The Goose Wife is a mythical female character that appears in tales from the Inuit and other ethnic groups that dwell across the circumpolar Arctic region.Bäcker, Jörg. "Schwanjungfrau". In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Band 12: Schinden, Schinder – Sublimierung. Edited by Rudolf Wilhelm Brednich; Hermann Bausinger; Wolfgang Brückner; Daniel Drascek; Helge Gerndt; Ines Köhler-Zülch; Lutz Röhrich; Klaus Roth. De Gruyter, 2016 . p. 314. . The usual story is that the geese alight on land, become women by taking off their goose-skins and bathe in a lake. However, they are unaware that a human hunter is spying on them, and he steals the goose-skin of one of them, forcing her to be his wife. Due to the great similarities between both characters, the goose wife has been compared to the swan maiden, another female that alternates between human and bird forms.
Overview Scholars have noted the great similarities between the character of the goose wife of the folklore of Arctic peoples and the swan maiden,Marshall, Bonnie C. Far north tales: stories from the peoples of the Arctic circle. Santa Barbara, California: Libraries Unlimited, 2011. p. 255. which appears across Eurasia in several mythologies.Hatt, Gudmund (1949). Asiatic influences in American folklore. København: I kommission hos ejnar Munksgaard. pp. 94-96. The main plot points between both stories are that a flock of bird women (swans or geese) come to bathe in an earthly lake in human form; a man spies on them and steals the feather garments to force one of them to marry him; later, the bird woman regains her feathers (or birdskin) and flies back to the land of the birds.
As cited by Lotte Motz, researcher Inge Kleivan compared several Eskimo narratives of the bird/goose wife and produced a hypothetical proto-form. In these tales, the goose wife leaves her human husband and travels to the "Land of Birds". Whenever the husband finds her, she is already married to another bird person.
The bird wife
Researcher Birgitte Sonne stated that the bird wife is a wild goose or merganser in Greenland, while Inge Kleivan, in an article on Enzyklopädie des Märchens, stated that the bird maiden in Inuit stories was "almost always" a goose or a duck.Kleivan, Inge. "Eskimos" [Eskimo Narrative Tradition]. In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Online. Edited by Rolf Wilhelm Brednich, Heidrun Alzheimer, Hermann Bausinger, Wolfgang Brückner, Daniel Drascek, Helge Gerndt, Ines Köhler-Zülch, Klaus Roth and Hans-Jörg Uther. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2016 . https://www-degruyter-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/database/EMO/entry/emo.4.050/html. Accessed 2022-10-26.
The giant helper According to scholar Daniel Merkur and Inge Kleivan, in the story of the man searching for his bird wife, the human hunter meets the Fishmaker (or Salmon Maker) on his journey to the land of the birds, a giant that chops away wood and every woodchip becomes salmon (or other species of fish) when falling in the lake.Kleivan, Inge. The Swan Maiden Myth Among the Eskimo. København: Ejnar Munksgaard. 1962. p. 31. This giant must be approached from the correct angle, for only then he will provide the human husband the means to cross to the land of the birds. Although he may exist in other, independent tales, the character appears in bird wife stories "across the Arctic, from southern Alaska to west Greenland": among the Chukchi, Koniag, Polar, and Netsilik peoples and in Baffin Island and west and east Greenland.
Distribution William L. Sheppard traced the geographical distribution of the tale of the Man who Married Sea Fowl according to the available literature. Versions are found in the following regions and groups: Greenland, Labrador, Baffin, Iglulik, Netsilik, Copper, North Alaska, Northwest Alaska, Bering Strait, Mainland Southwest Alaska, Koniag, Siberian Yupik, and Chukchi.
Tales North America A. L. Kroeber collected a tale titled The Man who married a Goose, from Smith Sound. In this tale, the human hunter finds a goose woman and steals her garment. He marries her and she bears two children. Years into their marriage, the goose woman gathers feathers for herself and her children, they become geese and fly away. The human hunter meets a man named Qayungayung, carving boats and creating sea animals with every wood splinter. Qayungayung agrees to take the man to his wife across the water.Kroeber, A. L. “Tales of the Smith Sound Eskimo”. In: The Journal of American Folklore 12, no. 46 (1899): 170–172. https://doi.org/10.2307/534175.
The goose wife also appears in tales of the Inuk hero Kiviuq. In these tales, Kiviuq (also Keeveeok, and variations) marries a woman whose goose skin he has stolen or hidden. She bears him children, but decides to fashion a pair of wings for her to return to the skies. In a version collected by Kira Van Deusen, Kiviuq finds three maidens bathing, all three having cast their water bird skins: "a sandhill crane, a loon, and a Canada goose". In another version, Kiviuq marries a goose maiden as a second wife; she cannot bear to eat human food and flies away, with Kiviuq going after her. During his journey, he finds obstacles he has to overcome: two grizzlies mauling each other, a lit qulliq (lamp/stove), a pot boiling a stew made of human parts, and two mountains that clash against each other.
