#netsilik elder

[leadandblood]

Cold Boy close ups from Aidan Monaghan

I went absolutely bonkers over some of these and I hope you do as well, so I don't have to feel so bad

[willowbilly]

Hi!

Do you have any recommendations for resources on Inuit names in the mid 19th century? I’m working on a post-canon The Terror fic and I want names for OCs.

Ii, sure thing! I don't know of any Inuit name databases in modern standardized orthography, specifically, but I have some resources!

Most important is to keep dialect, orthography, and the kinship system in mind. If your OCs are Ugřuliŋmiut, Qikiqtarmiut, Natchiliŋmiut, or any other speakers of what may possibly be termed a Nattilingmiutut (sub)dialect, I'd suggest hewing toward phonetically modern Natchiliŋmiutut in the way that I think the book ᐊᒡᓗ | Aglu | The Breathing Hole does for its Inuktut starting from Act One in 1535 onward, resulting in intervocalic [h] rather than [s] and so on, as this way one can more closely rely on available resources that reflect today's modern language. If one uses modern standardized orthography, then try to standardize all the names alike into the same qaliujaaqpait, for example by representing the voiced velar nasal [ŋ] phoneme with either /ŋ/ or /ng/ throughout all names; otherwise, keep period-typical spelling for all the names, and note that you may need to “de-update” names from modern standardized spelling so that they meet the same nonstandard standard. “Aglukkaq” is spelled in modern standardized orthography; “Aglooka” is in period-typical nonstandardized orthography. Modern standardized orthographies for Inuit languages are highly phonemic, meaning that the spelling systems' graphemes more consistently correlate to the languages' phonemes, and usage of modern standardized orthography in the historical setting could imply that the POV character is better able to discern how the language actually sounds. Kinship terms would be usual in place of speaking a relative's name, and people adopted into a community would be given kinship terms or, with a name, the kinship terms that correspond to their namesake. Inuit names are all functionally unisex!

Inuit naming is a brief article by Peter Irniq. He mentions the -nnuaq and -nnuałłuk postbases as the Natchiliŋmiutut ones preferred over other Canadian dialects' -kuluk.

Janet Tamalik McGrath's master's thesis Conversations with Nattilingmiut elders on conflict and change: Naalattiarahuarnira touches on the kinship system's traditional usage.

I highly recommend going through The Netsilik Eskimos: Social Life and Spiritual Culture by Knud Rasmussen, wherein his census record as many names as he could in his own orthography, influenced by his fluency in Kalaallisut. The name “Orpingalik” from his orthography may be modernized to “Uqpiŋalik;” “Qaqortingneq” to “Qakuqti’niq;” “Uvlúnuaq” to “Uplunnuaq;” “mane·lAq” to “Maniilaq;” “kiɳmiArtɔq” to “Kiŋmiaqtuq;” et cetera.

Modern Inuktut language surnames are all derived from traditional given names, so looking at prominent Inuit figures, and at who is portrayed and credited in media such as on IsumaTV, can yield great results! Though note that some names will be dialect-specific, and many surname spellings predate standardization. Thus, surnames such as Louie Kamookak's and Sammy Kogvik's would be standardized to “Qamukkaaq” and “Qurvik” respectively.

The Natchilingmiut Uqauhingit | Natchilingmiutut Dictionary is indispensable, both for with which to double-check one's spelling, and for the nouns therein that may make for suitable names! Common nouns like tuktu “caribou,” ujarak “rock,” and kuplu “thumb” are all solid choices. If one is feeling daring, one may even combine a verb root with the intransitive indicative mood singular verb ending +ř/tuq (+řuq after vowels, +tuq after consonants) to make a noun participle. Postbases like -nnuaq (noun-to-noun; “the small Noun”) and -’ř/-rřuaq (noun-to-noun; “the big Noun”) may additionally be incorporated so long as one is confident of one's grammatical synthesizing.

To that aim, the sites uqausiit.ca and tusaalanga.ca are really very wonderful, uqausiit being a dictionary, tuhaalaŋa having a glossary with more than a few audio entries, and both holding extremely useful grammar basics on several central Canadian Inuit language varieties that include Natchiliŋmiutut! Other great sites I recommend are inuktitutcomputing.ca (grammar and some Natchiliŋmiutut in the dictionary); inuinnaqtun.ca (closely related language Inuinnaqtun resources); and inupiaqonline.com (Alaskan Iñupiatun language dictionary)! The Inuktitut Magazine archive is available online for free as well!

