The Inuits
The term Inuit is a broad term that encapsulates many culturally similar groups indigenous to parts of the Arctic, including parts of Greenland, Russia, and Canada. The Inuits, like many other cultures throughout the world, had a unique understanding of the stars and other celestial bodies that does not get shared much. The role of astronomy in any of these groups was mainly for time keeping, navigation, and most importantly, story telling. The stars themselves proved hard to see and map, as throughout much of the year, there were factors that prevented the Inuit people from doing this despite the long four and half month polar nights. The Moon would often be so bright that it would drown out the light of any other night sky object, and the snow would often be swept up and reflect the light from the Moon, creating a hazy and bright sky. Nevertheless, the importance of the stars and other celestial bodies should not be understated. The stories that were told because of them were used to teach very important lessons and pass on morals. Living in the Arctic demands that you live as carefully as possible, with little room for error, and these stories were a great way to show that. While the stories and mythologies are not shared across the all groups and cultures in the region, there exist many similarities due to a common cosmology.
Cosmology
Like many other early cosmologies, the Inuits placed the Earth at the center of the Universe, with Earth existing as a flat disk that had many other realms either above or below it, and with the celestial objects revolving around it. The Moon was thought of as a disk of ice and the Sun was thought of as a ball of fire. When the Sun would set for the long polar nights, the belief was that the snow had weighed it down so much, that it could not rise anymore. One of the most important realms was the sky itself. The sky and the Earth were thought to be linked, each having a similar snow covered landscape during the winter season. The sky and its many celestial objects were easily available to the shaman on what was called their spirit flights. Another one of these regions was what we now call the aurora borealis, where certain groups believed that those who died of blood loss would reside.
Stars and Planets
While the many Inuit groups across the region surely noted the movement of the planets across the sky, there was not any sort of common knowledge or understanding of the planets by the Inuit people. There is some evidence that Venus was a somewhat important marker for certain events, but this is mostly relegated to uncorroborated stories. After the introduction of Christianity, however, Venus became associated with Christmas and began to hold some importance. Before delving into the names of stars, it should be noted again that "Inuit" is a very broad term encompassing many different groups. While there certainly exist some similarities between the different groups, they are not all identical. The group in particular that the information about the stars come from is the Igloolik Inuits, which resides in northern Canada. This group recognized 33 different stars, 2 star clusters, and a nebula. 7 of the stars had names, with the rest being grouped up into about 17 different celestial objects. A table below shows the name of the objects, their meaning, and what we know them as today (MacDonald, 2015).
Stories
Story telling was perhaps the most important part the astronomy played for the early Inuits. The harsh, unforgiving nature of the Arctic meant that any sort of advice or way of living that increased one's chance of surviving was invaluable. Stories are a great way to pass down these morals and knowledge, and the night sky served as a great basis for many of these stories. Many stories for the Sun and Moon paint the Moon as a man and the Sun as a woman, with perhaps the most well known story being about a brother that endlessly chases is sister as she tries to escape his lustful desires. This story explains the phases of the Moon as the brother being so obsessed with his sister that he forgets to eat. Another story sees four hunters chasing a bear, until the bear starts climbing into the sky. One of the hunters drops his mitten and returns back to Earth, while the rest are still climbing after the bear. The three hunters are the the three stars in Orion's Belt.
The Inuits in Modern Astronomy
There are five moons of Saturn that were named after characters from Inuit stories and mythology. Their names are; Kiviuq, a legendary hero would wonder the Arctic, Ijiraq, a shapeshifter who would kidnap children and abandon them, Paaliaq, a fictional character from the book The Curse of the Shaman, Tarqeq, the spirit of the Earth's Moon in certain mythologies, and Siarnaq, a sea goddess responsible for all life. The dwarf planet Sedna is also named after this sea goddess.
“Ancestors of the Inuit.” Hurtigruten Expeditions, https://global.hurtigruten.com/destinations/northwest-passage/inspiration/ancestors-of-the-inuit/.
ASTROLab du parc national du Mont-Mégantic. “The Inuit Sky: Universe.” Canada under the Stars, https://astro-canada.ca/le_ciel_des_inuits-the_inuit_sky-eng.
MacDonald, J. (2015). Inuit Astronomy. In: Ruggles, C. (eds) Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6141-8_40
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