Gripla - 20.12.2009, Blaðsíða 127
127
Greenland, and on the whole it is impossible at this stage to say defini
tively whether the skrælingar were Indians or Eskimos; the distinction
certainly was immaterial at the time, when the people that met the
Norsemen were truly ‘new’.
In Eiríks saga rauða (‘The Saga of Eric the Red’) itself, the skrælingar are
described thus: ‘They were black and ferocious men, who had wiry hair on
their heads; they had big eyes and broad cheeks’ (Eyrbyggja saga 1935, 227).5
The Norse observers were none too pleased by what they saw; in other
stray references to the native Greenlanders, the skrælingar were described
as trolls (e.g. Flóamanna saga 1932, 43). Seen from the Icelandic centre, the
Eskimos were definitely not human. They could in fact be anything but.
In slightly later sources, where actual meetings between the settlers and
native inhabitants of Greenland are related, the references are still slightly
mythical. When the (Greenlandic) Norsemen went hunting for seal and
walrus at Norðrseta (their northernmost hunting grounds on the western
coast of Greenland) they would see traces of settlements and also meet the
‘small people’ of skrælingar. An early source is Historia Norwegiae (c. 1200)
in which it is said that “further north, hunters have found a small people,
whom they call skrælingar. Hit by weapons when alive, their wounds turn
white and do not bleed, but when they die their blood does not stop flow
ing” (Historia Norwegiae 1880, 75ff). The encounter probably was not
entirely peaceful but that notwithstanding, a picture is given of a people of
hunters, totally lacking iron but with a remarkable craft in using walrus
bone and stone. These people would have been members of what was later
to be known as the Thule-culture among archaeologists (Hastrup 2008);
from the detailed description of their weapons and skin-boats, there is no
doubt that the references in both Eiríks saga rauða and Grænlendinga saga
are to members of this (archaeologically defined) early eskimo culture – in
so many ways the ‘Scythians of the North’ by their hunting and nomadic
ways. Most encounters between the Greenlanders (of Icelandic descent)
and the skrælingar, are depicted as a meeting between a farming and a hunt
ing people that are driven towards each other by equal amounts of curios
ity, enmity, a wish to exchange goods and a wish to remain untouched (e.g.
Eyrbyggja saga 1935, 261f).
5 ‘Þeir váru svartir menn ok illiligir ok hǫfðu illt hár á hǫfði; þeir váru mjök eygðir ok breiðir í
kinnum.’
noRtHeRn BARBARIAnS