Essay Week 10: Reviewing Eskimo Folktales

This week, I read the stories from Eskimo Folktales. These folktales feature a variety of subject matter. Within this Eskimo Folktales unit, you will find stories about the spirit world and village shamans. There are also stories of evil spirits, zombies, ghosts, and cannibalism. However, all of the stories aren’t super extreme and dark. Some of them are about animals or family dynamics and, of course, there is a creation story. There weren’t really any general themes throughout, but I didn’t mind. The varied subject matter kept things interesting.

The Eskimo Folktales are actually Canadian Inuit stories recorded by a polar explorer in the early years of the 20th century. After reading a few of the stories, I was curious about the origin of the names of characters, so it was interesting to me to find out they were Canadian Inuit names. The names were really long and complicated. I couldn’t even type them for my reading diary; I had to copy them and paste them in every time.

I enjoyed the illustrations that were included, even though a lot of them were bizarre. They looked hand-drawn and even though they weren’t in color, there was a lot of detail in most of the illustrations.

All of these stories were one page stories. This length is preferable to stories that are one long, continuous thing. As I normally do, I completed all of the readings in one sitting. This helps me keep my thoughts together and once I get going, it’s just easier to make some time and take care of it. Also, this means I can take care of both of my declarations at once.

Some of these stories had notes and some did not. I appreciated the notes that were included, but the stories without the notes weren’t difficult to understand. As mentioned in the notes in the beginning of the unit, these stories are recorded in a way that’s stylisticly similar to the way the stories would likely have been told in oral tradition. I think this makes the stories pass in a lively way.

(Illustration of Nukúnguasik done by a native Eskimo artists, Eskimo Folktales unit)