Uumarnituq and Aakulujjuusi

In the recorded corpus the world has suffered a prior destruction (accounts include a collapsed pillar‑supported earth) leaving the land empty; Uumarnituq and Aakulujjuusi appear after that cataclysm as the first humans. Regional variants differ: some tellings present the pair as finding or adopting infants discovered in snow or earth, others as producing children after a bodily transformation; in several versions they are described as emerging fully formed as adults from mounds of earth (niaquqtaak). The tales function to explain how humans re‑appeared after the ancient catastrophe, how children come to families (both by being found and by birth in some variants), and to situate practices of ritual speech and shamanic maintenance of the world in Inuit cosmology.

Descriptions vary by locale rather than offering a standardized portrait. In several Natsilingmiut and Iglulingmiut tellings both appear as fully formed adults emerging from earth mounds called niaquqtaak. Cumberland Sound variants include domesticized detail (for example, anecdotal mention of a woman wearing boots with laces extending) but the sources do not give consistent physical features beyond their human adult form and these situational details.

Across variants they function chiefly as progenitors and culture‑founders. In Netsilik/Iglulingmiut versions Aakulujjuusi composes and sings an irinaliuti (a magic song) that effects bodily change — notably transforming Uumarnituq from male‑bodied into a woman so childbirth can occur; the quoted incantation in one report reads: 'A human being here, a penis here. May its opening be wide and roomy. Opening, opening, opening!' In other variants Uumarnituq is portrayed as chanting an irinaliuti to introduce death and war when descendants multiply too rapidly, while Aakulujjuusi in some tellings is said to preserve dying human souls or enable their continuance after death. Thus their narrated capacities center on ritual speech acts that alter bodies and social conditions and on roles in reproduction and in certain accounts the regulation of mortality and post‑mortem fate.