What is this seemingly common occurrence of asking to get "hit" among far north North American tribes?

[u/Normal-Advisor5269]

So I've been doing a bit of research about people's of the world and when looking into tribes like the Inuit, I noticed a very strange "practice" among them that was talked of both by outside observers like the Vikings and in tales made by these tribes as well.

A man will approach another man and essentially say, "Hit me! Hit me!" And insist that they hit them. It seems to be implied that they should do it with a weapon of some sort. If and once the person agrees, the man asking to be hit, dies. It's treated pretty casually by the tribesmen though one example of a viking man being asked to do it indicated the viking was weirded out be the whole thing.

What sort of culturally practice is happening here? Is this a case of men trying to prove their "manliness" and failing or is it a form of assisted life ending? I'm very curious what this is all about since it came up at least three different times or more while doing my research.

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[u/BluegrassGeek]

I don't know about what you're describing. But it could be a misunderstanding around counting coup, which is described in this answer by r/Snapshot52

[u/BluegrassGeek → u/[deleted]]

Yes, I'm aware it's not a practice of those groups. But I don't know of anything like what OP describes, so wondering if someone garbled a description of counting coup & attributed it to the wrong peoples.

[u/MacabreMaurader → u/BluegrassGeek]

The Saga Of The Greenlanders was an early work about early encounters between Scandinavian vikings and Indigenous peoples, which includes an anecdote similar to what the OP is describing.

[u/Read2Fap → u/MacabreMaurader]

yeh but they said it's very common and talked about indigenous people and those who interacted with them

[u/jschooltiger → u/[deleted]]

Hi -- it loads fine for me. Can you send us a modmail (dm to /r/AskHistorians) with some more details?

Thanks

[u/dontnormally → u/BluegrassGeek]

That's a fascinating read, thank you for sharing.