September 19, 2009.

My next blog entry is about the Aqsarniit the Northern Lights. The scientific name is Aurora Borealis.

In my own experience as a child, we were made to believe that the Aqsarniit could take your head off if you whistle at them and play ball with your head once the Aqsarniit took it off. When we were playing outside when we were children, we would tease and whistle at the Aqsarniit and we could see them getting closer and closer til they almost reached us and then we would quickly run inside the house before we got beheaded by the Aqsarniit.

That was my own experience that I just shared.

Here is one version I found on the internet and you can see more of the pictures and more information here.

What the locals know
But the northern lights are more than that. They’re the living game of the past played out on today’s night sky. For in these splendid lights in the night sky you can see the Greenlanders of bygone days playing a game they always loved while alive:

They play football in the heavens, and the northern lights are the body stripes of the players running through the night after a large, frozen walrus head as their football.

If the game starts moving too far from the spectators, you can whistle out into the night to draw them closer again. But take care – the ancestors can be frightening if too close, so make sure you keep a proper distance, which can be done by rubbing your fingernails together so they make a clicking sound.