Everyone should also read Aglu, because I hath saith. One should cry for Aŋu’řuaq, that good bear. (Natchiliŋmiutut translation included!)

Any mistakes herein are mine; if spotted, feel free to please correct! (A variant by the qakuqhi- in the dictionary may be Qakuqhi’niq…and perhaps Qakuqhinniq would furthermore be the better standardization as I am unsure as to whose precise subdialects assimilate the latter [t] in what I presume is the ∓tit- morpheme into /’/ versus /n/, and so on…) I do hope this is helpful!

[weepingjesters]

Alright alright!, here we go!

(Long, long text post after the cut)

First things first, lore time!!

All of this may change overtime as I make adjustments and figure out finer plot details, so don't take everything for being set in stone.

Anyways, my story for the Arcane Order is WAY different than the canon version we were given.

Beginnings

Starting with the main cast, Skrael, Bellroc, and Nari are given a bit of a different dynamic than shown in the show. Instead of just being a vague group of primordial wizards, they were born from the earth itself. Evolution plays out as it does in the modern science books, with the different eras and ice ages. The earliest plant life began about 460 million years ago, that is when Nari first appeared. Nari created new forms of life over a very long stretch of time, including the earliest forms of dinosaurs, and watching those dinosaurs evolve on their own. When they are wiped out by an asteroid, however...

That is when the second Arcane Order member would appear, around the end of the Cretaceous period about 66 million years ago. The recovery period afterwards is when Bellroc comes into the picture for the Arcane Order. They appear while the smaller mammals and rodents are running around and scavenging, trying to survive. (This is where they get their skull headpiece---It's a runt giganotosaurus skull! ((might change to be a juvenile allosaurus skull as well, or a Utah raptor))). From here on Bellroc is just kind of... there. They live throughout history until we get to about... 2 billion years ago.

2 billion years ago is when the first Ice Age began! Which means, you guessed it, Skræl appears! Before this time, however, Bellroc and Nari had grown into a siblings-like bond, with Nari guiding and helping Bellroc around the powers they now wielded.

They hadn't really been meddling in creation very much up to the point that Skræl appears, but afterwards, they start steering the course of the Earth, which includes the beginning of the human race. This is a post for another day, so let's just skip to the part that focuses the most on Skræl!

Skræl's lore / his role in humanity

From here, the timeline can get a bit muddy, since the Inuit and Norse and Norwegien groups of humans I have inspired his looks and lore from appear at about the 13th century, meanwhile toa Wizards dates the Killahead War at the late 12th century. I ask you ignore this hiccup in my storyline, please and thank you!

Anyway, Skræl had taken a liking to the humans who were choosing to live in his harsh arctic environment, specifically the several different Eskimo peoples, which include but are not limited to the eight Inuit groups (credit to this site for the information): The Labradormiut (Labrador), Nunavimmiut (Ungava), Baffin Island, Iglulingmuit (Iglulik), Kivallirmiut (Caribou), Netsilingmiut (Netsilik), Inuinnait (Copper) and Inuvialuit or Western Arctic Inuit (who replaced the Mackenzie Inuit).

Starting with his name, Skræl took his name off of the term that the Old Norse and Icelandic people had for the Inuit tribes, skrælingi or plural skrælingjar. From before this point, Skræl had just been referred to as North Wind by the other members of the Arcane Order and by any mortal/magical creature who knew of him. He chose to be referred to as a male a long time ago as well, simply to ensure that there wasn't much confusion amongst the humans whom he was spending more and more time watching and messing with.

Skræl had been meddling with humans for a very long time, since the first Ice age, and all of the time afterwards that there were ever any humans in his Arctic environment. He had taught the humans many different skills, and was sometimes worshipped alongside other deities by the Old Norse.

He often met with at least one or two elders of an Inuit group every few generations simply to talk and see them off into the next life. (Energy and souls can be reincarnated in my version of Trollhunters, which will leave interesting story options open for future use).

Because of Skræl's open enjoyment of the human race, you can see how I'm setting up the Killahead battle and the way he will react to being asked to meddle with such an important and fragile battle for balance. But that's for later.

Skræl's design inspiration

There are several different observable things to talk about in his design, so lets start with his head dress: the walrus skull.

