Angakkuq- Inuit ConceptConcept

Becoming an Angakkuq

Every significant community needed at least one angakkuq. When game vanished or illness struck without explanation, the angakkuq intervened, using powers granted by tuurngait to find what had gone wrong between humans and spirits.

The path to those powers was dangerous. An aspirant retreated to a remote place, far from any human presence, and fasted for days or weeks. The purpose was to attract tuurngait, the helping spirits granted by Torngarsuk. What followed was terrifying: encounters with spirits, sensations of the body dissolving and being rebuilt. Not all who sought shamanic power received it. Some were broken by the attempt.

Established shamans sometimes mentored initiates, teaching songs and spiritual geography. But no instruction substituted for the direct encounter with the spirit world that transformed an ordinary person into an angakkuq.

The Spirit Journey

The angakkuq's most dramatic act was the spirit journey: a trance voyage undertaken during community crisis. The community gathered in a darkened dwelling. The shaman entered trance. The soul, guided by tuurngait, traveled out.

The most famous journey was the descent to Sedna's house at the bottom of the sea. When Sedna withheld marine animals because of broken taboos, the angakkuq's soul traveled down through the water to reach her, combed her tangled hair (which she could not do herself, having lost her fingers), and persuaded her to release the animals. In Rasmussen's Iglulik recordings, the community participated by confessing taboo violations aloud while the shaman journeyed, calling out transgressions that might have caused the crisis. The shaman's voice changed as spirits spoke through them. The sounds of the voyage filled the dwelling.

The Drum

The qilaut, a large flat frame drum beaten with a stick, was the angakkuq's instrument. Its rhythmic pulse helped induce trance. Each angakkuq developed personal songs tied to their tuurngait, sung during ceremonies to invoke the spirits' aid. The drum's sound, rising and falling in a darkened dwelling, was the first sign that the shaman had begun the dangerous work of entering the spirit world.

When someone fell sick, the angakkuq consulted their tuurngait to diagnose the cause. If the soul had wandered, the shaman journeyed to retrieve it. If a spirit had intruded, the shaman wrestled it out. The community watched these struggles play out in the dark, hearing the voice shift between human speech and the strange utterances of spirits, knowing that their neighbor's life depended on what happened next.

The angakkuq who served the community well was indispensable. One who turned spiritual power to harmful ends, fashioning tupilait or settling grudges through sorcery, was feared above almost anything else.