The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-125 - museum specimen

Tunumiit (East Greenland Inuit)

Greenland (Denmark) - Tasiilaq (Ammassalik), East Greenland - North America - Arctic

Play / practical

Tunumiit (East Greenland) bullroarer from Tasiilaq (Ammassalik), possibly collected by Knud Rasmussen — National Museum of the American Indian...
Tunumiit (East Greenland) bullroarer from Tasiilaq (Ammassalik), possibly collected by Knud Rasmussen — National Museum of the American Indian 11/3020. National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution (11/3020) Image source

Source term: bullroarer

On East Greenland’s Ammassalik coast, Tunumiit children grew up making miniature hunting gear and learning the skills of seal and bird hunting; Holm met one thirteen-year-old who had already taken thirty seals. This wood-and-hide bullroarer comes from that same Tasiilaq community. Denmark’s Nationalmuseet exchanged it with George Heye’s museum in 1922. In the Ammassalik record the whirled slat was a child’s plaything, never a spirit voice.

Object
Wood-and-hide bullroarer from Tasiilaq; NMAI 11/3020, transferred from the Nationalmuseet in 1922. A connection with Rasmussen’s Fourth Thule Expedition is possible, not confirmed.
Function
A child's plaything in the Ammassalik record (Thalbitzer 1914); no spirit use is reported for the district.
Map confidence
high - Tasiilaq settlement
Source location
NMAI 11/3020

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