Case file · Folklore / legend
Boas records the Sedna feast at Cumberland Sound
Wintering on Baffin Island in 1883-84, Franz Boas recorded the story of Sedna, the sea woman whose severed fingers became the seals and whales, and the autumn feast at which angakkuit (shamans) drove her away.
1883 CE · 65.80, -66.50 · status: legend
The account
Published in 'The Central Eskimo' (1888), it became the classic account. Among other Inuit groups she is Nuliajuk or Takannaaluk; hunters believed broken taboos tangled her hair and made her withhold the animals until a shaman combed it.