The reason I decided upon a walrus skull rather than one of a caribou or mammoth or any other great beast is because of the Inuit legend of Sedna, the sea goddess. In the legend, Sedna has her fingers cut off, which then become all of the sea creatures of the oceans, which include things like whales, seals, and walruses. Before this legend came around, though, Skræl had been wearing a scimitar cat skull instead. He switched to a walrus to be more connected to the Inuit.

The second part of his design is his "cloak", which is really just a standard Inuit fur coat that has been cut down the middle like a jacket, and thrown over his shoulders like a cloak. He doesn't wear it like the mortals would because he, as a god, doesn't need to worry about freezing to death. I also just wanted an excuse to show off his tattoos, which may or may not be added. (I still have to find some good and credible resources and references to the meanings behind chest and arm tattoos for the Inuit, so only his face has any right now in the final art I've done for him. the only reason he's kept the two lines across the face is because they **allegedly** mean that he has killed a rather large or memorable whale).

The third part is his pants, which are the common pants of a Norwegian / Viking trousers. They are tied at the waist with rope and wooden/bone beads, because Skræl is just extra like that. The shoes/'shin guards' are also typical boots for Viking age Norwegians *according to my sources*, but I cut them off at the ankle so that he can be bare foot in the snow like the little maniac he is.

Speaking of little, I made him so much larger than he is in the cannon. Skræl stands at about 5'6" when standing up straight, and he's bigger physically, but still extremely lean. He has more of the native features of an Inuit (referenced from old photos off Google).

In a previous ask I sent to @ssiggss, I said that he has braids beneath the hood and skull, but now I'm not sure if I want him to be bald or not. Probably not, just to go the easy route, since I can barely draw loose hair as it is.

He has those little itsy bitsy horns on his head still, too. No lore reason, I just liked them in his canon design.

Skræl (and Bellroc's role) in the battle of Killahead, and a tease at the rest of the story!

Nari is the one who calls the Arcane Order together to discuss the issue of the balance within her domain, and urges them for help. Bellroc and Skræl are don't really agree with the idea of meddling in such a big event, considering they didn't help any of the other previous civilizations during things like the Ice Ages, Aztec empires, or natural disasters like Pompei.

They decline her request, and leave the Wild Wood.

Immediately, Nari is pissed off and tells them to help, but they still decline. Nari gives Morgana her power to be the Mother of Monsters, and meddles in the battle herself.

And then Skræ; and Bellroc disappear...

...until the time of Merlin's death.

Someone ask me about my version of Skrael PLEASE 🙏 I WANT TO RAMBLE ABOUT THIS LOSER

[midweekblues]

Hi there. I read your wonderful post about how upset you were that Silna in The Terror had to go off by herself at the end of the show, and how you thought she deserved better. I can't find the link (I'll keep trying), but I remember an interview where the show creator said this was entirely based on his research into Netsilik culture--that if you were a shaman and lost your spirit guide, you HAD to leave the community. There was simply no other option. It's terrible...but accurate.

Hi, and thanks for the ask! It’s a shame you can’t find the link, I’d love to read it, please do share if you happen to find it! I’m always on the hunt for sources on Netsilik culture and I know they did a lot of research for the show and had Inuit advisors for everything from costumes to the Inuqtitut spoken!

Through the years (i read the book in like 2010 and went Full Nerd) i’ve done some digging myself just for fun, some good stuff online, Woodman’s Inuit Testimony books about the expedition, Rasmussen’s works on the Netsilik, modern Inuit-produced works (late 1990s-early 00s) with direct testimonies on shamanism and spirituality, like Isuma TV documentaries or the Nunavut Arctic College Interviewing Inuit Elders series... but the show seems to stray from what I’ve read so far on angakkuit and their relationships to tuurngait?* 

Which is great, it’s fiction! And it leaves many things ambiguous, which is great too. Like really makes you think about Silna’s motivations and choices as the story progresses. I think a lot about her, like a lot a lot. And the wider Netsilik society in the story and in the real historical context of the expedition. Uhm. I guess from a narrative point of view I would have appreciated her having a story outside of the story? If she left all the same, but Crozier was just told “She’s back to her people”, or “She’s got duties now”. So at least one person in this wretched show would make it home lol. No, but in all seriousness. I get what the writers were trying to do, i get their approach to the real historical consequences of the exploration and colonization of the Arctic, i’ve read the interviews with the showrunners on the tone they were trying to set with Tuunbaq and Silna and their demise. But, uhm. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched Black Sails, but Black Sails did it better imo. To each their own  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

* again, i haven’t read that much, and I’d be so so happy if someone points me to more sources. Especially because we’re talking about an oral culture that started being eroded as soon as westerners contacted them, so there’s inevitably going to be seemingly contradicting versions, and especially on matters of religion/spirituality. But let’s also remember that writers doing their research doesn’t mean they’ll stick to it 100% all the time, and that’s fine too! 