Scientist Fridtjof Nansen reported an "Eskimo" tale wherein a reindeer-hunter finds some maidens bathing in a lake, and steals the clothes of one of them (the most beautiful one), while the other maidens escape in the form of geese and mergansers. The hunter marries the maiden and she bears him a son. However, she secretly gathers feathers to fashion new birdskins for her and her son, and they fly away. The hunter goes after them and meets a man cutting chips of wood that transform into fishes. The hunter rides a big salmon to where his family is hiding.Nansen, Fridtjof. Eskimo Life, translated by William Archer. 2nd edition. London and New York: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1894. pp. 297-298.
Author Ramona Maher published a tale titled The Man who Married a Snow Goose. In this tale, on Kodiak Island a chief keeps his son at home to protect him from his prophesied death in the ocean. Time passes, and the boy grows restless with longing for the outside. When he is 17 years old, he distracts his father's guards and steps outside, delighting at the view of people, the sky, the sounds. When he sights the guards returning, a "lump of tears" fills him with an intense sadness. His father lets the young man live and hunt with other people of the village. One day, the young man sees five geese flying overhead. He follows them and, as he approaches, he hears women's voices and laughter. He finds five maidens playing and bathing in the water, some gooseskins carefully folded in some bushes. He hides the garments of the youngest; the five maidens leave the water, four of them turn back into geese. The young hunter takes the remaining goose maiden (now human) and takes her to the human village. Despite being in a human state, the goose wife still retains avian eating habits (for instance, she eats beach grass and grass under the trees; seeds from pods and berries). A baby boy is born to her. Her sister-in-law mocks her laughter, and, tired of the abuse, the snow goose wife finds the goosekin, wears it and flies away with the baby on her back. The hunter learns of her departure and goes after her. Near the end of the journey, he meets an old man carving a piece of wood. The old man introduces himself as Qayungayung. The human hunter travels across the sea on a king salmon and finds his wife and son in the "land where the birds stay during winter". He tries to adjust to life with the bird people, but eventually intrudes in their ritual transformation between human and bird forms. At the end of the tale, the birds say they need to move out to another region, and the human hunter is carried by an eagle, but the bird bites his arm and he falls to his death in the water. The hunter and goose maiden's son becomes a puffin.Maher, Ramona. The blind boy and the loon, and other Eskimo myths. John Day Co, 1969. pp. 79-98.
Canada Franz Boas collected a tale from the "Central Eskimo" (Cumberland Sound), with the title Ititaujang (or Itajung), after its main character. Ititaujang goes to the "land of the birds" and finds himself a wife there, by hiding the maiden's boots. She reluctantly marries the human hunter and goes to live in his hut. She gives birth to a son and gathers enough feathers for herself and the boy to fly back to her original home in "the land of the birds"."The Bird Wife". In: Bayliss, Clara Kern. A treasury of Eskimo tales. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell. 1922. pp. 23-27."Ititaujang". In: Boas, Franz. The Central Eskimo. Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1884–1885; Government Printing Office, Washington, 1888. pp. 616–618. As the tale continues, on the way to his wife, hunter Ititaujang meets a man named Ixalu'qdjung chopping a piece of red wood with his hatchet. According to Boas's research, to the Aivilik, the tale of Ititaujang also belongs to the Kiviuq Cycle, as the episode of Kiviuq meeting the "Salmon Man" during the quest for his wife.
Ethnologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson collected two tales of goose wives from two Copper Inuit tellers. In both tales, the hunter has stolen the garments of a grey goose maiden. He marries her and she begets him a certain number of children (one in the first version, three in the second). She prepares makeshift wings for her and her children and they leave behind the human father (on the second tale, only a child remains with the father).Canadian Arctic Expedition., Stefansson, V., Canada. Department of Marine and Fisheries., Canada. Department of Mines., Canada. Department of the Naval Service. Report of the Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913-1918. Vol. XIII: Eskimo Folk-lore. Ottawa: King's Printer, 1924. p. 77.
In a version from Baffin Land, the human hunter, named Itiqtaujaq, steals the boots of a goose maiden and marries her. She does not adapt to ordinary human life and collects feathers to make a new pair of wings for herself and her son. Both depart with the wings and Itiqtaujaq follows after them. The hunter meets a person named Eqaluqdjuq, who is carving a piece of wood and every wood chip falls into the water to become salmon.
Knud Rasmussen collected a tale from the Iglulik Inuit with the title The man who travelled to the land of birds: a man goes after his wild goose wife in the land where gulls and ravens lived. The story flashes back to the moment where he met his wife: he found a group of women playing and frolicking without clothes on, and withheld their garments; intent on finding a strong woman as wife, he tested their strength by having them pull a line made of the hide of a bearded seal. He chose the strongest woman, married her and had children. However, when autumn came and the wild geese flew away, so did his wife. Back to the present, the man finds shelter in a double house that belongs to a raven and a gull. Later, he looks for the land of wild geese, and, in his lonely moments, sings a song about his adventures. At last, he finds the land of birds. Outside his wife's double house, their son sees him and goes inside to tell his mother.Rasmussen, Knud. Intellectual culture of the Iglulik Eskimos. Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-1924. Vol. VII. No. 1. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1929. pp. 265-267.