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At the beginning of the 1970s, the following event took place during the festival. On Twelfth Night (Three Kings) on 6 January, disguised 'mummer' figures show themselves in the streets, while some of them even sit in the Church during the service. In West Greenland, during the daytime the 'mummers' are usually children and young girls, while in the evening they are young, unmarried men. In East Greenland however, it is only the men who dress up, at any rate according to a report dating from 1968. They are dressed in a grotesque way, wearing cardboard masks, while their faces and hands are blackened with soot. Men wear women's clothes, and stuffed-out garments suggest an advanced stage of pregnancy. At the same time they often wear a penis made of paper, rolled up. Their clothing also shows other unusual features, such as a rubber boot on the left foot and a seal-skin boot on the right. The mummers threaten people, but do not actually hit them, and they are silent in case they are recognised by their voices. They try to blacken the bystanders with soot, and to make them laugh. In the houses they are given small presents. If a mummer is recognised, he is out of the game. The mummers represent the Three Kings, but they all wear the same kind of costume. As a rule there are only two of them, and they claim that one of the Three Kings got lost in the dark. According to the Greenlanders themselves, Kongepingasiit (mitaartut) was not celebrated in former times, but another old Greenland festival, called uaajeertut, had a number of similar features, for example the dressing-up in disguise, the use of soot, the pulling of faces, making bystanders laugh, and transvestite elements. |
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