For hundreds of years before their discovery by Europeans, the narwhal was central to the life and culture of the Inuit people of northern Canada and Greenland, and it remains important to their subsistence today. Due to their dependence on the animal, it has been prevalent in Inuit artwork, of which this sculpture is an exemplar, along with their storytelling traditions. A widely shared Inuit legend describes the formation of the mammal’s great tusk. An Inuit woman, hunting with a harpoon, was dragged into the ocean after catching a great whale. She became one with the animal she had speared, and her hair, which was twisted in an elaborate bun, became the spiraling tusk of the whale.
Ivory
Late 19th – early 20th century
10 x 3 x 2 cm
Nicholson Whaling Collection, Providence Public Library