Excerpts from
The Ulo
By Erik Hjorth Nielsen
In the springtime a large male bear lumbered into the settlement. Many people ran off into their huts, but grandmother said to the boy: “A large bear is approaching. What are you going to do?”
The blind boy asked his sister to fetch the bow and a sturdy arrow.
“Now you’ve got to take aim for me,” he said. They led him outside and he stretched the bow. His sister and grandmother guided him, so that the arrow was pointing at the bear’s chest. And then the boy’s sister gave him a signal to shoot. The arrow penetrated deep into the bear’s heart and killed it on the spot.
But grandmother said: “Oh, what a shame! You missed.” For she wanted the bear meat all to herself, a nd would not share it with he who had slain the bear.
*An ‘ulo’ is an old Greenlandic word for a flensing knife. Women used it in olden times to cut up and clean the hunters’ catch. There is a story, told in Greenland, concerning a greedy grandmother and her ulo.
Translated by Gaye Kynoch
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