Nggwalndu

The nggwalndu are the great ancestral clan-spirits at the summit of the Abelam supernatural order, the most powerful and most feared of all beings. Each patrilineal clan possesses its own nggwalndu, held responsible for the fertility and prosperity of its people, pigs and prized long yams, and the soul of a dead clansman is thought to pass into its keeping. Though they are spoken of as ancestral, no reckoned genealogy joins living men to them. Their presence is materialised in towering polychrome carvings and painted faces housed within the korambo and disclosed to initiates only at the culminating stage of the long initiation cycle; their brilliant paint is itself understood as the potent substance that makes them efficacious. Anthony Forge argued that Abelam religion is carried almost entirely by such images and by ritual rather than by narrative myth, so that the nggwalndu are named and displayed far more than they are recounted.

Domains

• ancestral power
• clan prosperity
• afterlife

Powers

• confer prosperity and fertility upon the clan
• shelter the souls of dead clansmen
• make its presence heard as voices in the ceremonial house

Epithets

• nggwalndu — the great spirit-beingForge, A. (1973), 'Style and Meaning in Sepik Art', in Primitive Art and Society, Oxford University Press. (secondary)

Sources

• The nggwalndu are the most powerful and respected class of Abelam supernatural beings, the paramount clan spirits revealed at the final stage of male initiation.: Losche, D. (1991), 'Abelam', Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Vol. II: Oceania, ed. T.E. Hays, Boston: G.K. Hall. (secondary); Forge, A. (1970), 'Learning to See in New Guinea', in Socialization: The Approach from Social Anthropology, ed. P. Mayer, London: Tavistock. (secondary)
• Although loosely ancestral, no genealogy is reported linking the living to the nggwalndu.: Losche, D. (1991), 'Abelam', Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Vol. II: Oceania, G.K. Hall. (secondary)