Inuit crafts, sold by Ultima Thule
Tupilak:
The tupilak is man made creature.Its mission is to find and kill a specific,personal enemy.
The maker of the Tupilak found prts of various animals,which he assembled into a tupilak.Bones teeth,skin,beaks,claws,sculls and the like.Also turf was used in the creation .But most important was some bit from the intended victim .Hairs or shavings from nails were the easiest item to get hold of.These bits of personal tissue made it easier for the tupilak to track down the victim.When the tupilak was physically finished it was given life.By rubbing the tupilak against his or her genitals the maker made it come to alive.Thereupon it was put into either a river or into the sea to track down and kill the victim.
The tupilak was a sure killer.For the maker of the tupilak there was one risk,though.If the victim was stronger in magical power than the maker,he would reverse the tupilak,which would then inevitably return to kill its maker.Thus the tupilak would have completed its mission-to kill.
In 1884 the Danish colonizers reached Ammassalik and established contact with the Eastgreenlanders.In order to visualize the tupilak one of the informers carved a figure showing one of the possibillities in the creating of this conglomerate being.This effegie was not a tupilak in the original sense,but it became the basis for Greenlandic souvenir carvingduring the last century.Soon the TUPILAK name spread from these first illustrative crvings nd came to encompass the whole group of fantasy figurines.Today one might even refer to the entire handicraft industri as TUPILAK industri.
