Akilineq

{{Short description|Inuit toponym}}

Akilineq is an Inuit language toponym meaning the opposite country, which has variously been theorized to be a mythical place, an area in northeastern North America, or possibly even Europe.

One theory notes that the term was used in West Greenland to refer to the territories across Davis Strait, such as the Labrador Peninsula and Baffin Island.{{cite book|author=Jack D. Forbes|title=The American Discovery of Europe|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cd8yZn7MfSQC&pg=PA150|accessdate=24 August 2013|year=2007|publisher=University of Illinois Press|isbn=978-0-252-03152-6|pages=150–}}

Renee Fosset notes that Gustav Holm of the 1880s Danish polar expedition recorded east Greenlanders as describing Akilineq as a land far to the east, which by evidence Holm took to refer to Iceland.{{cite book|author=Renee Fossett|title=In Order to Live Untroubled: Inuit of the Central Arctic 1550 To 1940|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yK7cac_mXGgC&pg=PA76|accessdate=24 August 2013|date=1 January 2001|publisher=Univ. of Manitoba Press|isbn=978-0-88755-328-8|pages=76–}}

The term was also used to refer to one or several trading sites where the Inuit and neighbouring peoples would meet, by the Akilineq Hills at the mouth of the Thelon River,{{cite book|author=Mark Nuttall|title=Encyclopedia of the Arctic|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LcucDSk4w3YC&pg=PA2|accessdate=24 August 2013|date=12 November 2012|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-57958-436-8|pages=2–}} or on the north shores of Lake Aberdeen.{{cite book|author=Matthew D. Walls|title=Caribou Inuit traders of the Kivalliq Nunavut, Canada|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Yw0NAQAAMAAJ|accessdate=24 August 2013|date=31 December 2009|publisher=Archaeopress|isbn=978-1-4073-0377-2}}