An Amarok, or Amaroq, is a gigantic

wolf The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, and gray wolves, as popularly u ...

in Inuit religion, said to stalk and devour any person foolish enough to hunt alone at night. Unlike wolves who hunt in packs, amaroks hunt alone. Writing in the 19th century, Danish geologist and

Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland is t ...

ic scholar

Hinrich Johannes Rink Dr. Hinrich Johannes Rink (first name sometimes as Henrik) (26 August 1819 – 15 December 1893) was a Danish geologist, one of the pioneers of glaciology, and the first accurate describer of the inland ice of Greenland. Rink, who first came to ...

reported that the Greenlandic Inuit reserve the word ''Amarok'' exclusively for this legendary wolf, whereas other

Arctic peoples Circumpolar peoples and Arctic peoples are umbrella terms for the various Indigenous peoples of the Arctic. Prehistory The earliest inhabitants of North America's central and eastern Arctic are referred to as the Arctic small tool tradition (AST) ...

use it to refer to any wolf.

''Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo''

In his book ''Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo'', da, Eskimoiske eventyr og sagn, oversatte efter de indfødte fortælleres opskrifter og meddelelser (1866) Rink recounts several folk legends that feature the Amarok. In one tale, a persecuted and physically stunted boy seeks to increase his strength. When he calls out to the lord of strength, an Amarok appears and wrestles him to the ground with its tail. This causes a number of small bones to fall from the boy's body. The Amarok tells the boy that the bones had prevented his growth; he instructs the boy to return daily in order to develop his strength. After several days of wrestling with the amarok, the boy is strong enough to overcome three large bears, thus gaining him the esteem of his village. In another story, a man mourning the death of a relative hears reports that an Amarok is nearby. He and a relative go in search of the Amarok. They find instead her pups, and the mourner kills them all. The mourner's relative becomes frightened. The two retreat to hide in a cave. Looking out, they see the adult Amarok returning to her pups, carrying a reindeer in her mouth. When the Amarok fails to find her offspring, she hastens to a nearby lake and drags a humanoid form from the water; at that moment, the mourner collapses. The Amarok, "from which nothing remains concealed", took the mourner's soul from his body. In some tales, a person captures or kills an amarok. The myth of the Amarok was most likely originated from the tale ancient

Inuit Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...

(

Eskimo Eskimo () is an exonym used to refer to two closely related Indigenous peoples: the Inuit (including the Alaska Native Iñupiat, the Greenlandic Inuit, and the Canadian Inuit) and the Yupik peoples, Yupik (or Siberian Yupik, Yuit) of eastern Si ...

s) told about

dire wolves The dire wolf (''Aenocyon dirus'' ) is an extinct canine. It is one of the most famous prehistoric carnivores in North America, along with its extinct competitor ''Smilodon''. The dire wolf lived in the Americas and eastern Asia during the L ...

References

{{Inuit religion Inuit legendary creatures Wolves in folklore, religion and mythology Mythological canines

''Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo''

See also

References