A long long time ago, long before there was a lot of people on Earth, there lived a group of people in the north of America.
They were called the Inuit people. In this part of the world it was always dark and these people thought it must be like that in all the other places where they have never been.
They had a very special relationship with nature and all animals and some of them could even understand what the animals were saying. One day a crow came to them and told them about other countries and beautiful places and that it was not always dark there.
The Inuit people were so excited and they begged the crow if he goes to these far away places again, he will bring them back some light. Crow promised that he would do that.
A few weeks later Crow flew away and he flew for a long time. In the distance he could see the dim glow of daylight. The closer he got to it, the brighter the light got and eventually the whole sky was lit up and bright.
Crow was very tired from flying so far and he landed in a tree close to a village to rest. While he was sitting in the tree, he saw the daughter of the chief come towards the river to fetch water.
Crow had magic in him, and he could change himself into something else. He quickly turned himself into a speck of dust, floated down to the girl and landed on her fur coat. When the girl returned to the village, the speck of dust was carried with her.
The girl took off her coat when she got inside the lodge and the speck of dust floated into the ear of the boy that was sitting on the ground playing. He was the grandson of the chief.
The speck of dust whispered into the child's ear "Tell your grandfather that you want to play with a ball of daylight."
The boy got such a fright and started crying. When his grandfather asked him what was wrong, he answered that he was sad, because he wanted to play with a ball of daylight.
The grandfather wanted to keep the boy happy, so he went to fetch the special box he kept in his room. Inside of this box were the daylight balls. He took out one of the balls and gave it to the boy.
The speck of dust whispered "Tell him you want to play outside."
The boy did this and went outside in the snow. As soon as they got outside, the speck of dust turned back into the crow.
He grabbed the ball of daylight from the boy's hands and flew away as quickly as he could.
He flew back to the land of the Inuits and when he got there, he dropped the ball to the ground. It shattered into tiny pieces and the light that came out went into all the houses and drove away the darkness in the sky.
The people were so excited - they could not believe how wonderful it was to be out of the dark.
"I could only carry one ball of light, so you will only have light for one year," the crow told all the people.
The Inuit people knew the ball of light had magic powers and they made a plan to make it last longer. They gathered all the pieces and only used half of it which would mean they would have light for half a year and then darkness for half a year.
That is is why, in the land of the Inuits they do not have day and night like we do, but they have light for 6 months of the year and darkness for 6 months of the year.
*this story is a folk tale told from generation to generation in different versions.
