• The Sunday Sermon: Sedna

    19Apr
    Categories: The Sunday Sermon

    This week’s Sunday Sermon comes from my own country. Although Canada is not particularly well known for it’s mythology, there have been people living here for at least 12,000 years. The indigenous cultures found here have been orally based  - they told stories but they did not write them down. So a lot of interesting stuff has surely been lost through time. However, there are groups out there that still live in fairly traditional ways and still tell the stories that have been passed down through generations. Whether these stories are accurate representations of similar tales told over the past few thousands of years….I don’t know. Being of a literate culture, it’s hard to imagine how an oral culture works. I watch how a rumour spreads and changes or how memes spread across the Internet and wonder if anything is ever static. But then again, I see how much of our own language, our own stories, are based off the Greeks and Romans from a couple of thousand years ago and the continutity is also fascinating. So, stories are powerful and some are bound to get passed on.

    This story is one that is still told today by the Inuit of the Arctic. Inuit stories are often simply told, with little elaboration, yet they are powerful in concept and are often full of meaning. The stories explain where things come from - the seals, the wind, the dirt or the Earth. The stories explain what happened in the past and what people should do in the present.

    There are many different versions to this particular myth. The names change, the specific details vary quite a bit but the essense of the story stays the same. The myth of Sedna is fairly central within the Inuit belief system, appearing in various different forms across many regions and cultural groups. Sedna has many different names - Nuliajuk (the poor wife), Niviarsiang (the girl), Kavna (she down there), Takanakapsaluk (the terrible one down there) and many others. She personified both the tragedies of life as well as the mysteries of creation. She controlled the sea creatures - and that meant that the people depended on her for survival. She was a powerful spirit. You don’t mess with Sedna.

    Here is one version of her tale. My refrence source is the book “The Inuit Imagination: Arctic Myth and Sculpture” by Harold Seidelman and James Turner.

    Just so you know, a fulmer is a large white bird that hangs out on clifts a lot.

    Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Sedna, who lived with her dad on a quiet shore. Her mom had been dead for ages so it was just the two of them, but they were happy together. Sedna grew up to be quite pretty and was rather proud of it. Soon enough, the local boys were flocking to her, begging for her hand in marriage.

    She looked at them all, smirked, and said “Nah.”

    One spring, just as the ice began to break up, a fulmer came to visit her. He started to sing and his song was beautiful. Sedna couldn’t help but be entranced by him.

    “Come with me!” The fulmer sang. “My place, the land of the birds, is freaking awesome. No one is ever hungry and my house is totally sweet, you’ll love it! You can sleep on soft bearskins! Seriously! My buddies, the other fulmers, will bring you anything you could ever want – you will have plenty of beautiful clothing, oil in your lamp and all the meat you could possibly eat.”

    Sedna was rather impressed by this offer. So she agreed to marry him and set off to join her new husband in the land of the fulmers.

    Shockingly, when they finally arrived at his place, it was not quite as glorious as she had been told. The house was made out of fish skins and was falling apart.  There were holes everywhere, the rain and snow just poured in unabated.  Instead of an awesome bearskin for a bed, Sedna had to sleep on hard crunchy walrus hides and she had to live off rotten fish. Sedna was not happy.

    Sedna was angry at the fulmer for lying to her and was feeling annoyed at herself for being such a sucker. With tears in her eyes, she suddenly sang out “Daddy! Come save me! This place totally sucks!”

    He didn’t hear her. Sedna sulked and grumpily ate some fish.

    A year passed. Sedna was still eating fish. But the weather was getting warmer and her father decided to come and visit his daughter. Sedna launched herself at him, so happy to see him, and pleaded for rescue. She told her father all about the drafty house and the crappy fish and her father was outraged. No one messes with his little girl!

    So, Dad promptly killed the fulmer, grabbed the girl and they took off in his boat. Soon after that, the fulmer’s buddies came home and found their friend dead on the ground. Sad, angry and wanting revenge, they took off after the boat. The massive beating of their wings created an enormous storm beneath them. The waves in the sea were staggeringly high and threatened to overturn the boat at any moment. This scared Sedna’s dad. He didn’t want to die. So he did the only thing he could think of.

    He tossed Sedna overboard.

    Sedna was pretty quick though. She just managed to grab the side of the boat and hung on for her life. Her dad, having already decided on his course of action, grabbed his knife. He chopped off the first joints of her fingers. As soon as the severed fingers hit the water, they transformed into whales, the nails turning into whalebones. Still, Sedna managed to hold on.

    Gritting his teeth, good old Dad chopped at her fingers again, this time severing the second joints. These swam away as seals. Still, Sedna hung on.

    Getting rather annoyed at how long this was taking, Sedna’s father thrust down his knife one more time and chopped off the stumps of her fingers, which became ground seals.

    Meanwhile, the storm subsided because the flock of angry fulmers thought that Sedna was drowned and left to go mourn their old buddy. Dad finally noticed this and graciously allowed Sedna back into the boat.

    However, Sedna was somewhat pissed off at him at this point. She glared at him and plotted bitter revenge.  Soon after they got ashore, she called out to her dogs and sent them to attack her dad. They gnawed off his feet and hands as he slept. When he woke up, he was naturally annoyed at this and cursed the whole mess of the situation and everyone involved – himself, his daughter and the dogs.

    Suddenly, the earth opened up and swallowed them all. Since then, they have lived at the bottom of the sea, where Sedna rules over all sea creatures.

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