Historically, Inuit art comprised small amulets carved from bone or ivory or derived from other natural substances. However, the Inuit apparently also carved stones as pastime and children’s toys, but this seems to have been a well-kept, though unintentional, secret to most of the world. The artist James Houston discovered these treasures when he visited the Arctic in 1949 and organized a major exhibit of Inuit art in Montreal.

Imagine – one man, one exhibition, and the new field of commercial Inuit art launched! But that’s what happened. The pieces essentially sold out in a few days – a few thousand stone and caribou antler and walrus ivory sculptures carved by Inuit no one ever heard of found new homes in foreign lands in the blink of an eye. Inuit art was on the map, the art world enlarged. Houston returned to the Arctic where he lived for a number of years, developing the field of Inuit art, cultivating an artistic garden he discovered.

Many Inuit sculptures depict animals and lifestyle in the Arctic, which are easy subjects to comprehend within our experience. We are familiar with polar bears, seals, caribou, birds and other species, as well as with common activities, such as hunting, wrestling, giving birth, family life and the like. However, myths that are foreign to our experience also provide a major focus of Inuit art.

The most widespread Inuit myth is that of the Sedna or mermaid (part woman, part fish), who was Goddess of the Sea. In an earlier blog I sketched the essence of one of many versions of the Sedna myth (Jellyfish in Art), in which an unhappily married young woman living on an island with her dog-husband is rescued by her father. When her husband discovers that she is missing, he transforms into a bird, finds her escaping in her father’s kayak and flaps his wings creating waves to capsize the boat. Her father tosses her overboard and chops off her fingers as she clings to the side for dear life. I know, horrible! But here’s the remarkable part: the parts of her fingers and hands become the mammals of the sea. She sinks to the bottom, grows a fish tail, and becomes the powerful Sedna, the ruler of marine life and the provider of food and natural products extracted from sea mammals.

Neither the Sedna legend or other Inuit folklores are limited to single versions, possibly due to the fact, in part, that they are passed down by oral tradition through the generations and in part that they are perpetuated in different areas of the Arctic. In a slight variation of the Sedna myth, the young girl rejects potential husbands found for her by her father and marries a dog. Infuriated, her father throws her into the sea from his kayak and cuts off her fingers when she tries to climb back on the boat; the rest is as above.

In a different variation, when the maiden rejects all marriage proposals, a hunter appears, and her father agrees to trade his daughter for fish. He sedates her with a sleeping potion and gives her to the hunter, who takes her to his nest on a cliff, since he is a bird-spirit. Her father rescues his daughter in his kayak. Her angry bird-spirit husband creates a storm, her father throws her into the sea, and she hangs on the kayak. Her fingers freeze, fall off and become the sea creatures; she sinks and becomes the Sedna. In this version, there is no dog involved.

In still another version, a girl grows bigger than her giant parents. When she needs more food than is available, her parents bundle her in a blanket, take her out to sea in their kayak and dump her. The sea mammals and fish come from parts of her huge hands that are sliced off when she grasps the canoe. She falls to the sea bottom, becomes the Sedna and lives in a hut made by fish.

The Sedna’s father doesn’t give her away in other versions. In one theme, she is kidnapped by a bird creature, who imprisons her in a floating ice-island. However, once again, her father rescues her in his kayak and throws her overboard to appease the angry god. He chops off her fingers and so forth.

There’s even a version where the girl is a mistreated orphan and thrown into the sea after her fingertips are cut in order to drown her. The fingertips transform into seals and walruses, she marries a sculpin and lives in the sea as the Sedna controlling all the sea mammals.

Although the versions of the legend differ in detail, Sedna is always the source and ruler of marine life, and she is always worshipped by hunters and fishermen, who depend on her to supply food. She is the great provider, the mythological God. When seals and marine animals are scarce – a cause of impoverishment – Sedna is angry and marine life is entangled in hair. In prosperous times, her hair is flowing.

The Sedna myth has inspired Inuit artists, who have perpetuated and glorified her with innumerable sculptures based on her origin and role as provider. Any collection of Inuit art has works connected with the Sedna.

I present here a few Sedna sculptures from my collection.