Sedna
- samguzzie
- Mar 17
- 4 min read
Translated and retold by Lawrence Millman
From “A Kayak Full of Ghosts”
In the time of our earliest forefathers, there lived a handsome young woman known far and wide for her long dark hair. When she bunched this hair in a top knot, it was almost the size of the rest of her body. An entire week she would spend combing it.
One day this woman was picking berries when a fulmar flying overhead happened to see her. He immediately who swooped down and said, “Marry me, my dear.” The woman laughed and said seabirds weren’t much to her taste.
Then the fulmar went away and changed himself into a man. He put on a garment of the richest sealskin, a colorful tunic and some spectacles made from walrus tusks. Now he came back and appeared at the woman’s door. Once again, he put the question to her. “Well, you’re a fine piece of man,” she said, and left with him despite her parents’ objections.
Now, the woman lived with the fulmar in a little rock hut at the end of the sea, and she was fond of blubber. Each day the fulmar would bring her a fresh seal. And she was fond of singing. He would sing to her while they made love. And so, they had a happy marriage. But one day the fulmar’s spectacles fell off and the woman saw his eyes. She said, “You’re just an ugly fellow like the others.”
All this time her parents had been paddling around in search of her. At every cove and headlands, they called out “Daughter, daughter, where have you gone?” They searched the shore all the way to the inland ice. At last, they arrived at the little rock hut at the end of the sea. They beseeched her to return with them. She agreed to go because she said, “I can’t stand my husband and his eyes anymore.”
Now, the fulmar was searching for the woman himself. First he couldn’t find her. But then he put on his walrus tusk spectacles and saw the little boat in the sea below. Whereupon he flapped his wings wildly, more and more, and a terrible storm rushed over the water. Wind swept down the mountains. The boat looked as if it might capsize. The woman’s parents said, “You brought this on, you brought on this storm. If you don’t get out, we’ll drown. Out, out with you.”
She protested that the storm was her husband’s fault. It did no good. Her parents tossed her overboard, but she got hold of the gunwale and clung to it. Her father took out his knife and cut off a few of her fingers. Still, she clung there, he cut off a few more. Still, she clung and then he chopped off both her hands. She tried to hold on with her stumps, but she had no grip and as a result, she slipped away beneath the waves. Immediately the water subsided and her parents were able to paddle home, relieved that they’ve survived even if it meant the sacrifice of their daughter.
The woman sank to the bottom of the sea and became Sedna, Mother of the Sea. Her chopped off fingers came back to her as fish, whales, seals and walruses, all making their homes in her hair. But she couldn’t comb this hair as she’d been able to before. Try as she might, she couldn’t as she didn’t have any hands. All she could do was sit there at the sea bottom, legs drawn up to her chest and watch her hair get more and more filthy with each passing day. Thus, it is that the angakok, the shamans, must swim down to the depths and comb Sedna’s hair for her. In exchange, she offers humankind all the creatures of the sea. The bounty in her long spreading hair is endless.
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Indigenous to the Arctic circle, Sedna is known in Inuit culture as The Mother or Mistress of the Sea. This watery creation goddess is often depicted as half woman, half sea creature, similar to a mermaid. Her myths come with a warning to hunt and fish responsibly and keep clean her oceans, or risk her creatures remaining unreachable in the depths of Adlivun.
Sedna came to rule over Adlivun, the Inuit underworld equivelent which translates to “those who live beneath us.” A land below the sea where souls go first after death to be purified for about a year, before moving on to the Land of the Moon, a peaceful, and usually frozen, final resting place of the deceased.
Sedna’s creation myths change slightly depending on the region, the themes that always carry through are that of grief and betrayal. Loosing all her fingers, some say both her hands, always for circumstances outside of her control, Sedna’s sacrifice of blood became the first animals so critical to Inuit survival through harsh climate and dramatic periods of light and darkness.
Sedna controls the accessibility of her creatures, giving and taking away depending on the health of the sea. Her myths are rooted in the harsh way of life in the Arctic circle, reflecting an unforgiving environment and the sacrifices necessary for survival. It is said that Shaman’s visit Sedna at the bottom of the sea to clean and comb her hair in reverence, to remain in harmony with her resources.
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