Nanook: Polar Bear Lord and Shamanic Helper of the Inuit Tradition

Nanook is not an abstract god but the religious constellation that gathers around the polar bear.

In the study of religion, this doubling of animal and spirit is typical of Arctic subsistence societies: the animal is at once prey, adversary, relative and a person endowed with its own dignity. This constellation resists a Western subject-object dichotomy and is phenomenologically distinct in religious terms.

In the central Arctic Inuit tradition, Nanook occupies a prominent position among the animals. The hunt for the polar bear is dangerous, the meat nourishing, the pelt prestigious.

From this economic significance the religious charge arises. Whoever kills a polar bear has not merely taken prey but has received a being that has handed over its power as a gift.

The polar bear is moreover the principal candidate for the form of helping spirits, especially of Tornarssuk.

This interweaving of real animal and shamanic helping spirit is a central element of Inuit religion and distinguishes it from religions that strictly separate animals and spirits. The permeability between the spheres is constitutive in terms of the phenomenology of religion.

The religious constellation around the polar bear has been reworked in more recent research through expanded methodological approaches that combine ethnographic precision, linguistic source criticism and a comparative perspective.

With Nanook in particular, whose image in the West is heavily overlaid by reception in popular culture, the Inuit community of knowledge that now takes part in the research corrects older, partly colonially shaped attributions.

In the Inuktitut of the central Arctic the form is Nanuq. In West Greenland Nanoq, in the Inupiat-language tradition of Alaska Nanuk, in the East Greenlandic Tunumiit tradition Nannut. This variation is linguistically to be expected and not decisive for the study of religion, but it should be kept in mind when using the sources.

The English-language form Nanook became the international standard form in the 20th century through Robert Flaherty’s film Nanook of the North (1922).

In the study of religion, this form is an external reception that is not directly connected with the religious content but represents a standardization in popular culture, the effect of which on the image of Inuit culture was considerable.

Etymologically Nanuq is related to the Proto-Inuit stem for bear. The specialization toward polar bear as opposed to brown bear is Arctic in origin, since brown bears are rare outside the subarctic forests.

This ecological conditioning of the formation of the term is, in the phenomenology of religion, a distinct phenomenon and reflects the close interweaving of language and ecology.

In addition, there is the question, in the sociology of religion, of Nanook’s function within the social order of the traditional Inuit community.

Since the dangerous and at the same time prestigious polar bear hunt was religiously charged, he serves well to show that the religious structure was not separated from social practice but closely interwoven with it. This interweaving is a research field of its own in the anthropology of religion and was systematically studied above all by Frederic Laugrand and Jarich Oosten.

In his religious form Nanook is at once animal and person. Shamans report that polar bears appear in trance as humans who lay aside their pelts like a garment.

This notion of transformation between human and animal is a central motif of Arctic religion, varied in numerous narratives, and a distinct phenomenon in the phenomenology of religion.

In the iconography of contemporary Inuit art, Nanook is one of the most frequent animal figures. Stone carvings from Cape Dorset, Pangnirtung and Iqaluit usually show him in a quiet, powerful posture.

The religious significance of these depictions is weighted differently today; often it is a marker of cultural identity, sometimes a deliberate reference to religious history.

Symbolically Nanook is associated with strength, patience and the dangerous beauty of the Arctic world. In the study of religion this is not a modern romanticization but corresponds to the traditional statements of Inuit shamans about the dignity of the polar bear.

This dignity is not aesthetic but theologically grounded and manifests itself in the taboo practices of the hunt and the treatment of the prey.

In comparative study of religion, Nanook is understood as part of the circumpolar religious topography, which repeats over thousands of kilometers in a remarkably stable structure. This far-reaching constancy is among the most striking findings in the phenomenology of religion and remains the subject of ongoing scholarly discussion to this day.

The hunt for the polar bear was surrounded by numerous taboos. After a successful kill the bear was not simply treated as prey but received as a guest.

The soul of the bear, its tatkoq or tarniq, had to be appeased through the correct treatment of the body so that it would later return voluntarily as prey.

Concrete practices consisted of offering fresh water to the dead bear, laying its skull at a particular place, hanging its pelt in a reverent position and observing a period of mourning during which the hunters avoided certain foods.

These practices are referred to in research as bear burial or bear ceremonialism and resemble structurally the practices among other subarctic and Arctic peoples, such as the Ainu and some Siberian groups.

In the study of religion, the bear ceremonial is a central piece of evidence for reciprocity in Inuit religion. The prey is not the property of the hunter but a gift that must be reciprocated with an appropriate response so that the hunt continues to work.

This reciprocity theology is a distinct phenomenon in the phenomenology of religion and differs fundamentally from market-economy concepts of resources.

