Sedna (mythology)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the Inuit mythic figure. For the planetoid named after her, see 90377 Sedna.

In Inuit mythology, Sedna (Inuktitut Sanna, ᓴᓐᓇ) is a deity and god of the marine animals, especially mammals such as seals. She lives in and rules over Adlivun, the Inuit underworld. Sedna is also known as Arnakuagsak or Arnarquagssaq (Greenland) and Nerrivik or Nuliajuk (Alaska). Although Sedna is sometimes thought to predominate throughout the Canadian Arctic she was known by other names by different Inuit groups. One example of this is Arnapkapfaaluk (big bad woman) ^[1] of the Copper Inuit from the Coronation Gulf area.

According to one myth, Sedna, similar to a mermaid, was the daughter of the creator-god Anguta. She is said to have been so huge and hungry that she ate everything in her parents' home, and even gnawed off one of her father's arms as he slept. According to some versions of the myth, she took a dog for her husband.

Anguta was so angry that he threw her over the side of his kayak. She clung to its sides, whereupon he chopped her fingers off one by one until she let go. She sank to the underworld, becoming the ruler of the monsters of the deep, and her huge fingers became the seals, walrus and whales hunted by the Inuit.

Another version of the myth says that she finds none of the men shown to her by her father good enough, and so she marries a dog. Her father is so angry at this that he throws her into the sea, and when she tries to climb back into the boat he cuts her fingers off. Her fingers become the first seals and she becomes a mighty sea goddess. When angered, she locks up all the sea-creatures and so people die. If that happens, it is held that someone must go to her house and wash her, whereupon she lets the animals go again.

Other tales assert that Sedna was a beautiful maiden who was innocently lured into marriage by an evil bird spirit. When her father tried to rescue her, the spirit became angry and caused a terrible storm which threatened the very survival of her people. In desperation, Sedna's father threw her into the raging sea.

The varying legends each give different rationales for her death at the hands of her father. Sometimes she is the innocent victim, and sometimes she appears to deserve death as punishment for greed or some other evil. But all tales agree that she descended into the depths of the ocean and became the Goddess of Sea Creatures. As such, she became a vital deity, worshipped by hunters who depended on her goodwill to supply food.

Sedna is also the adversary on the children's cartoon Inuk which follows the story of a young Inuit boy.

Her name was taken also to name a new disputed "tenth" planet, 90377 Sedna, as discovered by Michael Brown (Caltech), Chad Trujillo (Gemini Observatory) and David Rabinowitz (Yale University) on November 14, 2003.