Tuluŋigraq

In the form of Inuit mythology in vogue among the Iñupiaq Eskimo of north-western Alaska, Tuluŋigraq was a god created [Lowenstein 1992, p. 6] by the primordial "aana" ("grandmother" [Lowenstein 1992, p. 5] ) goddess. (cf. the god Tulugaak of the eastern Eskimo)
*When the world was in perpetual darkness of night, he stole the skin-wrapped sun, and with his beak released it from the skin : it flew upward, creating daylight. [Lowenstein 1992, p. 9]
*By wrestling her, Tuluŋigraq had acquired [Lowenstein 1992, p. 7] as wife an "uiḷuaqtaq" ('woman who had refused to marry'). (With this theme, Lowenstein compared [Lowenstein 1992, p. 11] the shamanic experience wherein "the shaman wrestles with" the goddess Nuliajuk, as recorded by Rasmussen (1930) for the Iglulik.) [comparative note : just as Nuliajuk was goddess controlling seals, so likewise in Hellenic myth goddess Thetis was acquired as wife, by means of his wrestling her, by the mortal hero Pēleus, who had killed Phokos ('Seal').]
*He had also harpooned a strange sea-animal : "The animal came up dry. It rose in the water. It was dry land. It was Tikiġaq." [Lowenstein 1992, p. 8] [comparative : just as Tikiġaq is located at the tip of a promontory [as indicated on the maps at Lowenstein 1992, pp. xix, xxvii] , so likewise it was at a promontory (Sepias) that Pēleus wrestled Thetis; there, just as Tuluŋigraq was blackened with "puiya" [Lowenstein 1992, p. 6] , so likewise was Pēleus blackened with sepia.]

Notes

References

*cite book |last=Lowenstein |first=Tom |coauthors=Asatchaq (informant); Tukummiq (translator) |title=The Things That Were Said of Them : Shaman Stories and Oral Histories of the Tikiġaq People |year=1992 |publisher=University of California Press |location=Berkeley, CA |isbn=0520065697
*cite book |last=Rasmussen |first=Knud |title=Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos |year=1930 |location=Copenhagen |series=Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-24, vol. 7, no. 1