Kilda Mailboat," "Ronay of the Sorrows," "The Last
Angakok," or "In the Westfjords of Iceland." Some of his wanderings are imaginary, as with a hallucinatory visit from the now-extinct Beothuck Indians of Newfoundland, where ghostly presences attend his solitary campfire, their very beings arising from the flora and detritus of the place: "Their eyes are crowberries squeezed into the swartness of their lost archaic faces.
And shamans require certain specific skills, which are symbolized in the old underworld stories by the golden bough, the caduceus, the lyre, the magic flute, the shamanic drum, the spirit-doctor's rattle, or the mask of the
angakok. The talismans refer to the ancient techniques of the arts - melodic structure, poetic meter, dramatic mimesis, pattern design, storytelling.