Reykjavík Grapevine - 02.08.2013, Qupperneq 20

20The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 11 — 2013
Step into
the Viking Age
Experience Viking-Age Reykjavík at the
new Settlement Exhibition. The focus of the
exhibition is an excavated longhouse site which
dates from the 10th century ad. It includes
relics of human habitation from about 871, the
oldest such site found in Iceland.

Multimedia techniques bring Reykjavík’s
past to life, providing visitors with insights
into how people lived in the Viking Age, and
what the Reykjavík environment looked like
to the first settlers.
The exhibition and
museum shop are open
daily 10–17
Aðalstræti 16
101 Reykjavík / Iceland
Phone +(354) 411 6370
www.reykjavikmuseum.is
List of licenced Tour
Operators and Travel
Agencies on:
visiticeland.com
Licensing and
registration of travel-
related services
The Icelandic Tourist Board issues licences to tour operators and travel agents,
as well as issuing registration to booking services and information centres.
Tour operators and travel agents are required to use a special logo approved
by the Icelandic Tourist Board on all their advertisements and on their Internet
website.
Booking services and information centres are entitled to use a Tourist
Board logo on all their material. The logos below are recognised by the
Icelandic Tourist Board.
Tangling With Tupilaks
Beware East Greenland’s most menacing menace!!!
by Lawrence Millman
A kayaker friend who'd just returned from East Greenland told me a very strange story. He said that a tupilak had recently emerged
from the sea and attacked the village of Igatek, causing it to be evacuated.
Iceland | Travel
Made by an angakok (shaman), a tupilak is a carv-
ing that typically boasts gaping mouthparts, grasp-
ing appendages, skulls adorned with bird beaks,
and various other grotesque body parts. Upon being
placed against the angakok's breast, it comes alive
and goes into attack mode. There's only one given
if you're the victim of a tupilak attack: your entrails
will be eaten. Or at least some of your entrails. A
subspecies of tupilak called a natigateq is only in-
terested in your intestines, which it'll meticulously
pull from your body and eat.
The search commences
Usually, a tupilak only targets individuals, not entire
villages, so when I heard my friend's story I flew
to East Greenland to investigate it. Specifically, I
took a helicopter to Tasiilak, the nearest village to
Ikatek, and began looking up people I'd known from
my previous visits as an ethnographer.
Georg Uparsima, probably the last full-fledged
angakok in East Greenland, had died, so I talked with
a cousin of his named Hendrik. "Many years ago, a
tupilak shaped like a walrus and wearing women's
breeches came ashore in Sermiligaq, but I've never
heard of one in Ikatek," Hendrik said.
"It was bad hunting that caused the people to
leave Ikatek," another Greenlander told me.
Ole Jensen, a Dane and former Director of the Ta-
siilak Museum, hadn’t heard the story about Ikatek
being attacked, either. But he did tell me that there
was a plastic bag containing the apparent remains of
a tupilak in the Museum's basement or possibly in
its attic. I rummaged around among old beams and
boards in the basement, but didn't find the plastic bag
in question. I didn't locate the bag in the attic, either.
Nor did I observe any tupilaks assuming their
initial pose of standing at the edge of the sea and
waiting to do their carver's bidding.
Becoming an angakok ain’t easy
But I did find tupilaks, dozens of them, at a work-
shop which had the Danish name of "Stunk." Here
they were being carved by local craftsmen with
power tools. The air in the shop smelled (stunk?)
of burnt reindeer antler, the raw material for most
tupilaks nowadays. Unfinished carvings with elon-
gated skulls, exposed ribcages, and oversized talons
rested on tables next to cellphones and mugs of coffee.
"If someone stole your wife or girlfriend, would
you send one of your tupilaks after him?" I asked
one of the carvers.
"Nagga," he said. "I'd just beat up the guy."
This was definitely the quicker solution. For
if you want to send a tupilak after someone, you'd
need to be an angakok, and to be an angakok, you
have to be eaten by an enormous underground po-
lar bear called a Timek, digested and then shat out.
Once you've been shat out, you would somehow
have to find a way to rejoin your skeleton. If you
succeed in that dicey manoeuvre, then lo! you're an
angakok. Myself, I would rather engage in fisticuffs
with a wife stealer than undergo such an unpleasant
apprenticeship.
The qiviktok vanishes
An Italian living in Tasiilak, Robert Peroni, hadn't
heard the Ikatek story, but he did tell me about a
qiviktok that had attacked a house just down the
road from him. A qiviktok is a mountain hermit
whose solitude gives him supernatural powers. For
example, a qiviktok can fly, and in the case of the
one that attacked the nearby house, it simply flew
in through the window. So great was the fear as-
sociated with its visit that no one lived in the house
for ten years.
"Is the qiviktok still hanging out in the house?" I
asked expectantly.
"No. It went back to the mountains. They can't
stand human company."
I was getting nowhere with my tupilak investi-
gation. At one point, I googled "Ikatek" to find out
if there might be any online information about its
abandonment. One of the first hits I got was for the
prayer times in Ikatek for Moslems. Interesting, but
not really relevant.
“Video games”
At last I decided to visit Ikatek, so I hired a boat
to take me there. The village did in fact look aban-
doned, with most of the houses collapsed or boarded
up. Iconic Greenlandic litter such as Carlsberg lager
cans were notably absent, as was the toilet tissue
that decorates the ground throughout the Arctic.
Soon I was searching around for the telltale
signs of a tupilak attack, maybe big claw marks on
the side of a house, maybe the remnant of someone's
yanked off arm. Occasionally, I'd look up to make
sure that a monstrous creature, possibly one shaped
like a walrus and wearing women's breeches, wasn't
advancing toward me.
A Greenlander came out of one of the houses
and asked me what I was looking for.
"Signs of a tupilak attack," I said.
The man laughed. "The only place you'll find
tupilak attacks now is in video games," he said.
I asked him about all the empty houses.
"Ikatek died because it was too close to Tasi-
ilak," he replied. "Everyone wanted to live in 'the
big city'" (note: "The big city" has a population of
fewer than two thousand people).
"But you didn't move there."
"I'm from Tasiilak. This is my summer home."
Back in Tasiilak, I went into the gift shop at the
Hotel Angmagssalik and bought the most gruesome
tupilak I could find. It had a huge grinning skull
propped up on bandy little legs, and there was a
drill-like beak sticking out of its occiput. Perhaps I
could bring it alive and cause the abandonment of a
row of McMansions not far from where I lived?
Once I got home, I put the bad luck charm
against my right breast and waited. Nothing hap-
pened. Then I put it against my left breast, but the
tupilak again remained a carving made from the
antler of a reindeer. And I suspect it will always re-
main simply a carving, unless, of course, I somehow
manage to get myself eaten by a giant underground
polar bear.
For if you want to send
a tupilak after someone,
you'd need to be an anga-
kok, and to be an angakok,
you have to be eaten by an
enormous underground
polar bear called a Timek,
digested and then shat out.
Once you've been shat out,
you would somehow have
to find a way to rejoin your
skeleton. If you succeed in
that dicey maneuver, then lo!
you're an angakok.
“
„
Illustration: Megan Herbert