this, she was angry, and taking the wood which they
had brought from the south, she broke it all into small pieces. So
angry was she at thus being made a widow.

Then she went home, after having spoiled the men's wood. But the
sledges drove on.

Suddenly a great seal came up ahead of them, right in their way,
where the ice was thin and slippery. And the sledges drove straight
at it, but many fell through and were drowned at that hunting. And
a little after, they again saw something in their way. It was a fox,
and they set off in chase, but driving at furious speed up a mountain
of screw-ice, they were dashed down and killed. Only two men escaped,
and they made their way onward and told what had come to the rest.

And it was the soul of Avovang, whom nothing could wound, that had
changed, first into a seal and then into a fox, and thus brought about
the death of his enemies. And afterwards he made up his mind to let
himself be born in the shape of every beast on earth, that he might
one day tell his fellow-men the manner of their life.

At one time he was a dog, and lived on meat which he stole from the
houses. When he was pressed for food, he would carefully watch the
men about the houses, and eat anything they threw away.

But Avovang soon tired of being a dog, on account of the many beatings
which fell to his lot in that life. And so he made up his mind to
become a reindeer.

At first he found it far from easy, for he could not keep pace with
the other reindeer when they ran.

"How do you stretch your hind legs at a gallop?" he asked one day.

"Kick out towards the farthest edge of the sky," they answered. And
he did so, and then he was able to keep pace with them.

But at first he did not know what he should eat, and therefore he
asked the others.

"Eat moss and lichen," they said.

And he soon grew fat, with thick suet on his back.

But one day the herd was attacked by a wolf, and all the reindeer
dashed out into the sea, and there they met some kayaks in their
flight, and one of the men killed Avovang.

He cut him up, and laid the meat in a cairn of stones. And there he
lay, and when the winter came, he longed for the men to come and bring
him home. And glad was he one day to hear the stones rattling down,
and when they commenced to eat him, and cracked the bones with pieces
of rock to get at the marrow, Avovang escaped and changed himself
into a wolf.

And now he lived as a wolf, but here as bef