ARCTIC-001 - museum specimen
Qikiqtani / Belcher Islands Inuit / Sanikiluaq
Canada - Nunavut - Belcher Islands - North America - Arctic
Play / practical
Source term: bullroarer sculpture
A sculpture of a bullroarer, worked in ivory with skin and sinew, made by a Qikiqtani (Belcher Islands Inuit) artist at Sanikiluaq in Hudson Bay and dated to 1936-1939, now in the Royal Ontario Museum and catalogued simply as "Sculpture, bullroarer." The museum records maker, materials, and place but no use for this piece. Among the Inuit the bullroarer was a lozenge-shaped plate of bone or wood, roughly 15 to 20 centimetres long, pierced at one end and hung from a sinew cord that could be tied to a wooden handle; spun rapidly, it gave off a loud whirring. The anthropological literature counts it a toy or noisemaker rather than a musical instrument, the skin drum being regarded as the only true Inuit instrument.
The Inuit bullroarer was a lozenge-shaped plate of bone or wood about 15-20 cm long, pierced at one end and suspended on a sinew cord which might in turn be attached to a wooden handle. When spun rapidly it made a loud whirring sound.
Whitridge 2015:19 (The sound of contact: Historic Inuit music-making in northern Labrador; citing Jenness 1946:143, Mathiassen 1927b:120, Murdoch 1988[1892]:378-379)
- Object
- Ivory skin and sinew bullroarer sculpture dated 1936-1939
- Function
- Inuit bullroarer (ROM sculpture from Sanikiluaq); ethnographically reckoned a toy/noisemaker, not a ritual or musical object
- Map confidence
- low_medium - Sanikiluaq source locality not ROM Toronto
- Source location
- ROM object 2010.86.32; title/object fields verified 2026-06-01
- Toy / secular survival