Tupilaq

Tupilait are created within angakkuq ritual practice and arise from acts of secret ritual manufacture or from breaches of taboo and concealed events (for example concealment of miscarriage or infanticide can produce related harmful beings). Greenlandic accounts describe a ritual process carried out most often at night and in secrecy: the maker (an angakkuq) fashions a composite figure from animal parts (bone, skin, hair, sinew, etc.) and, in some recorded accounts, even parts taken from corpses of children; during construction the angakkuq would don clothing backwards (parka/anorak with the hood over the face), have sexual contact with the bones used, and sing and chant over several days to give the object life. In other regions the term refers to an invisible created spirit or the restless soul of a dead person tied to taboo violations.

In Greenlandic tradition the tupilaq is a puppet-like carved composite, historically made from perishable animal parts and later rendered in durable materials (sperm whale teeth, narwhal and walrus tusk, wood, caribou antler) for collectors; some sources report the use of human remains in certain accounts. In Igloolik and Kivallirmiut descriptions the tupilaq is an invisible chimera-like creature (human head combined with parts of different animals) visible only to angakkuq.

In Greenland the tupilaq is an avenging monster animated by ritual chants and placed into the sea to seek and destroy a specific named enemy. Its use carries risk: if the intended victim or another practitioner has stronger magic the tupilaq can be sent back to kill its maker. In Igloolik accounts the tupilaq (as a restless soul after a death taboo) can frighten game away from hunting grounds; in Kivallirmiut accounts invisible tupilait are dangerous and can attack settlements, requiring angakkuq intervention. Some tupilait are only perceivable and counterable by angakkuq; others act in the physical world as embodied enchanted objects.