In Inuit mythology

Inuit mythology

Inuit mythology has many similarities to the religions of other polar regions. Inuit traditional religious practices could be very briefly summarised as a form of shamanism based on animist principles....

, Nerrivik was the sea-mother and provider of food for the Inuit people. She was the patron of fish

Fish

Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...

erman and hunters. In Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, she was known as either Sedna or Arnapkapfaaluk

Arnapkapfaaluk

Arnapkapfaaluk was the sea goddess of the Inuit people of Canada's Coronation Gulf area. Although occupying the equivalent position to Sedna within Inuit mythology, in that she had control of the animals of the seas, she was noticeably different as can be seen by the English translation of her...

 and in Greenland

Greenland

Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...

, she was Arnakuagsak

Arnakuagsak

In Inuit mythology, Arnakuagsak was an Inuit goddess, one of the primary deities of the religion, who was responsible for ensuring the hunters were able to catch enough food and that the people remained healthy and strong...

.

Myth

Nerrivik married the storm-god, who afterwards produced a storm at sea while her male relatives were ferrying her back to their homeland secretly when her husband had been absent hunting. Her relatives having cast her overboard in order to calm the storm, her grandfather cut off the hand with which she continued to grasp the boat; therefore she is now, one-handed, at the bottom of the sea. (Rasmussen, 1921, p. 113) [This myth is from the Polar Eskimo

Inughuit

The Inughuit or Polar Eskimos are the northernmost group of Inuit, and the world's northernmost people. They were first contacted by European peoples by the expedition led by Sir John Ross in 1818; Ross dubbed them "Arctic Highlanders"...

, of Smith Sound (in northern Greenland).]