ARCTIC STORIES
(excerpts from posts)
(If you want to retell any of the stories listed below, be sure to obtain permission from the copyright holder if the material is not in the public domain)

1) That story is A Whale of A Tale found in Twenty Tellable Tales by Margaret Read MacDonald. A really fun one for that age group (children ages 7-10).

2) The Boy Who Became a Caribou in Annette Harrisons' Easy to Tell Stories for Young Children.

3) Tikta'liktak: An Eskimo Legend.

4) The Dancing Fox: Arctic Folktales BR 11387, edited by John Bierhorst. 1 volume. A collection of 18 folktales from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. In these ancient tales, animals can take human form and magic often plays a role. The stories highlight Inuit traditions and express the human experiences of death, hunger, sadness, and joy. For grades 4-7 and older readers. 1997. Probably not for the young ones but 10 year olds love to be scared.

5) A Kayak Full of Ghosts: Eskimo Tales by Lawrence Millman.
"The first comprehensive collection of Eskimo folktales in over 50 years.......not for queasy readers [it] deals with strange and even gruesome events in the barren Artic......children who eat their parents....men who marry rocks....old people who wed insects....." Oh yes, there is also the story of a kayak full of ghosts.

6) The Eskimo Storyteller by Edwin S. Hall, Jr.
"With its voluminous and methodically organized collection of tales and its delightful line drawings by Claire Fejes--serves as a valuable document of a culture and lifestyle that was rapidly changing even at the time of the book's first publication."

7) Inuit Culture and Legends
http://teacher.scholastic.com/researchtools/articlearchives/arctic/culture.htm

8) INUIT LEGENDS
http://www.hvgb.net/~themdays/inuitlegends.html
The First Tear

9) American Folklore: Alaska State Folktale
http://www.americanfolklore.net/folktales/ak.html

10) Interesting sit with background information and a bit of legend.
Legends from Greenland
http://www.mashantucket.com/update/crosspaths.html#pomo1

11) ABoriginArt Inc. - Biography Index: People, Places and Things
http://www.inuitarteskimoart.com/store/catalog/

12) Inuit Legend
It is said that Raven made the world. He is a man with a raven's beak. When the waters forced the ground up from the deep, Raven stabbed it with his beak and fixed it into place. This first land was just big enough for the house that was on it. There were three people in the house. This was a family with a man, his wife and their little son Raven who had fixed the land. The father had a bladder hanging over his bed. After much pleading by Raven, the father allowed the boy to play with it. While playing Raven damaged the bladder and light appeared. The father, not wanting to have light always shining, took the bladder from the boy before he could damage it further. And that is how day and night started over the land.

13) Legends from Greenland
http://www.pequotmuseum.org/Home/CrossPaths/CrossPathsSpring2002/LegendsfromGreenland.htm

12) There's Sedna : an Eskimo myth / adapted and illustrated by Beverly Brodsky McDermott.
Author : Brodsky, Beverly.
Publisher : New York : Viking Press, 1975.
Sedna, mother of all sea animals, tells the story of her life and helps the starving Inuit.

13) Storm Boy / written and illustrated by Paul Owen Lewis.
Author : Lewis, Paul Owen.
Publisher : Hillsboro, Ore. : Beyond Words Pub., c1995.
A story drawn from Haida Indian literary tradition in which a boy falls from his canoe into a world of 18-foot tall humanlike creatures who welcome him and eventually return him to his village.

14) The Girl Who Dreamed Only Geese and Other Tales of the Far North by Howard Norman. Harcourt Brace, 1997. Stories with puffins, narwhales, walrus, and wooly mammoths.

(This web page updated 12/28/05)