Dr. Asta Mønsted

Search and rescue, right?

Exactly.

It's difficult to say, I mean, because some of the knowledge we have from the oral stories and it's difficult for us to, I mean, we haven't yet looked into, is this a regional phenomenon or is it really widespread in Greenland and how far back in time does it go?

So we do see indications of this, but it's,

it's difficult for us to know yet how common an idea it was, but we also need to think about what, because we have the same, some of the same mythology coming from Alaska and Canada.

What is interesting in Alaskan mythology is for example, that the Raven plays such a huge part in their cosmology and the

They have a story from Alaska where the raven is one day flying over the sea, the ocean, and he sees a whale.

He sees this splash coming out and he goes,

gets closer and he allows himself to be swallowed up by this whale.

And when the Raven comes inside the whale, he finds out there is a woman sitting inside the whale and keeping a lamp.

And the Raven asks her, what are you doing?

And she says, I am the keeper of the whale.

I am the spirit of the whale.

And if I don't tend to this lamp,

the whale is going to die.

And what is really interesting about that is that some of the houses, for example, they did look very organic and roundish.

So are they supposed to be representations of a whale?

And then you have the soapstone lamb inside that needs to be kept, oftentimes by a woman, most times by a woman.

And that might be

an idea that was very common at the time, but it's really difficult for us to prove it.