Case file · Folklore / legend
The aurora as the dead playing ball (Kalaallit lore)
Greenlandic Inuit (Kalaallit) told the Danish scholar Hinrich Rink that the northern lights are the souls of the dead playing ball with a walrus head in the sky, and that whistling at them makes them come nearer.
1866 CE · 64.18, -51.72 · status: legend
The account
Rink collected stories in Greenland from the 1850s and published them in Danish from 1866 and in English as 'Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo' (1875). Similar beliefs are recorded across the Arctic. Year is the published attestation.