you do not know what will happen to you after death. Surely you would rather be happy than unhappy in the next world. If only my words could make you wish to be happy. Then, with God’s help, I can teach you when we meet again.

And there ends the dialogue. Perhaps because it was written by a priest, the missionary had the last word.

Taissumani is an occasional column that recalls events of historical interest. Kenn Harper is a historian and writer who lived in the Arctic for over 50 years. He is the author of “Give Me Winter, Give Me Dogs: Knud Rasmussen and the Fifth Thule Expedition,” and “Thou Shalt Do No Murder,” among other books. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.