The boy made of whale blubber
Once upon a time there was a young girl from the Inuit Nation, as the Eskimos are rightly called, and whose boyfriend had died at sea. She was terribly upset and nothing could console her — she only had room in her heart for the lad who had drowned and she didn't want any other boy. She loved him so much that she decided to make a likeness of him. She got a lump of whale blubber and fashioned it into the form of her loved one. She made a sculpture so perfect that it looked like the real thing.
“Hold me tight”, she said to the whale blubber figure.
And the tenderness of the embrace gave him life once again. They went to live together in a cabin by the sea, up there in Greenland. When her man came home tired after a day's fishing, she would say to him,
“Hold me tight.”
And the hug of his loving girl would reanimate him.
One day he was hunting seals and he felt unwell — the sun was melting him. He sweated and sweated and he got smaller and smaller. When he got back to the cabin he was just a lump of whale blubber. His sweetheart was not able to embrace him any more. The girl was very sad. But she picked up another good lump of whale blubber and made it into the form of her drowned boyfriend and, when she had finished, the sculpture could hear her voice saying,
“Hold me tight.”
Text: Koldo Izagirre
Translation: Joe Linehan
Voice: Tim Nicholson
