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Overview

Boas expressly attributes his principal Sedna account to the Oqomiut and Akudnirmiut. His geographical chapters place the former around Cumberland Sound and the latter farther north along the Davis Strait coast, including the Home Bay region. Sedna initially lives with her widowed father and refuses human suitors. A fulmar promises comfort and abundant food, but carries her to a leaking fishskin dwelling, hard walrus-hide bedding and a fish diet. When her father visits after a year, he kills the husband and takes her away. Other fulmars pursue their boat and raise a storm.

The father throws Sedna overboard to appease the birds. As she grips the boat, he cuts off successive parts of her fingers: the first joints become whales, their nails whalebone; later joints and stumps become different seals. The birds believe her drowned and the storm ends. Crucially, in this version she climbs back aboard. Ashore she takes revenge by having her dogs gnaw her sleeping father’s hands and feet. His curse brings the household, daughter and dogs beneath the earth, where Sedna becomes mistress of Adlivun.

Boas separately summarizes an old song with a different ending. A brother accompanies the father, the fulmar husband survives to pursue them, and the father kills Sedna by piercing an eye after cutting off her fingers. He takes her corpse ashore and covers it with a dogskin before the tide reaches it. Boas associates the great, one-eyed, scarcely mobile figure described by angakut with this second form. These endings are alternatives, not consecutive events.

In the surrounding account, Sedna shares her below-ground dwelling with her crippled father and a dog that guards the entrance. Souls assigned to her country must endure a stay there before some pass onward. These details belong to Boas’s particular regional synthesis. Rasmussen’s Smith Sound Nerrivik is a related sea-woman tradition with a different narrative and name; neither profile treats the two as interchangeable aliases.

Fulmar marriage and rescueSevered fingers become sea mammalsContrasting descent and death endingsMistress of Adlivun
01

Origins & earliest records

Franz Boas published this account in The Central Eskimo (1888), based on his Canadian Arctic fieldwork and expressly attributed earlier reports. No individual narrator is named for this selected story.

02

Records & interpretation

Sedna and the Fulmar, pp.583 onward, including the complete principal narrative, separate old-song variant and Adlivun discussion; regional geography pp.424 and 440–442.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

  1. 01

    The Central Eskimo

    Franz Boas, collector · 1888

    Sedna and the Fulmar, pp.583 onward, including the complete principal narrative, separate old-song variant and Adlivun discussion; regional geography pp.424 and 440–442.

Family & connections

A source-supported family tree or inspiration record has not yet been compiled for this profile. Related reading below indicates a connection in subject matter, not a proven lineage or creative influence.

References

Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.

  1. Primary textBoas 1888: Sedna and the Fulmar, pp.583 onward, including the complete principal narrative, separate old-song variant and Adlivun discussion; regional geography pp.424 and 440–442.Research access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

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