The Legend known by the name of
The Soul of the Whale and the Burning Heart
There was once a silly and conceited raven who flew out to sea, a very long way out.It flew and kept on flying, farther and farther, and when it became tired it began to look about for land; but there was no land. At last it became so tired that it could do no more than hover about the surface of the water, and when suddenly a whale bobbed up in front of it, the raven became so confused that it few right into its jaws.
For a moment all was dark around it, and there was a blowing and a gurgling, and the raven had just made up its mind that it was to die when it tumbled right into a house, a beautiful, lovely house, where there was light and warmth. On the platform sat a young woman busy with a burning lamp.
She rose and welcomed the raven kindly, saying:“You are welcome to be my guest, if only you promise me one thing: You must never touch my lamp.”
The raven, happy at being alive still, wasted no time in assuring her that he would never touch the lamp; then he sat on the platform and fell to wondering at how clean and nice everything was in the little house. It was built like men’s houses are. But the young woman was strangely uneasy. She was never still for long; every now and then she rose from the platform and slipped out at the door; she was gone but a moment, then she would come in again; but son afterwards she was gone again.
“What makes you so restless?” the raven asked. “Life,” answered the girl, “life, and my breathing.”
But the raven was quite unable to understand what she meant.
The raven, who had now recovered his composure and had forgotten his fears, began to be inquisitive.
“How can it be that I mustn’t touch that lamp?” , he thought; and every time the girl slipped out and he was left alone, he became more and more inclined to break his promise and go over and just touch the lamp a wee bit. In the end his curiosity got the better of him and, when the girl went out through the door, he leaped over and gently touched the lamp-wick.
At the same moment the girl came tumbling headlong through the door and fell headlong to the floor, while the lamp went out.
Too late the raven repented of what he had done; he groped about in the inky darkness and the beautiful fair hair was there no longer. He was choking. He fluttered about among blubber and blood, and it became so hot in there that his feathers fell off. Half-suffocating he tumbled about in the belly of the whale, and now for the first time he realized what had happened.
The girl was the soul of the whale, and she slipped out through the door every time the whale had to breathe, and her heart was a lamp with a large, steady flame.
Out of sheer curiosity the raven had meddled with the girl’s heart, and she had died. He was unaware that the fine and delicate is also fragile and easy to destroy, for the raven himself is stupid and hard to kill; and now he was struggling for life in darkness and blood. Everything which once had been beautiful and clean had now become horrid and stinking.
At last he succeeded in escaping by the same way he had come in; and there he sat, a half-naked raven, greasy and soiled, on the back of a dead whale.
There he remained, living on the carcass, while wind and waves tossed it about. His wings were so spoiled by heat and blood that he could no longer fly.
At last a storm drove them towards land, and people saw the carcass and rowed out in their umiaqs to secure flesh and blubber. When the raven saw them he transformed himself immediately into a man, a little ugly, swarthy and untidy man, standing on top of the whale.
He said nothing at all about having out of mere curiosity touched a heart and destroyed something beautiful and fine; he simply squawked exultantly: “I killed the whale.”
And he became a great man among the people.
~ ~ ~
To this tale Dr. Rasmussen adds:
The whale is dangerous to hunt, but it is susceptible to advances from human beings, especially when they are women. Thus the wife of a chief, as soon as she heard that her husband’s boat had harpooned a whale, had to remove of her boots and remain quietly inside her house. This step preparatory to mounting the platform would confuse the soul of the whale and entice it to the house. Then when the boat approached the shore, she had to fill the water-pail with fresh water and go down to the killed whale to give its thirsting soul refreshing water to drink.
The chief himself in most cases took the part of helmsman; it is considered to be a great art to anticipate the movements of the whale. As a harpooner he would have a young and powerful man to thrust the harpoon into the whale as soon as he gave the signal. The day before proceeding out to the ice-edge to start whaling the young harpooner had to sleep in the bow of the boat, and there during the night he would be visited by the wife of the chief. As a rule a chief had several wives, and it was the harpooner’s privilege to choose the youngest and prettiest. This meeting with a woman put the young man in a festive humour, and it was pleasing to the soul of a whale to let itself be killed by a man who had just come from a woman.
This was the way the whale was hunted in former times. Now the old harpoons with their artistically fashioned heads of flint and slate are antiques, and instead the whaler uses a modern “darting gun” with explosive bombs. The skin boat alone remains, for as it often has to be carried long distances over the ice, it is still considered to be the most practical craft.
Knud Rasmussen, 5th Thule Expedition, Vol. #10