Knud Rasmussen Quotes

The greatest peril of life lies in the fact that human food consists entirely of souls. All the creatures that we to kill and eat, all those that we have to strike down and destroy to make clothes for ourselves, have souls, souls that do not perish with the body and which must therefore be pacified lest they revenge themselves on us for taking away their bodies

Den, der raster, ruster.

Dois homens chegaram a um buraco no céu. Um pediu ao outro ajuda para se erguer até a abertura... Mas era tão bonito no céu que o homem que espiou pela beirada esqueceu tudo, esqueceu o companheiro a quem tinha prometido ajudar a subir e simplesmente saiu correndo para entrar em todo o esplendor celeste. De um poema em prosa esquimó iglulik, do início do século XX, recitado por Inugpasugjuk a Knud Rasmussen, o explorador ártico da Groenlândia

We cannot see the glacier but we can feel it. It extends a chill around itself, dropping the air temperature by five degrees or more. The place we have chosen to camp is over a mile from the calving face, but even there we are within the glacier’s aura. In the days we spend at the Knud Rasmussen, we become icy. We drink ice. We wash in ice. We sleep by and on the ice. Ice fills our ears and our dreams and our speech. Ice fills the water and the air and the rock. We enter the ice and the ice enters us.

Therefore I say this : in sooth, you may come to feel sorrow; but remember in that day that the happiness you have lost is not the only happiness life has to give ; and if you believe this—and you will one day—then later you will understand that the hardest and heaviest part of your sorrow before arose from your own obstinacy.

And when she went to look at it, she nearly died of fright, it was so ugly. Its eyes were jellyfish, its hair of seaweed, and the mouth was like a mussel.

Two men came to a hole in the sky. One asked the other to lift him up … But so beautiful was it in heaven that the man who looked in over the edge forgot everything, forgot his companion whom he had promised to help up and simply ran off into all the splendor of heaven. from an Iglulik Inuit prose poem, early twentieth century, told by INUGPASUGJUK to KNUD RASMUSSEN, the Greenlandic arctic explorer