[6] Professor Alexander Bugge has pointed out to me that Schoolcraft [1851, i. p. 85, pl. 15] mentions a tradition among the Algonkin Indians that they had used as a weapon of war in ancient times a great round stone, which was sewed into a piece of raw hide and fastened thereby to the end of a long wooden shaft. The resemblance between such a weapon with a shaft for throwing and the Skrælings’ black ball is distant; but it is not impossible that ancient reports of something of the sort may have formed the nucleus upon which the “modernised” description of the saga has crystallised; although the whole thing is uncertain. This Algonkin tradition has a certain similarity with some Greenland Eskimo fairy-tales [cf. Rink, 1866, p. 139].
[7] As arquebuses or guns had not yet been invented at that time, this strange name may, as proposed by Moltke Moe, come from “fusillus” or “fugillus” (an implement for striking fire) and mean “he who makes fire,” “the fire-striker.”
[8] Evidently saltpetre has been forgotten here, and so we have gunpowder, which thus must have been already employed in war at that time, and perhaps long before.
[9] Moltke Moe has found a curious resemblance to the description of the “herbrestr” given above in the Welsh tale of Kulhwch and Olwen [Heyman: Mabinogion, p. 78], where there is a description of a war-cry so loud that “all women who are with child fall into sickness, and the others are smitten with disease, so that the milk dries up in their breasts.” But this “herbrestr” may also be compared with the “vábrestr” spoken of in the Fosterbrothers’ Saga [Grönl. hist. Mind., ii. pp. 334, 412], which M. Hægstad and A. Torp [Gamalnorsk Ordbog] translate by “crash announcing disaster or great news” [cf. I. Aasen, “vederbrest”]. Fritzner translates it by “sudden crash causing surprise and terror,” and K. Maurer by “Schadenknall.” It would therefore seem to be something supernatural that causes fear [cf. Grönl. hist. Mind., ii. p. 198]. The “Grönlandske historiske Mindesmærker” mention in the same connection “isbrestr” or “jökulbrestr” in Iceland. I have myself had good opportunities of studying that kind of report in glaciers, and my opinion is that it comes from a starting of the glacier, or through the latter skrinking from changes of temperature; similar reports, but less loud, are heard in the ice on lakes and fjords. Burgomaster H. Berner tells me that the small boys of Krödsherred make what they call “kolabrest,” by heating charcoal on a flat stone and throwing water upon it while simultaneously striking the embers with the back of an axe, which produces a sharp report.
[10] Scorium (slag) is also used in mediæval Latin for “corium,” animal’s skin, hide.
[11] The poles that are swung the way of the sun or against it seem incomprehensible, and something of the meaning must have been lost in the transference of this incident from the tale from which it was borrowed. It may be derived from the kayak paddles of the Greenland Eskimo, which at a distance look like poles being swung, with or against the sun according to the side they are seen from. It may be mentioned that in the oldest MS. of Eric the Red’s Saga, in the Hauksbók, the reading is not “trjánum” as in the later MS., but “triom” and “trionum.” Now “triónum” or “trjónum” might mean either poles or snouts, and one would then be led to think of the Indians’ animal masks, or again, of the trolls’ long snouts or animal trunks, which we find again in fossil forms in the fairy-tales, and even in games that are still preserved in Gudbrandsdal, under the name of “trono” (the regular Gudbrandsdal phonetic development of Old Norse “trjóna”), where people cover their heads with an animal’s skin and put on a long troll’s snout with two wooden jaws. But that snouts were waved with or against the sun does not give any better meaning; there may be some confusion here.
[12] It is worth remarking that Gustav Storm, although he did not doubt that the Skrælings of Wineland were really the natives, seems nevertheless to have been on the track of the same idea as is here put forward, when he says in his valuable work on the Wineland voyages [1887, p. 57, note 1]: “It should be remarked, however, that this inquiry [into ‘the nationality of the American Skrælings’] is rendered difficult by the fact that in the old narratives the Skrælings are everywhere enveloped, wholly or in part, by a mythical tinge; thus even here [in the Saga of Eric the Red] they are on the way to becoming trolls, which they really become in the later sagas. No doubt it is learned myths of the outskirts of the inhabited world that have here been at work.” In a later work [1890a, p. 357] he says that it is “certain enough that in the Middle Ages the Scandinavians knew no other people in Greenland and the American countries lying to the south of it than ‘Skrælings,’ who were not accounted real human beings and whose name was always translated into Latin as ‘Pygmæi.’” If Storm had remarked the connection between the classical and Irish legends and the ideas about Wineland, the further step of regarding the Skrælings as originally mythical beings would have been natural.
[13] This is the same word as the Old Norse “skratti” or “skrati” for troll (poet.) or wizard. “Skræa,” “sickly shrunken and bony person,” in modern Norwegian, from north-west Telemarken [H. Ross], is evidently the same word as Skræling; cf. also “skræaleg” and “skræleg”; further, “Skreda” (Skreeaa), “sickly, feeble person, poor wretch,” from outer Nordmör [H. Ross].
[14] It is, perhaps, of importance, as Professor Torp has mentioned to me, that the word “blá” is more often used than “svart” (black), when speaking of trolls and magic, as an uncanny colour. This may have been a common Germanic trait; cf. Rolf Blue-beard.
[15] Grönl. hist. Mind., i. p. 242; G. Storm, 1891, p. 68.