In the 1950s, the famous Danish archaeologist Jørgen Meldgaard (1927-2007) made a mysterious discovery in northeastern Canada:
A small, headless bear figurine, carved from walrus tusk ivory, lying against the back wall of a stone fireplace in an old settlement. The bear had been deliberately positioned that made it look as though it was ‘diving’ into the fireplace.
As this was just one out of a long series of discoveries that Meldgaard made during his field trips to the Igloolik region of Arctic Canada and Greenland in the 1950s and 1960s, the significance was not understood until now.
Humans and animals were one
The walrus tusk figurine is only 3.4 cm in length and could be an important key to understanding how people more than 1,000 years ago understood the relationship between humans and bears.(Photo: The National Museum of Denmark)
The Danish National Museum recently gained access to Meldgaard’s surviving diaries, records and photos and during examination of the material this small bear figurine came to light and could be an important key to understanding how people viewed the relationship between animals and humans more than a millennium ago.
”The figurine provides us with information about some previously unknown 1,000-year-old rituals, which suggest that the Pre-Inuit, also known as the Dorset people, imagined that humans were related to certain animals in a way that’s very far from what we would imagine in today’s Western world,” says Ulla Odgaard, a senior researcher at the National Museum.
She adds, “Humans were not superior to animals; rather, it was a symbiotic co-existence. Bears and other animals functioned as mediators between mankind and the world of spirits.”
An intriguing trail into the spirit world
Further figurines were identified and their close association with what may be a gateway to the spirit world, the fireplace, was recognised. The question was raised, what does this mean about the beliefs of the now long vanished culture. The researchers from the museum were keen to explore this fascinating trail.
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More Information
- Jørgen Meldgaard (1927 -2007) pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic60-2-215.pdf
- Dorset culture
- Canadian Museum of Civilisation - Dorset Culture Bear figurines
