The Tupilaq: The Vengeance Creature Carved by Greenland Shamans
In the museums of Copenhagen and Nuuk, and in the hands of East Greenlandic carvers working today, one meets small figures of tooth and bone that seem to concentrate the entire menace of the Arctic into a palmful of grimace: twisted composite creatures, part bear and part man and part bird, mouths agape, eyes bulging, limbs bent wrong. Visitors call them grotesques and buy them as souvenirs. Their name is tupilaq , and the carvings are — this must be said precisely — only portraits. The true tupilaq of East Greenlandic tradition was never made of walrus ivory for a shelf. It was made in secret, from the parts of dead animals and sometimes of dead children, bound together at a hidden place by a practitioner of the dark side of the shaman's art, sung over, brought to life — and then sent into the sea to find a particular human being and kill him. The tupilaq is folklore's most explicit assassination: a monster with a name on its errand. How a Tupilaq Was Made The accounts coll...