Greenlandic tupilaks (and other traditional arctic crafts and knives)

[netrin]

The description said they're cursed.  So that's just advertising?

And are they made of bone?  You sometimes suggest it but you also say you can't export it out of Greenland so it sounds like a no.

Tupilak are cursed, but not yet applied to a specific victim. The curse could be activated before shipping, but to whom would I apply the curse? My customers? The tupilak are the real deal. You basically give the tupilak pieces of your victim so that he can smell and taste your victim and then you set him free. I suspect most people would prefer to keep them in the house as decoration and only activate (and lose) them later. It's up to you. If you prefer, send me pieces of your victim and I (or someone more experienced) will activate them for you; I just hope he doesn't eat his way out of the postal system.

Most of the tupilak are made from reindeer antler which is indeed bone. Some of the pieces I have are made from muskox horn, which is a bit softer, translucent and beautiful, but doesn't lend itself as well to detail work. The most beautiful, in my opinion, are made walrus ivory, but are illegal to import most everywhere. The most powerful tupilak are often made from the bones of the victims' ancestors (or deceased children). But no, I am not exporting human bone, unless you manage a museum and are prepared for enormous paper work.

So, tupilak are made from bone and they are as cursed as you choose to make them.

[netrin]

25% off

...all tupilakker and knives ordered before November. I simply can't keep up with the exchange rate and have set all prices in USD and EUR, but will adjust later if/when BTC stops hyperinflating (50%+ monthly depreciation). Pick up some curses while their CHEAP!

EDIT: Kjj picked up two pieces on the cheap. Is the thin muskox carving a gift?

[Minsc]

Tupilak are cursed, but not yet applied to a specific victim. The curse could be activated before shipping, but to whom would I apply the curse? My customers? The tupilak are the real deal. You basically give the tupilak pieces of your victim so that he can smell and taste your victim and then you set him free. I suspect most people would prefer to keep them in the house as decoration and only activate (and lose) them later. It's up to you. If you prefer, send me pieces of your victim and I (or someone more experienced) will activate them for you; I just hope he doesn't eat his way out of the postal system.

So those things can't bring good luck like all the genie rings sold on the metaphysical category of eBay?

[netrin]

So those things can't bring good luck like all the genie rings sold on the metaphysical category of eBay? Life is pain, my friend. Anyone who tells you otherwise is only trying to sell you something. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- For more cliche collected by Knud Rasmussen while traveling throughout the North: "The great peril of our existence lies in the fact that our diet consists entirely of souls." Once the anirniq (spirit) of the dead - animal or human - is liberated, it is free to take revenge. The spirit of the dead can only be placated by obedience to custom, avoiding taboos, and performing the right rituals. In the Arctic, we don't believe. We fear.

[Mushroomized]

These are really cool 

[cablepair]

Tupilaks are what killed Steve Jobs, buyer beware!

[Xenland]

If being one of the most remembered people of our times is what happens with people with tupilaks... count me in!
Actually have been pretty inquiries of these things and I might be able to purchase one very very soon.

PM'ing you OP.

[tosaki]

do you also have cute ones in stock ? I need one friendly or cute looking, price range and size could be like http://en.bitmit.net/trade/i/50-cursed-tupilak-reindeer-bone-carving-from-greenland

[RandyFolds]

do you also have cute ones in stock ? I need one friendly or cute looking, price range and size could be like http://en.bitmit.net/trade/i/50-cursed-tupilak-reindeer-bone-carving-from-greenland

You want a cute demonic curse? That's just mean.

[netrin]

What do you mean by 'cute'. Cuddly with a smiling face? How about a polar bear head?

[tosaki]

okay maybe cute is the wrong description. e.g. for me is the left one on your banner more sympathetic/friendly/cute than the one on the right hand side.
I would prefer it

[BitcoinMint.US]

These often-grotesque statues are used to curse or magically kill enemies, though none of those I'm selling will have been 'activated' .

Do we have the option of having them activated?

25% off

Wish I had seen this sale.

[netrin]

Do we have the option of having them activated?

That's an interesting question. Yes, I suppose you could send a sample of your victim to a third party (me?). Though, do you realize you could just as easily do it yourself? I'm not a big fan of harming anyone, particularly not those I don't know, who've done me no harm. But theoretically this would be possible.

[BitcoinMint.US]

Do we have the option of having them activated?

That's an interesting question. Yes, I suppose you could send a sample of your victim to a third party (me?). Though, do you realize you could just as easily do it yourself? I'm not a big fan of harming anyone, particularly not those I don't know, who've done me no harm. But theoretically this would be possible.

