The large number of carvings recovered from the Dorset culture provide a rare insight into the religion and worldview of an ancient hunting people. The relationship between humans and animals seems to have been a central concern of the Dorset people. Human life depended on taking the lives of animals, and this act was accomplished by a combination of luck, skill, and the willingness to confront both physical and spiritual danger. The carvings found at Dorset sites suggest that their owners, like all other northern hunting peoples, practised a shamanistic religion in which all living creatures had human and animal, spiritual and physical qualities, in much the same way traditional Christian thought portrays a human being as a combination of a corporeal body and a spiritual soul. Unlike Christian belief, however, shamanistic belief does not exclude animals from the world of the spirits.
Animals have souls, can become ghosts, and can manifest themselves as spiritual beings.
Shamanistic thought postulates a distant past when there was no difference between humans and animals, when they could talk to one another and even transform themselves from animal to human form at will. These transformations and communications are thought to also occur under special circumstances, such as in a dream, or when a human soul journeys to one of the other planes of existence above or below the earth, where the animals live as humans do on the earth's surface. Such spirits could be encountered in dreams, through a deliberately induced trance or, occasionally, while hunting or travelling alone on the tundra. Through a spiritual helper, people could survive dangerous situations, and increase their ability and luck at hunting and other activities. A large proportion of Dorset carvings represent the polar bear and the falcon, the consummate hunters of the Arctic world.