Coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, where this story originates, though many related versions also come from Greenland, and other circumpolar regions of northern hemisphere. Photo Credit: Erik McClean on Pexels.
An oceanic underworld, sometimes stormy, frothy, turbulent and unforgiving, while at other times gently undulating, soothing, and life-giving. Both describe Sedna, the Goddess of the Sea, a courageous and mighty character in an ancient arctic folktale shared among the Inuit of Northeastern Canada and the people of Greenland. She is sometimes also referred to as the ‘Mother of the Deep’, or 'Old-woman-who-lived-in-the-sea' or the ‘Big Bad Woman’.
There are so many versions of this folktale, and I particularly love Caroline Blechert’s version offered on TeaandBannock.com, a collective blog by Indigenous women photographers. Here is brief synopsis of her version:
Some initial carvings and draft prints of the Sedna Linocut.
Sedna is a beautiful maiden with long luxurious black hair and piercing eyes, who rejects several marriage proposals from the hunters of her village, only to the frustration of her father who had raised her on his own. One day an unknown foreigner appears, and eager to have his daughter married, Sedna's father secretly tricks Sedna into marrying the stranger by giving her a sleeping potion and the stranger takes her away to his large nest on a steep cliff overlooking the ocean, revealing his true form: a great bird-spirit (sometimes described as a great raven, a fulmar or a Kokksaut/petrel-spirit). She wakes in the company of birds covered in stray black feathers. Her father, upon realizing his mistake of having married his daughter to a bird, attempts to rescue her by kayak, but when the bird-spirit realizes his wife has been taken, he flaps his gigantic wings and causes a great storm which threatens to overturn the kayak. Fearing for his life, and in a frantic effort to calm the bird’s anger, Sedna's father throws Sedna into the raging sea. In one last attempt at survival, she clings desperately to the sides of the kayak, only to have her fingers chopped off by her father. Down, down, down she drowns . . her fingers becoming the seals, schools of herring take refuge in the strands of her long kelp-like hair. To this day, she resides in the ink black depths of the ocean, Adlivun, the Inuit underworld, holding all the sea animals in her captive home at the bottom only releasing a whale when she is appeased by offerings, songs or visit from a hunter or shaman. In places like Killiniq, Newfoundland, people throw worn-out harpoon-heads, broken knives, and morsels of meat and bone into the sea as offerings with expectation that she will then bring them a good catch.
Though this story is brutal and traumatic, the story of Sedna is a reminder that unimaginable pain can be transformed into our greatest gift to others. Though she suffered the pain of forced marriage, abandonment and deceipt by her own family member as well as her husband, Sedna shows trauma can be healed. The fingers she lost at the hands of her father transform into seals, who become food and nourishment for her people. Through witnessing Sedna’s story, those who have suffered through trauma can realize their own wounds may not be setbacks or flaws, but may ultimately be the source of their power and perhaps even their greatest gifts. Through overcoming her own pain, a more powerful mature and life-giving Goddess inside her was born: she became Sedna, the Mother of the Sea.
In folktales and myth, the ocean is often a symbol of the unconscious. Residing just below the surface of the water are truths we may find difficult to contend with, parallel to the way truths are hidden just below the surface of our awareness until we are psychologically ready to handle them. It can be challenging to come to grips with Sedna’s tragic story and how it conveys a universal truth about human survival relevant even in this modern age. In the same way Sedna’s dismembered fingers are dismembered, we also may have to undergo a significant experience of pain and loss before we can transform. Sedna’s drowning in the salt water can be symbolic of the depth which she bravely descended into the salty tears of her own pain, which enabled her old young self to “die” and her new, more powerful mature and life-giving Goddess of the Underworld self to be born.
When Sedna is cut off from her human roots (when her fingers are literally chopped off and she is released from the the lifeboat she feels she must cling to and depend in order to survive), she is forced to descend and contend with who she is without her family, and through that separation she transforms and becomes her true self. I love how this folktale suggests that taking time away from society, and being in close proximity with the wild, can be a path to finding the Self.
In Greenland there is a slightly different version of this tale, retold by Mâliâraq Vebæk, novelist and folklorist, in her beautifully illustrated book A Journey to the Mother of the Sea. In this version a village of starving people seek help from an old female Shaman, who journeys to the bottom of the sea where she asks the Mother of the Sea to release seals, fish and aquatic birds for the people to eat. The Mother of the Sea tells the Shaman that she is withholding these animals from the people because they have not taken care of the ocean, nor treated the animals with respect. The Shaman appeases the Mother of the Sea by combing her tangly hair, oiling her face, and promising to tell the villagers to respect and take care of the ocean. In return. the Mother of the Sea releases the seals, fish and aquatic birds and the people are able to survive.
I love how in this version both the Shaman and the Mother of the Sea are elder women, and how they wield their power to ensure the wild is respected, while at the same time playing an important role in nurturing the supporting the life of the village.
In this folktale, as well as many folktales from around the world, the underwater realm is often associated with the feminine, and rebirth, the salty watery womb where all life emerges. Unlike the stereotypical representation of the feminine as passive and always giving, the main female character (whether in the form of Sedna, the Shaman or the Goddess of the Sea) in this folktale can sometimes withhold fish from hunters, while at other times she offers them in great abundance. She can be powerful, tempestuous, choppy, and turbulent while at other times she can be gently undulating, and all-encompassing like the hug of a big soft mother, as well as tenderly cradling and nurturing. Like the salt water of the ocean itself, Sedna is a complex character like all of us, fallible, lovable and real.
I love how this folktale gives the ocean, and more specifically, food (in the form of fish, whales and seals) a human ancestor. It is a way of entering into relationship with food and seeing it as more than just calories and energy. The folktale poetically and lyrically weaves humans into the circle of life and reminds us of our ancient and intimate entwinement and belonging to this precious planet.
The next time you find yourself surrounded by the smell of salt air, or the taste of wild ocean fish, or the feel of waves on your skin, I hope you might remember this folktale and settle deeper into the gift that is being offered in that experience.
Handcarved linocut print of Sedna,
References:
Blechert, Caroline (September 16, 2018). “The Story of Sedna”, a collective blog by indigenous women photographers. [https://teaandbannock.com/2018/09/16/the-story-of-sedna/]
Boaz, Franz (1967) The Central Eskimo. Bison Books.
Young, Ayana [Host]. For the Wild Podcast “MICHAEL MEADE on Cultivating Mythic Imagination”, January 26, 2022. [https://forthewild.world/podcast-transcripts/michael-meade-on-cultivating-mythic-imagination-encore-270]
Sedna (Mythology), Wikipedia. 30 May, 2023. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedna_(mythology]
Vebæk, Mâliâraq (1999) A Journey to the Mother of the Sea: As Told in South Greenland. Inhabit Media.
Photo Credit: Vida Nodli-Mathisen, on Unsplash (Blog Post Cover Image)