Eskimo Folktales

Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen (June 7, 1879 - December 21, 1933) was a Danish polar explorer and anthropologist. He has been called the "father of Eskimology"and was the first European to cross the Northwest Passage via dog sled. He remains well known in Greenland, Denmark and among Canadian Inuit. Native languages and ways of living, including the arts of sea kayaking and dog sledding, fascinated Knud Rasmussen, himself of Inuit and Danish descent. Rasmussen devoted much of his life to ethnological and cultural studies throughout Arctic North America. Establishing a base station in Thule, Greenland, in 1910, he visited as many Inuit peoples as he could, taking meticulous notes and making sketches, collecting artifacts and compiling hundreds of Native legends and songs. The tales are grounded in the Inuit belief system, itself defined by superstition and transformation.