The Very Obstinate Man

: Eskimo Folktales

There was once an Obstinate Man--no one in the world could be as

obstinate as he. And no one dared come near him, so obstinate was he,

and he would always have his own way in everything.



Once it came about that his wife was in mourning. Her little child

had died, and therefore she was obliged to remain idle at home;

this is the custom of the ignorant, and this we also had to do when

we were as ignorant a they.



And while she sat thus idle and in mourning, her husband, that

Obstinate One, came in one day and said:



"You must sew the skin of my kayak."



"You know that I am not permitted to touch any kind of work," said

his wife.



"You must sew the skin of my kayak," he said again. "Bring it down

to the shore and sew it there."



And so the woman, for all her mourning, was forced to go down to the

shore and sew the skin of her husband's kayak. But when she had been

sewing a little, suddenly her thread began to make a little sound,

and the little sound grew to a muttering, and louder and louder. And

at last a monster came up out of the sea; a monster in the shape of

a dog, and said:



"Why are you sewing, you who are still in mourning?"



"My husband will not listen to me, for he is so obstinate," she said.



And then the mighty dog sprang ashore and fell upon that husband.



But that Obstinate One was not abashed; as usual, he thought he would

get his own way, and his way now was to kill the dog. And they fought

together, and the dog was killed.



But now the owner of the dog appeared, and he turned out to be the

Moon Man.



And he fell upon that Obstinate One, but the Obstinate One would as

usual not give way, but fell upon him in turn. He caught the Moon Man

by the throat, and had nearly strangled him. He clenched and clenched,

and the Moon Man was nearly strangled to death.



"There will be no more ebb-tide or flood if you strangle me," said

the Moon Man.



But the Obstinate One cared little for that; he only clutched the

tighter.



"The seal will never breed again if you strangle me," cried the

Moon Man.



But the Obstinate One did not care at all, though the Moon Man

threatened more and more.



"There will never be dawn or daylight again if you kill me," said

the Moon Man at last.



And at this the Obstinate One began to hesitate; he did not like the

thought of living in the dark for ever. And he let the Moon Man go.



Then the Moon Man called his dog to life again, and made ready to

leave that place. And he took his team and cast the dogs up into the

air one by one, and they never came down again, and at last there

was the whole team of sledge dogs hovering in the air.



"May I come and visit you in the Moon?" asked the Obstinate One. For

he suddenly felt a great desire to do so.



"Yes, come if you please," said the Moon Man. "But when you see a

great rock in your way, take great care to drive round behind it. Do

not pass it on the sunny side, for if you do, your heart will be torn

out of you."



And then the Moon Man cracked his whip, and drove off through the

naked air.



Now the Obstinate One began making ready for his journey to the

moon. It had been his custom to keep his dogs inside the house, and

therefore they had a thick layer of ingrown dirt in their coats. Now he

took them and cast them out into the sea, that they might become clean

again. The dogs, little used to going out at all, were nearly frozen

to death by that cold water; they ran about, shivering with the cold.



Then the Obstinate One took a dog, and cast it up in the air, but

it fell down heavily to earth again. He took another and did so, and

then a third, but they all fell down again. They were still too dirty.



But the Obstinate One would not give in, and now he cast them out

into the sea once more.



And when he then a second time tried casting them up in the air,

they stayed there. And now he made himself a sledge, threw his team

up in the air, and drove off.



But when he came to the rock he was to drive round, this Obstinate

One said to himself:



"Why should I drive round a rock at all? I will go by the sunny side."



When he came up alongside, he heard a woman singing drum songs, and

whetting her knife; she kept on singing, and he could hear how the

steel hummed as she worked.



Now he tried to overpower that old woman, but lost his senses. And

when he came to himself, his heart was gone.



"I had better go round after all," he thought to himself. And he went

round by the shady side.



Thus he came up to the moon, and told there how he had lost his heart

merely for trying to drive round a rock by the sunny side.



Then the Moon Man bade him lie down at full length on his back,

with a black sealskin under, which he spread on the floor. This the

Obstinate One did, and then the Moon Man fetched his heart from the

woman and stuffed it in again.



And while he was there, the Moon Man took up one of the stones from

the floor, and let him look down on to the earth. And there he saw

his wife sitting on the bench, plaiting sinews for thread, and this

although she was in mourning. A thick smoke rose from her body; the

smoke of her evil thoughts. And her thoughts were evil because she

was working before her mourning time was passed.



And her husband grew angry at this, forgetting that he had himself

but newly bidden her work despite her mourning.



And after he had been there some time, the Moon Man opened a stone

in the entrance to the passage way, and let him look down. The place

was full of walrus, there were so many that they had to lie one on

top of another.



"It is a joy to catch such beasts," said the Moon Man, and the

Obstinate One felt a great desire to harpoon one of them.



"But you must not, you cannot," said the Moon Man, and promised him

a share of the catch he had just made himself. But the Obstinate One

would not be content with this; he took harpoons from the Moon Man's

store, and harpooned a walrus. Then he held it on the line--he was a

man of very great strength, that Obstinate One--and managed to kill

it. And in the same way he also dealt with another.



After his return from the Moon Man's place, he left off being

obstinate, and never again forced his wife to work while she was

in mourning.