Inuit TraditionIsland
Igloolik (Iglulik)
The island community in the Foxe Basin, Nunavut, whose people told Knud Rasmussen about the Sea Woman, the Moon Spirit, and Sila in the 1920s, and whose elders continue to share that knowledge.
About Igloolik (Iglulik)
Aua's country
In 1922 Knud Rasmussen and the Fifth Thule Expedition stayed among the Iglulingmiut, and the angakkuq Aua and his family became among his most important teachers. Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos (1929) records their accounts of Takanaaluk, the Sea Woman; of Taqqiq, the Moon Spirit; and of Sila, as well as Aua's often-quoted explanation that people observe their rules not because they know why, but because they fear what happens when they are broken.
An archaeological heartland
The Igloolik area is rich in archaeological sites from the Dorset and Thule periods, the ancestors of today's Inuit and the earlier people Inuit tradition calls the Tuniit.
Keeping knowledge
Igloolik has been a centre of Inuit-led cultural work. The Igloolik Oral History Project has recorded elders' knowledge for decades, and the film company Isuma, founded there, made Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001), the first feature film written, directed, and acted in Inuktitut, which retells an Iglulik legend.
On the map
Igloolik (Iglulik) among other places of the Inuit Tradition.
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.
- Knud Rasmussen, Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos (Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-24, vol. 7, no. 1)
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.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.