The Arctic Sky: Inuit Astronomy, Star Lore, and Legend

The book is brand new and will be dispatched from UK.

DWANE WILKIN Nunatsiaq News
IQALUIT - For many of the same reasons that popular interest in astronomy has steadily declined elsewhere in the Western world, author John MacDonald notes at the outset of this intriguing study that traditional Inuit knowledge of the circumpolar sky has also reached a twilight of sorts.

In an age of jet travel, five-day work weeks, self-government talks and the Internet, after all, ancient ideas about time and space have little practical meaning.

As for the sky's diminished literary and mythological significance, well, it goes without saying that it could not thrive in a social and religious climate regulated by Christian missionaries, traders, government administrators and the RCMP.

As MacDonald observes a little wistfully, gone are the frequent slow-paced trips by dog team that once afforded Inuit children the natural opportunity to learn about the stars, their movements and wayfinding functions from parents and elders.

Modern hunting excursions are ill-suited to star-gazing, and not just because snowmobiles have accelerated the pace of life in the Arctic: contemporary families now rarely travel together during the winter months - the only time of year that stars in the extreme northern hemisphere are actually visible.

"Light pollution, the anathema of city-dwelling amateur astronomers everywhere" MacDonald adds wryly in The Arctic Sky's opening pages, also "now pervades most Canadian Arctic communities."

A list of reasons for the decline of ancient Inuit astronomical wisdom would grow very long, indeed, and no doubt include mention of what MacDonald deems the "vague, unsubstantiated, or incomplete references to stars and other celestial or environmental phenomena of significance to Inuit" which populate the writings of earlier anthropologists, explorers and missionaries.

It would be wrong, however, to look to this book for fresh evidence in support of the idea that all earlier investigations were somehow tainted by the blinkers of western cultural imperialism; we aren't asked to believe that the decline in knowledge of traditional Inuit astronomy has been any more or less significant than the triumph of radar and satellite sensors over the sextant and the Farmer's Almanac.

Oral history survives

What is different - and here lies the book's great value - is that, unlike European star names and lore, which can always be traced to their mythic origins through a substantial body of written literature, the oral culture of the Arctic, till now at least, precluded reference to a comparable Inuit tradition. Happily, as the title of the book suggests, the obliterating glare of qallunaat customs did not entirely mask its memory.

In his job as manager of the Igloolik Research Centre, high above the Arctic Circle, MacDonald was intimately involved in the collection and documentation of Inuit oral history and traditional knowledge for most of the last decade.

Such rare and close collaboration with community elders, whose recollections of native star names and lore inform and enliven each page of The Arctic Sky, makes this book a compelling and fascinating read.

MacDonald's approach was to carefully compare his contemporary Inuit sources with selected references culled from the journals of explorers and established works of such trusted academics as Knud Rasmussen, Diamond Jenness and Edward Nelson. Their observations on the subject are amply cited throughout.

The result is a clear and dispassionate survey of the myth and practical knowledge associated with each of the known heavenly bodies and other environmental phenomena, such as aurora borealis, rainbows, sun dogs, snowdrifts and eclipses. Taken together, they offer a tantalizing glimpse into an ancient, forgotten Arctic cosmology that once stretched from the Bering Strait to East Greenland.

Inuit star legends

MacDonald's honest analysis shows that traditional knowledge of, and the importance placed upon stars in Inuit society varied across the Arctic. In fact, except for a remarkable linguistic unity and the widely held view that stars were the flickering souls and spirits of earthly creatures, Inuit star legends did not necessarily coincide with one another at all.

Which is perhaps why elder Noah Piugaattuk's somewhat utilitarian view on the place of star lore in traditional Inuit culture contains an appealing logic: "The true purpose of celestial mythology," he is quoted a saying "is to teach Inuit how to recognize and remember the stars so that they can be used for navigation."

Certainly this appears to be the case for the star Aagjuuk, to cite one example. Out of a celestial cast of some 18 stars and constellations that made up the arctic astronomical system, Aagjuuk, was closely identified by Inuit everywhere as a herald of daylight, owing to its appearance in the sky about the time of the winter solstice. Recognizable as the European constellation Aquila (Altair and Tarazed), its appearance on the northeast horizon during tauvikjuaq - the great darkness - was also used as a signal to mark the time of day.

Other stars too, notably, Ursa Major (Tukturjuit) found favor as timekeepers, and in some circumstances, as aids to navigation. But MacDonald is careful not to overstate the point. The Pole Star, for instance which appears in Inuit astronomy as Nuutuittuq (meaning literally, "never moves") played a relatively minor role as a guiding star, MacDonald observes, its usefulness diminishing altogether among Inuit living at latitudes above the Arctic Circle...

A chapter devoted to the pan-Arctic legend of the sun and moon offers a refreshingly clear and useful introduction to the fundamentals of pre-Christian Inuit mythology, and several translated versions of the legend are reprinted at the back of the book, together with a selection the original Inuktitut transcriptions.

A number of handsome charts and diagrams supplement MacDonald's lively prose. A chapter devoted to descriptions of individual stars, for instance, is graced by a superb table identifying the most important stars and constellations in Igloolik's astronomical tradition with their corresponding European names.

All in all, The Arctic Sky brings an important branch of Arctic anthropology and mythology to life, and promises to be a worthy companion to all serious students of Inuit folklore.