Kudlik

The qulliq (seal-oil, blubber or soapstone lamp,Inuktitut: ᖁᓪᓕᖅ, ‘kudlik’ IPA: [qulːiq]; Inupiaq: naniq), is the traditional oil lamp used by Arctic peoples, including the Inuit, the Chukchi and the Yupik peoples.

This characteristic type of oil lamp provided warmth and light in the harsh Arctic environment where there was no wood and where the sparse inhabitants relied almost entirely on seal oil or on whale blubber. This lamp was the single most important article of furniture for the Eskimo peoples in their dwellings.

It is uncertain in which period the seal-oil lamps began to be used. They are part of a series of technological innovations among the Arctic peoples whose introduction and spread has been partly documented. Oil lamps have been found in sites of Paleo-Eskimo communities dating back to the time of the Norton tradition 3,000 years ago. They were a common implement of the Dorset culture and of the Thule people, the lamps manufactured then showing little changes compared with more recent ones.

In one of the Inuit myths of the Sun and the Moon, the sun deity Sukh-eh-nukh —known as Malina in Greenland carries an oil lamp which gets overturned spilling oil and soot on her hands and she blackens the face of her brother, the moon deity Ahn-ing-ah-neh (Anningan). Among the Netsilik if the people breached certain taboos, Nuliajuk, the Sea Woman, held the marine animals in the basin of her lamp. When this happened the angakkuq had to visit her to beg for game.

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Wikipedia