May 21, 1910

My Eskimos, especially Tannaumirk, have the unpleasant habit of being superior to the people they meet down here. T. keeps talking about how their houses smell bad (which item he alone of us all noticed), how they are ignorant of this and that, and how there is great need they be taught that and this – to use guns, matches, flour, tobacco, and to pray. Pannigabluk and B. have the superiority to same extent though B. not much.

One of songs [...] was characteristically different from any Eskimo song I had previously heard. It had both rhyme and a scaldic assonance as in the Njálssaga: [Icelandic: I don’t wish to blaspheme the Gods but I think Freyja is a bitch] “Spara ek ei god gjeija, grei þikkjir mjér Freiya” – or more like some others, whose words I can’t remember – very short lines and frequent rhyme […].