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measured 28 feet in length and 5 feet in breadth, being
divided by low curtains into 8 stalls, the size being proportioned
to the number of persons in each family. The whole room
including the stalls was 28 feet long and 15 feet broad, the
greatest height being 6½ feet. The reader may imagine what
had to be performed in this room offering the only refuge to
38 persons during the darkness of the Arctic winter, sleeping,
cooking and eating, working as well as merry making, dancing
and singing! And yet no quarrel disturbs the peace, there is
no dispute about the use of the narrow space. Scolding or
even unkind words are considered a misdemeanour, if not
produced under the legal form of process, — namely the nith-song.
It is obvious that this order and domestic peace supposes
two conditions: in the first place TRADITIONAL RULES OR LAWS,
and secondly LEADERS WHO KNOW TO ENFORCE THESE
REGULATIONS. In contrast to what has been most generally assumed,
we learn by the statement of our explorers that every house or
station has its chief or patriarch whom the others obey with
every mark of veneration. Very likely his orders on account
of their gentle form may have been generally hardly observable
to strangers, but on certain occasions, f. i. when the moving
from tents into the house took place he acted as a commander
very much after the habits of civilised society. Furthermore a
case of severe punishment was witnessed when a young man
was turned out of the house in the middle of winter. It is
evident that between being suddenly abandoned in this way
without shelter in the depth of an Arctic winter and the
disagreeableness of being shamed by a song in an assembly, several
degrees of punishment may be imagined sufficient to deter
malicious individuals from ordinary offences or disturbances of
order and peace. It must be added, that the position as chief
of the house has no relation to that of «angakok» though both
dignities may occasionally be united.
Throughout DANISH WESTGREENLAND the ancient organisation
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