Fróðskaparrit - 31.12.2000, Page 32

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THE SNOW BUNTING (PLECTROPHENAX NIVIALIS) AS FOOD
Fig. 3. A grain sieve usedfor a snow bunting fall, Stensele. Lapland (EU 4193)
Mynd 3. Kornsálđ nýtt sum snjófuglafella í Stensele í Lapplandi.
plucked the birds and then boiled or roast-
ed them. According to a Banffshire saying,
“the heavier the snow falls and the longer it
lies, the fatter the ghallicks get”. Peasants
in Invernesshire, Caithness, and Sutherland
also hunted the snow bunting for food or to
feed their dogs (Nethersole-Thompson,
1966: 168-169).
Otto Fabricius (1780: 119) wrote that it
was known as kupolarárssuk in Greenland;
the inhabitants of that island considered it
of poor value, although they did dry its
meat. Fabricius (1962: 74-75) stresses that
only children caught the buntings, and that
they did so when the birds came down to
the houses in the course of their migration.
The birds were either shot with small bows
or captured with snares made from the
small horsehair-like fringes found on the
edge of baleen. The snow bunting was the
first prey that the young boys of Greenland
hunted (at an age of five or six years). The
buntings built their nests close to the
dwellings of the Eskimo. “Apparently they
never realize that children are much worse
than foxes. The Eskimo youngsters have
no mercy at all with any living creature. All
things alive can be killed and the future
hunter starts proudly making snow
buntings his first game.” (Freuchen and Sa-
lomonsen, 1958: 153; cf. Holm, 1914: 63;
1935: 50; Bruhn, 1935: 50).
The Danish ethnographer, Kai Birket-
Smith (1929: 117), observed that small
boys among the Caribou Eskimo in the
southern part of Barren Grounds, west of
Hudson Bay, amused themselves by catch-
ing snow buntings in traps. These traps re-
call the deadfalls used in northern Scandi-
navia. They consisted of a small hollow in
the soil in which a few berries were placed
as bait. By the side of the hollow, a flat
stone was leaned against a stick to which a
long slring was tied. When the bunting