Tradition / Region: Inuit Mythology, Greenlandic Mythology
Alternative names: Ice Loon
Category: Bird
The Myth
The Ice Loon is a mysterious spirit being described as half bird and half human. Inuit shamans sought out the creature when ordinary means failed, believing it possessed the power to grant life and alter fate. One powerful shaman, desperate after losing many children, traveled onto the inland ice to ask the Ice Loon for help in giving him a child who would survive.
The spirit answered his plea, and his daughter was said to have been born through the aid of the Ice Loon. During a time of famine, the shaman asked the spirits for a sign of whether the child would live. As long as a seal’s breathing hole in the ice remained open and seals continued to appear, he knew his daughter had been spared. Even when she later fell gravely ill, further omens confirmed that her life had been protected.
As the child grew older, she could see and play with the spirits of her dead brothers and sisters, mistaking them for living children. Her father learned through his helping spirits that, because of her supernatural birth, she remained closely connected to the world of the dead. To keep her from being taken away by them, the spirits raised an invisible rocky barrier whenever she tried to follow the ghostly children, ensuring that the child born through the Ice Loon’s blessing would continue to live among the living.
Sources
A Book of Creatures. (2016, January 29). Peteu. Retrieved June 29, 2026, from https://abookofcreatures.com/2016/01/29/peteu/