[shadeslayer]

“[[actor]] was able to reassure us that we were responsible and that we were faithful to what she felt what the representation of her culture,” Hugh says. But those “gut checks” also sound like the kind of extra labor that people of color regularly perform for allies–to their cost. The show didn’t pay to employ a separate consultant on Inuit historical culture, although such people do exist. Kamookak, the Netsilik historian who spent much of his life searching for the remains of the Franklin Expedition, is a prominent example. Kamookak’s research was instrumental to finding the two shipwrecks, something he hoped would bring tourism and jobs to Nunavut. When he wasn’t hunting for Franklin’s grave and his other legacies, the highly-honored historian, who died last month, worked with numerous Canadian authors and Arctic historians. In terms of accuracy, however, Gross says they couldn’t have asked for better: [[another of their 3 inuk actors]] is a community elder, a holder of oral history and traditional knowledge. Symon adds that producing the Inuit costumes involved “the most rigorous academic research we’d ever undertaken.” Her team understood how to produce authentic-looking British period garb, but didn’t know anything about how to make traditional Annuraaq, the skin and fur garments that the historical Inuit relied on. The detail of these garments is an important cultural distinction between Inuit groups as well, Gross says, but in general Symon tried to put less ornamentation on the garments than would have historically been there, since the English sailors likely wouldn’t have noticed the amount of detail. That’s the other thing: this show is first and foremost about the Franklin Expedition, not the Netsilik Inuit of the 1840s. It approaches the worldview and culture of Lady Silence obliquely, just as even the most curious members of Franklin’s crew might have done with the real Netsilik Inuit that they met.

unreal lol. they blatantly and purposely didnt hire cultural advisors, used their three native actors as free consultants (aka putting them on the spot to lose their acting job if they voice disagreement!) spent all their research on costuming instead of anything else and then purposely made the story not about indigenous people anyway. how is this "flipping the script" and "showing the indigenous perspective" sweetheart. sounds like someone just wanted a headline to give good PR!

bro U_U u cannot take media recs from white folk. they will completely miss the entire indigenous storyline and tell you its really compelling about how these white british colonials get stuck in an uninhabited land and go crazy and when u try to find anything even mentioning the indigenous part of the story you get some reviews from the smithsonian indian museum saying that its soo fair and good and it ~flips the script~ and shows the indigenous perspective bc they did a bunch of costume research and then used their three inuit actors as unpaid cultural consultants to stroke their egos. LOL

[midweekblues]

Oh boy, this has been sitting in my drafts for how long!? Ok this one's straight up going under a ReadMore, sorry about your dashes dear followers

Tuunbaq VS Tuurngaq

Names are SO important in The Terror. Silna given a name through violence, respectful or at least sympathetic at first ("Condolences, Lady Silence") then turns into an everyday thing then it gets tragic when she cuts her tongue but by then it's caught on? Like how Crozier refers to her when he's talking to Goodsir in the tent "Do you think she's safe?" "Silence?" like... can i scream a bit? Anyway i was gonna talk about Toony Tunes, Mr Teeth and Claws, you know.

I LOVED Nive Nielsen's interview, what a QUEEN her first day at work was the scene with her dad dying? And she KILLED IT like that. BTW Silna's name is a mix of the two main Inuk deities (Sila and Sedna) which i thought was a bit cheesy at first but YES GIRL you deserve to be named after not 1 but TWO gods. Ok Nive fangirling over, let's talk The Creature™ and its names.

Nive says tuurngaq, that's the word in Greenlandic and also in Netsilingmiut and most Nunavut inuktitut variants as far as I've found. Here's Johnny Issaluk, who's from Nunavut, saying it too:

Slightly different accent but the -rng- sound is still clearly there. Here's Silna's first time saying it on screen, with Crozier and Blanky's attempts to repeat the word:

I'm gonna take Blanky's word on turnraq being Yupik but... Francis... Toombak? Really? And then he just keeps going, and so do the subtitles even when it's Inuit characters speaking proper Inuktitut. It's been like this since the very beginning, when Ross and ¿McClintock? are talking to Issaluk's character in his tent.

