Greenland is home to some of the world’s oldest storytelling traditions, dating back over 4000 years. Greenlandic Inuit culture is steeped in terrifying stories of monsters, myths and legends – each offering valuable life lessons about respecting nature and each other.
I remember the first time I learned about one of Greenland‘s monsters – the Qivittoq, a wandering spirit and mountain walker. I was listening to a friendly Greenlander sharing myths from her home country as we sat at Copenhagen Airport. Lykke, who is half Danish, half Greenlandic Inuit, told me about the terrifying creature as we waited to board a plane towards said monster. She wasn’t to know that I have an irrational fear of zombies.
I was terrified.
So, coming across Maria Bach Kreutzmann’s work years later as a bonafide ‘monster hunter’, I was intrigued. Who would want to go searching for these mythical creatures through historical documents, archives, and, more importantly, in person?
‘The reason I call myself a monster hunter is because it’s an easy way to explain to people what I do,’ Maria laughs when I ask her. ‘I use that title when I give talks in schools. When I tell kids I disseminate culture, they don’t understand what that means. But when I tell them I hunt and find the monsters from our stories like Newt Scamander in the Harry Potter universe, they get it.’
As a writer who deep-dives into culture through traditions and lifestyle, I’ve always been fascinated by Greenlandic Inuit storytelling, such as the art of Uaajeerneq – mask dancing – which dates back 4000 years. Passing on stories of resilience and survival through generations via verbal storytelling often requires giving those lessons a visual form so they are easy to remember.
‘Because our history hasn’t been historically written down and we still pass a lot of stories down orally, I collect stories and talk about mythology in visual ways,’ Maria says. ‘People often come up to me to tell me stories and myths they grew up with, and my job as a monster hunter is to collect these stories, document them, and recount them to others.’
Falling for monsters
Born to an Indigenous Inuk father and Danish mother, Maria grew up in Nuuk, where her grandfather co-founded Greenland’s National Museum in the 1960s. And this curiosity and calling to share cultural knowledge seems to run in the family.
When she was little, she was fascinated by monsters, creatures and mythology depicted in the movies she watched. Maria went on to become a trained animator with a background in computer graphics and 3D illustrations, and a self-proclaimed professional nerd. ‘After living in London for several years and finally falling homesick, I moved back home to shift my focus back onto the mythology of my own people,’ Maria shares.
In 2017, she founded Glaciem House, which is derived from the Latin word for ice. ‘I call it a house of icy curiosities because I do a variety of things,’ she adds. ‘I share Greenland’s culture and history. A subset of that culture is the monstrous mythology.’
Personifying nature
The stories Maria collects emerged out of the need to survive in a really harsh environment. ‘Monsters and creatures were used to explain certain things that could happen to you when you’re out in nature,’ Maria explains. This meant Greenlandic Inuit passed down tales of survival by personifying nature. With such a deep symbolic relationship between nature and people in indigenous culture, the environment wasn’t seen as separate.
‘Nature becomes its own entity, its own person, in our stories. The Arctic is one of the harshest environments in which to survive due to snow and ice. We invented stories to teach us how to survive by turning nature into its own entity that we must interact with.’
Encountering legends
The most iconic is Sassuma Arnaa – Mother of the Sea. Legend says her father cut off her fingers and threw her into the ocean. Her digits became sea creatures such as whales, seals and walruses, and her hair became the waves. While recently in Qaqortoq, a local fisherman told me the reason he couldn’t catch enough lumpfish that season was because Sassuma Arnaa was angry. When people throw trash into the ocean, it gets tangled in her hair, and she gets irate.
When Maria shares this symbolism with school kids, she explains that it’s important to keep the sea clean because we rely on the marine animals that live in Sassuma Arnaa’s hair to survive, and if we pollute the ocean she won’t release them to humans.
‘In the past, if you broke traditional taboo rules, she would be the punisher of your people,’ adds Maria. ‘Over time, she has shifted from being this really scary woman into being a representative of how we treat mother nature. So, when we talk about global warming and ocean pollution, we talk about her. Global warming has a huge impact not only on our cultural way of life but also on our economy, which relies on the fishing industry.’
There’s also the story of the Amarok, a giant magical wolf that stalks and devours people at night. Arctic wolves reside mainly in northeast and eastern Greenland. A confused wolf in search of food might, on occasion, wander to Western Greenland, where people rarely encounter wolves. Once sighted, it instantly gets labelled a mythical creature. ‘Even though we have the Greenlandic sled dog, which is larger than Siberian huskies, an Arctic wolf is even bigger.’
These mythological stories are still tied to everyday living in Greenland and have evolved to emphasise the importance of protecting nature for the sake of both people and wildlife.
Fearsome fables
If there’s one monster that regularly appears in Greenlandic pop culture and movies, it’s the mountain walker-wandering spirit that I was introduced to at the airport: the Qivittoq. These are people who have left their communities in shame, anger or grief, to go and wander and survive in the harsh wilderness all alone – an almost impossible task in Greenland.
Over time, they have been elevated into this terrifying, ghostly creature. Because they survive by still being close to the community without being seen, they’ve become an urban legend of sorts.
”The mountain walker still scares me,’ Maria confesses. ‘I’m very superstitious, and I’ve been told stories by people who have had run-ins with the Qivittoq… seeing them climbing up the cliffs and jumping from mountain top to mountain top.’
Other frightening creatures include the Erlaveersiniooq – The Gut Eater – who appears to hikers out in the wild and invites them into her hut for respite. She tries to make them laugh, and if they smile back, she slices open their stomachs, which is a lesson in trusting random strangers.
The Ikusik is a limbless zombie-like corpse that hides in dark spaces and lives out in the fjords. It crawls on its elbows at speeds fast enough to catch a running human and eat them alive. ‘We draw parallels on how you would scare kids and teach them not to run away or wander away from the family because a monster could get them – the environment being hostile,’ Maria says. ‘I remember as a child, I thought the Ikusik was the scariest thing in the world.’
Today, urban legend says there’s an Ikusik that lives in a tunnel under Nuuk, one that lives close to an old church in an abandoned settlement, and another that lives right under the harbour in Qasigiannguit and snatches people who get too close to the edge.
The moral of these stories?
To survive in life, you must be aware of your surroundings, tread carefully and above all, respect nature.
Meet Maria and go hunting for monsters on the new Greenland Expedition, where she’ll teach you about the country’s deep storytelling traditions. Find out what else is new for 2025 with The Goods.
