Portraits of Everyday Life in Greenland

The thirty-six-year-old Greenlandic photographer Inuuteq Storch didn't know much about Inuit culture growing up. In school, for instance, he was taught about ancient Greek deities, but there was no talk of a native pantheon of gods

- Dawn Chan

About ninety per cent of the Greenlandic population are Lutherans, a legacy of Danish colonial rule. So thoroughly did European missionaries stigmatize Inuit beliefs that, even now, the more pious members of an older generation consider an appreciation of Indigenous spirits to be a sign of something demonic afoot. The word “Torngarsuk”—a shape-shifting Inuit spirit believed to assist shamans—is today used as a swear word. Storch, though, saw in the deity an opportunity to rediscover the culture of his ancestors. Four years ago, he got a tattoo of Torngarsuk along the span of his left forearm, in the form of a bearlike creature with beady eyes. In a recent conversation, he described himself as part of a generation of younger Greenlanders trying to rediscover Inuit traditions