Inuit TraditionCarrier of the Dead (Baffin tellings)
Anguta
Also known as Sedna's father
- the dead
- the underworld Adlivun
In Baffin Island tellings recorded by Franz Boas, the Sea Woman's father, who cut off her fingers and now lives with her in Adlivun, carrying the dead to that dwelling.
About Anguta
A regional figure
Anguta belongs to the Baffin Island tellings of the Sea Woman recorded by Franz Boas in Cumberland Sound in the 1880s. Many other regional versions give the Sea Woman's father no name, or no afterlife role, or no part in the story at all, as in the Netsilik story of the orphan Nuliajuk. This site includes him because Boas's account is a major published source, not because he is found across the Inuit Arctic.
Father and punisher
In Boas's account it is Anguta who rescues his daughter from her fulmar husband, and Anguta who, when the bird raises a storm, throws her overboard and cuts off her fingers as she clings to the boat. He is afterwards punished: in one version his own dogs gnaw off his hands and feet as he lies sleeping on the shore, and the earth opens and takes him, his daughter, and the dogs down to Adlivun.
Keeper of the dead
Boas reports that the dead are seized by Sedna's father, Anguta, and carried to Adlivun, the land beneath the earth and sea where Sedna is mistress. Boas also describes a happier land of the dead above, Qudlivun, for those who died by violence or in childbirth. These accounts describe beliefs recorded in one region at one time, and they should not be taken as a fixed Inuit doctrine of the afterlife.
Worship and cult
Temples, festivals, and practices recorded for Anguta
This is part of a living tradition. Inuit relationships with these figures today range from continued respect and storytelling to Christian faith that sets older practice aside, and they vary by family and community; this site does not describe angakkuq (shamanic) practice beyond what elders and Inuit-led publishers have chosen to make public.
Family
Anguta's family at a glance
- Who are Anguta's children?
- Children of Anguta recorded in the atlas: Sedna (the Sea Woman).
In the atlas
Where Anguta appears
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Franz Boas, The Central Eskimo
Appears in
Ancient and classical works featuring this figure.
Sedna's father, who carries the dead to Adlivun (section on religious ideas and traditions)
Further reading
The Baffin Island account of Sedna, Anguta, and Adlivun
Read online: The Central Eskimo (opens in new tab)
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Parallels are editorial comparisons across traditions: a shared role does not, by itself, establish a shared origin.
Family relationships come from the atlas's kinship records. Ancient sources often disagree on divine genealogy.
Genealogy
Family tree
Anguta's parents, consorts, children and rivals, as recorded in the atlas.