Reading Notes: Eskimo Folk-Tales, Part A

(Polar Bear from Creative Commons)

Hi guys!

Okay so today I read some stories from the Eskimo Folk-Tales Part A. Of course I loved the story about the cute polar bear. This should be no shock by now......

On a real note, this story is so cute. There isn't a huge underlying meaning other than to appreciate what you have before it is gone. Something I noticed with all of the stories in this unit is that they all had a pretty blunt ending. There wasn't always a good sum up or a overarching meaning. Most of these stories are just stories to be told not teach.

The Woman Who Had a Bear as a Foster Son. 

• An old woman is given a bear cub (polar bear) from a bear hunter who gave her meat
• The woman defrost the cub
• The cub learns her language and she raises it
• The cub plays with the kids, then the adults, and then just the men
• When it is too big, the bear goes hunting with the men and help kill seals
• One day it kills a random man to protect itself like the old woman told it to do
• The old woman told the bear it had to leave her to protect itself from people coming to kill it
• She waited until there was a day without a cloud in the sky to send the bear off. 

So this story reminded me of this movie I used to watch a kid at my family's house in Colorado. My favorite part is that the bear would sniffle when it was hungry. It was repeated throughout the story and added a heart warming touch to it. I would love to retell this story so here are some story ideas:

• Tell the story from the Bear's point of view
• Change the bear to a wolf and modernize it
• Tell the story from a bear hunters point of view
• Retell the story how it is
• Retell it in a diary format over many years
• Year/ Day 1: getting the cub
• Year 2 entry: cub is playing too rough
• Year 3 entry: cub's first day hunting
• Year 4: cub attacks man 
• Year 5: saying goodbye

Here are some sources 

• Polar Bears 
• Time line of polar bears 

Bibliography:

Eskimo Folk-Tales, Part A: The Woman Who Had a Bear as a Foster Son by Knud Rasmussen. Retrieved from Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook