Becoming a Wanderer

There are many ways people can turn away, whether it be through short or long-term travel, or the small turns people make during disputes. Some individuals may take extreme measures to turn away or cross a threshold into a state of magnified loneliness, such as becoming a personified angakkoq (shaman) or some people may also cross this threshold into loneliness by permanently walking into the landscape and becoming what is known as a qivittoq – someone who has turned away from their community in anger or shame. Seeking solitude in this extreme and transformative way is entirely possible for a human person, but they would not remain human. The loneliness of this extremity and permanence changes humans into Inhumans (p. 43, Janne Flora, 2019). The anthropology of thresholds usually characterizes a threshold as a liminal space of obscurity and disorientation. Victor Turner's (1974) work on ritual, for instance, initiates how a state of being betwixt and between is defined as being on the threshold. Thresholds are neither here nor there—thresholds collapse time and space with identity and ordinary social order. The threshold, which we might understand as the site of liminality, invites an investigation of what lies on the other side and what happens to people who move across it.