Polar bears were among the most frequent forms in which shamans experienced their helping spirits. Tornarssuk, the supreme helping spirit, is expressly described in several sources in polar bear form. The connection of animal and spirit power is therefore not accidental but structural and, in the phenomenology of religion, constitutive of Inuit religion.

Shamans who specialized in particular tasks often received a polar bear spirit as a helper.

Daniel Merkur, in Becoming Half Hidden, documented several calling biographies in which a polar bear appears to the future Angakkuq, leads him into the trance state and transfers his power to him. This calling sequence is a typical pattern of Inuit shamanism.

In rituals shamans could transform symbolically into polar bears by moving on all fours, growling or using polar bear skulls as a mask.

This practice is apotropaic and an initiation rite at the same time, and is known in comparative research on shamanism as Arctic animal identification. The theological consequence is a close identification of the shaman with the bear spirit.

A genre widely found in Inuit narrative literature is that of the bear men or bear women who live among humans in human form before their true nature is discovered.

These tales are not fairy-tale-like in the Western sense but reflect the religious notion of transformation and are to be read, in the study of religion, as theological reflection in narrative form.

A typical tale recounts a widow who marries a stranger who later turns out to be a polar bear.

In some versions she lives happily with him, in others the polar bear is driven away or killed through a taboo violation by the surviving relatives, whereupon the woman mourns him as a loss. Such tales are read as examples of the permeable boundaries between the human and animal worlds.

In the study of religion this narrative genre is important because it brings the theological notion into narrative form. Without the tales, the polar bear theology would be a mere theoretical residue. The tales make the theology concrete and socially transmissible and secure the tradition in oral form across generations.

The Christian mission changed the polar bear cult only in part. The taboos surrounding the hunt remained in place in many Inuit communities because they were directly connected with the practice of hunting and did not clash directly with Christian doctrines.

The religious charge was partly reinterpreted in Christian terms, for instance by understanding the bear meat as a gift of God.

In contemporary Inuit identity the polar bear has become a key symbol. The flag of Nunavut shows an inukshuk and polar bear tracks, and the coats of arms of many communities contain polar bear motifs.

This symbolism cannot be narrowed down to religious history, but it points to the continuing significance of Nanook for the cultural self-location of Inuit communities.

In the discourse on climate change and polar bear populations the religious background partly comes back to the fore. When polar bears disappear, it is not only an animal species that disappears but a being charged with religious and cultural meaning.

This doubling contributes to the political weight of the Inuit voice in the global climate debate and makes the polar bear a key theological and political symbol.

Bear cults are widespread in the circumpolar region. The Ainu Iyomante ceremony for the bear, the Finno-Ugric bear festivals, the Siberian bear ceremonials and the North American bear taboo of the subarctic together form a circumpolar bear religion whose exact relationships of kinship are contested.

A. Irving Hallowell, in his classic work Bear Ceremonialism in the Northern Hemisphere (1926), documented the circumpolar distribution of bear taboos and thereby opened the discussion of a pan-Eurasian stratum. Later research, such as that of Juha Pentikainen and Daniel Merkur, refined the thesis and supplemented it with more precise regional studies.

Within the Inuit tradition Nanook remains a variant of this circumpolar bear religion with its own specific features. The specificity lies in the special significance of the polar bear, which in this form occurs only in the Arctic and thus represents an ecological particularity.

This ecological embedding is decisive for the classification in the study of religion and distinguishes the Inuit variant from continental bear cults.

The research on Nanook is broad. Knud Rasmussen’s records, Franz Boas’s works, Daniel Merkur’s synthesis and the contemporary works of Frederic Laugrand and Pamela Stern offer comprehensive material.

The combination of the ethnology of religion, animal ethology and climate science is a new focus of the past two decades and is particularly productive in the study of religion.

In popular reception Nanook has been internationally present since Flaherty’s film of 1922. This reception is partly romanticizing, partly documentary, partly commercializing. In the study of religion the popular Nanook figure is to be distinguished from the traditional polar bear theology, without underestimating its effect on the image of Inuit culture.

Within Inuit communities Nanook is read today primarily as a cultural symbol and as a component of ecological identity. The religious layer is present but rarely explicit.

This corresponds to the general secularization of the religious tradition while cultural practice is preserved, and is, in the sociology of religion, a typical pattern of modern indigenous societies.

Nanook connects with Sedna, Tornarssuk, Sila, Pinga, Igaluk, Anguta, Tupilak, Malina and Qailertetang. The cultural hub Inuit tradition frames the polar bear cult. Structurally similar bear theologies are found in the Sami series of entries, where Leibolmmai as bear lord fulfills comparable functions.