The Problem With Sedna: Part One of Three

RACHEL ATTITUQ QITSUALIK

There exists across the Arctic a special myth, a story that in its multitudinous forms epitomizes the very wellspring of Inuit fears — and our awe of the elements. It is a myth that is fun and ferocious, that joins the past with the present, that can elicit primal dread even in today’s jaded times.

This is the story of Nuliajuk, or Niviaqsi, the woman below the waves. She is not a goddess, but rather a special creature of fear and tragedy.

In this first of three articles, I shall tell the first half of her story as it is most commonly known. In the second, I shall finish the story — then discuss its variations from culture to culture. In the third, I shall discuss the impact of this strange being upon Inuit traditions.

Taitsumaniguuq:

Once, there lived a beautiful girl, who dwelt along the shore with her mother and father. She loved her parents dearly, but this very virtue was at once her downfall.

When she came of age, her parents realized that it was time that their daughter had a mate. The girl was resistant, however. She knew that having a husband would force her to move away from her parents, a prospect she dreaded.

Time and again, the parents arranged to introduce their daughter to prospective suitors — fine young hunters of high skill. She rejected all of them, however, citing dubious reasons: this one’s clothes were sewn funny; that one’s sled was too short.

The frustration of the parents was exceeeded only by the girl’s own obstinacy, so that in time the parents resigned themselves to the idea that their daughter would never marry. Consequently, they were overjoyed when one sunny day a handsome youth rode into their camp. The stranger’s clothes and tools were of the finest craftsmanship, and his dogs were robust and numerous.

Without hesitation, he asked for their daughter as his bride, and for once, the finicky girl seemed smitten with him. In that same day, the two rode away as man and wife. The parents were very pleased.

Over the hills and across the ice, through storms and blinding sunlight, the young couple rode for days on end. During this time, the husband would say little, so that the girl grew increasingly concerned as each day crept by. Yet whenever she pressed her new husband for their destination, he would cryptically answer,

“Home….”

Such answers gnawed at the girl, but her fears were allayed when the youth reigned his dogs in at the edge of a strange and windswept coast. Far in the distance, over fitful waters, she could barely see a small island on the horizon.

Her husband wordlessly gestured toward a small umiaq (boat) waiting near the shore. Reticent, yet fearing the wrath of her husband, she scurried toward the craft and silently climbed inside.

Within moments, her husband had also climbed in and was rowing them across the darkening waters. For some hours he rowed, while hideous birds swirled and screamed overhead. The island loomed on the horizon.

Eventually, the tiny boat approached the edge of that island, with its stark contours, and stones that stood like brooding sentries over the patches of hideous, grey-green lichens. Near the center of that isle, on the highest ground, lay a singular oddity: a blackened hut that squatted like some fetid carcass among numerous piles of ancient bones and refuse.

And as the girl, her husband leading her onward, approached that loathsome hovel that she knew could only be intended as her new home and wedding bed, she suddenly found herself unable to proceed, pausing in sheer revulsion.

It was then that her husband, sensing her horror, wheeled about to regard her. Without a reason to maintain the masquerade, he stripped away his hood and goggles, revealing not the face of any handsome youth — a hunter and husband — but only the nightmare features of a hateful tuurngaq, twisting and leering from the depths of the dwarfish and malformed mass that served as a head.

And as the spirit reached out its arms to gather her up in its matrimonial embrace, the parentless girl screamed and screamed her despair, in futile breaths that were swept up and lost upon the uncaring winds.

Pijariiqpunga (for Part One)