And you could think, ok these kabloonas can't tell the difference between a guttural -rng- sound coming from your throat and a labial -mb- coming from your lips? But the plot thickens because in the novel, Tuunbaq is specifically not a tuurngaq, it's closer to a tupilaq.

Ok so what's a tuurngaq (plural tuurngait)? In general terms, a spirit. It can be good or evil. Angakkuit (shamans) interact with them, if they're friendly, and they can become their helping spirits. Tuurngait are present in most Inuit cultures and there's so many stories on them (if you're looking for Netsilik stories, check out Rasmussen's book). They can be humans who have passed away, they can have animal forms, sometimes something inbetween. They can be male or female or have no gender? They are spirits, but sometimes they can be killed. Here's almost one hour of Igloolik folks talking about them, and shamans, and the decline of shamanism as Christianity took over the Arctic Seriously this is really cool because it's from 2003 and it's mostly elders talking about their parents' and grandparents' experiences and way of life.

So what's a tupilaq (plural tupileq)? Okay this is more specific to the Greenlandic Inuit but it's basically a monster-spirit created by one having magic powers, who uses it to wreak vengeance on an enemy. One of the common themes is that if the person it's supposed to attack defeats the tupilaq, then it will turn on its creator. But book!Tuunbaq is not your regular, standard issue tupilaq. It's Sedna's. A tupilaq created by a goddess, and so a whole-ass deity in itself. This is 100% Simmons' creation because he loves his monsters, so he tells the story like this:

Sedna (aka Nuliajuk for the Netsilik), the ruler of the sea and all its creatures, had beef with Sila (aka Narssuk), the ruler of the skies and the weather, so she created a tupilaq to kill him which was the terrible Tuunbaq, BUT Sila defeated it so it had to turn on Sedna, BUT Sedna was too smart and had created it with a bug so if Tuunbaq was ever defeated it would be cast to the physical world and could never reach her, and she put it up North in the most desolate area of the world so it wouldn't, y'know, kill everyone. And Silna, her dad and others are part of a super-dope pan-Inuk angakkuit society that serves it, because book!Tuunbaq cannot be controlled, only somewhat appeased. Something behind human comprehension ("We were not meant to know of it") but almost in a cosmic horror kind of way.

Why keep the Tuunbaq spelling/pronunciation for the show when they changed almost everything about it? No idea. Maybe Simmons requested it? Maybe they thought the book fans would like it? (i didn't) As far as i know, tuunbaq is not an Inuktitut word, and actually the -nb- (or -mb-) phoneme doesn't even exist. Show!Tuunbaq works more as a tuurngaq anyway (though I'm ambivalent when it comes to its relationship to Silna/the expectations placed on her regarding it, where the show strays from most of what i've read on the subject), and i think it's interesting to note the importance placed on amulets (the ones belonging to Silna's father, the one she carves for herself) which were definitely A Thing in Netsilik society. Would she have been able to control it if she had the proper amulets? If her father had died under the sky, had an appropriate burial? If Hickey & co had not interrupted her first attempt to bond with it? Guess we'll never know. I think about it a lot though!

are there any Inuit/Netsilik folklore(? idk exactly the word i'm looking for here) around names?

just thinking about Silna/Lady Silence, and my immediate thought about her not giving up her name to them* is, from my Western/North-Western European standpoint, very reminiscent of fairies and not giving out your real name as it holds power.

like... names are SO important in the Terror. I especially like how Nive Nielsen replaced tuunbaq with tuurngaq, as that is how she would say it (in Greenland). she mentions this here (great interview, would recommend a read!). that the terror & erebus crews aren't supposed to know of the Tuunbaq, and then also mispronounces its name? feels v important. (and then add onto that - Crozier & Fitzjames' conversation about it in ep8, when they both genders it and claims it. man, if anyone have any interesting thoughts about that i'd love to read it!! brain mushy)

and then Crozier is only told her name when everyone else is dead, and he's as good as. he's harmless now, he has no power, so he is told her name.

but idk the myths and rituals around names in Silna's culture. i don't know how much they considered it when making the show, but as Nive apparently was allowed a lot of freedom, and was consulted regularly on what she thought would be appropriate (she also discusses that in the interview!), i like to believe they maybe did some research into that? maybe.

*(IIRC they did actually ask and she stayed silent? if they didn't that's just another point in Here Comes Imperialism, esp when they Name her. then it becomes a different but equally interesting discussion!)