Sorry. I overlooked the post where you explained this. I'll keep my eyes open for the next sale.    PM me if you're interested in trading for silver.

[netrin]

I wouldn't hold my breath for another sale, as I was shipping them below cost. I've just set all the prices in EUR and USD and am done with it. As for silver, that is an option I'd accept!

[chieffery]

Here's a story Knud Rasmussen collected prior to 1921

NUKÚNGUASIK, WHO ESCAPED FROM THE TUPILAK

NUKÚNGUASIK, it is said, had land in a place with many brothers. When the brothers made a catch, they gave him meat for the pot; he himself had no wife. One day he rowed northward in his kayak, and suddenly he took it into his head to row over to a big island which he had never visited before, and now wished to see. He landed, and went up to look at the land, and it was very beautiful there.

 And here he came upon the middle one of many brothers, busy with something or other down in a hollow, and whispering all the time. So he crawled stealthily towards him, and when he had come closer, he heard him whispering these words:

 "You are to bite Nukúnguasik to death; you are to bite Nukúnguasik to death."

 And then it was clear that he was making a Tupilak, and stood there now telling it what to do. But suddenly Nukúnguasik slapped him on the side and said: "But where is this Nukúnguasik?"

 And the man was so frightened at this that he fell down dead.

 And then Nukúnguasik saw that the man had been letting the Tupilak sniff at his body. And the Tupilak was now alive, and lay there sniffing. But Nukúnguasik, being afraid of the Tupilak....

(I'll let you finish the second half of the story from whence I nicked it http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/inu/eft/eft07.htm)

What the hell did I just read...

[RandyFolds]

What the hell did I just read...

Seriously...I spent like, ten hours a couple months back reading through a bunch of awesome Greenlandic mythology. It's...unique, to say the least. I feel like the movement to record oral histories has lost steam in the past fifty years. There are still a bunch of projects to preserve them, but it seems like they are more focused on the preservation of the language rather than the culture. I just want my stories!

netrin, how can I find more? Are there some better-translated works that you can refer me to?

[netrin]

What did you read? I don't know many myth books, none in English.

There's a huge collection of modern Arctic (and Antarctic) literature that will get the testosterone flowing. Knud Rasmussen, Peter Freuchen, Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen, Roald Amundsen, Robert Peary, Ernest Shackleton, Robert Scott. I just finished a good read by Alvah Simon titled "North to the Night".

Not the way I heard it but...

As I remember it, he’d fashioned a chisel from his own excrement to chip his way out. In Peter Freuchen’s account of his 1924 journey through Canada’s far north, the Danish explorer recounted how in a driving storm his sled dogs had refused to go any further. He took refuge under his dog sled, overturned against the wind side of a large boulder.

While he slept, snow had buried his makeshift shelter and he awoke to find himself entombed and his feet painfully frozen. Barely able to move, he’d scraped at the hardened snow. After many hours of agonizing effort, Freuchen remembered how, during the previous day, his sled dogs’ turds had frozen solid almost instantaneously in the extreme cold.

Freuchen thus thought to resort to his frozen poo chisel. Despite narrowly escaping a slow death he lost an entire foot to frostbite.

Perhaps what pushed the lead over the edge and off the page was this addition:

His is not the only such tale to come out of the north. Famed Canadian ethno-botanist, Wade Davis, recounts a similar story collected from an Inuit community on Baffin Island.

An elder had resisted a 1950’s Canadian government plan to relocate the Inuit into settlements. In an effort to force him to move, his family took away all his tools and implements.

The elder stole out of the igloo that night and dropping his caribou and seal skin drawers in the harsh cold, he defecated and shaped the rapidly freezing feces into a knife. He spit on it to form a sharp saliva edge and butchered a dog. Using the dog’s ribcage as a sled and the hide to hitch onto another dog, he “put the shit knife in his belt and disappeared into the night.”

http://www.mywestworld.com/living/monster-mush-the-yukon-quest/

[Xenland]

They came sooner then I expected!
I'm using one for a Christmas gift and the other for a table piece!

Here are some pics to show how well they travel.

I could have swore I heard one of the buggers gasp for air
when I ripped open the packaging



Thank Netrin, I will be buying from you again in the future.

[netrin]

Hey Xenland, that was kinda fast, and on a Sunday!? Actually, I don't really know when they left the island. It's just that the storms seemed to keep the planes grounded for weeks (one might have slipped away without me noticing). Did you keep the stamps and postmark? Also, the packaging doubled as a note. Hope you didn't throw that out nor that the tupilakker ate it.