Tuluŋigraq Explained

In the form of Inuit mythology in vogue among the Iñupiaq Eskimo of north-western Alaska, Tuluŋigraq was a god created^[1] by the primordial aana (or "grandmother")^[2] goddess. (cf. the god Tulugaak of the eastern Eskimo)

• When the world was in perpetual darkness of night, he stole the skin-wrapped sun, and with his beak released it from the skin: it flew upward, creating daylight.^[3]
• By wrestling her, Tuluŋigraq had acquired^[4] as wife an uiḷuaqtaq, a 'woman who had refused to marry'. (With this theme, Lowenstein compared^[5] the shamanic experience wherein "the shaman wrestles with" the goddess Nuliajuk, as recorded by Rasmussen (1930) for the Iglulik.) [comparative note: just as Nuliajuk was the goddess controlling seals, so likewise the goddess [[Thetis]] of Hellenic myth was acquired as wife by the mortal hero Pēleus, by means of his wrestling her, after he had killed Phokos ('Seal').]
• He had also harpooned a strange sea-animal: "The animal came up dry. It rose in the water. It was dry land. It was Tikiġaq."^[6] [comparative: just as Tikiġaq is located at the tip of a promontory,<ref>as indicated on the maps at Asatchaq 1992, pp. xix, xxvii</ref> so likewise it was at a promontory (Sepias) that Pēleus wrestled Thetis; there, just as Tuluŋigraq was blackened with ''puiya'',<ref name="Asatchaq 1992, p. 6"/> so likewise was Pēleus blackened with sepia.]

References

• Book: Lowenstein . Tom . Asatchaq . Tukummiq . The Things That Were Said of Them : Shaman Stories and Oral Histories of the Tikiġaq People . 1992 . University of California Press . Berkeley, CA . 0-520-06569-7.
• Book: Rasmussen, Knud . Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen . Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos . 1930 . Copenhagen . Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-24, vol. 7, no. 1.

Notes and References

1. Asatchaq 1992, p. 6
2. Asatchaq 1992, p. 5
3. Asatchaq 1992, p. 9
4. Asatchaq 1992, p. 7
5. Asatchaq 1992, p. 11
6. Asatchaq 1992, p. 8