A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.

Overview

A man who wants an unusual wife takes a vixen home. After a hunt he finds a woman who has shed her fur; her former tail forms her topknot. At her request they travel to another settlement. There the husband exchanges wives with a man whose spouse is a hare. The second man disparages the vixen’s smell, and she angrily extinguishes the lamp with her tail and flees uphill.

Her original husband searches for her and finds her living with a worm in human form. Burn marks identify it as a creature he once burned, now returned through its soul. The worm challenges him to wrestle and loses, but the man nevertheless abandons the marriage. The story continues with his visit to harmless small shore-dwellers, among whom an eider wing is treated as a walrus flipper. The wife’s flight and his later hospitality are successive encounters, not evidence that fox women and those small people are one kind.

Fur shed to take human appearanceTail becomes topknotDeparture after an insult
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Origins & earliest records

The volume’s final source list assigns this narrative to West Greenland. Knud Rasmussen collected the material; W. Worster edited and translated the 1921 English selection. No individual storyteller is named here. Worster states that he selected and edited versions, including omissions; this is not an unabridged performance transcript.

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Records & interpretation

The complete The man who took a Vixen to wife narrative and its final source-list attribution were inspected. The episode begins on printed p. 79.

Selected bibliography

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

  1. 01

    Eskimo Folk-Tales

    Knud Rasmussen, collector; W. Worster, editor and English translator · 1921

    The man who took a Vixen to wife, begins printed p. 79. Complete narrative and source-list entry.

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 textRasmussen/Worster 1921: The man who took a Vixen to wifeResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.

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