Game of Ball: Legends and Folklore of the Northern Lights - Inuit Most Inuit groups have a myth of the northern lights as the spirits of the dead playing ball with a walrus head or skull. The Inuits of Nunivak Island had the opposite idea, of walrus spirits playing with a human skull Folklore is from Legends of the Northern Lights, by Dorothy Jean Ray, The ALASKA SPORTSMAN, April 1958, reprinted in AURORA BOREALIS The Amazing Northern Lights, by S.I. Akasofu, Alaska Geographic, Volume 6, Number 2, 1979 From Blue Panther Keeper of Stories.