It has been assumed by several inquirers that the Eskimo immigrated to Greenland by two routes. One branch is supposed to have come southward along the west coast from Smith Sound, as suggested above, while the other branch went northward from Smith Sound and Kane Basin along the coast, where relics of Eskimo are found as far north as 82° N. lat. They thus gradually worked their way round the north of Greenland and turned southward again along the east coast. The Eskimo who formerly lived on the northern east coast, and whom Clavering found there in 1823, are supposed to have come by that route and possibly also the tribe that still lives at Angmagsalik. But in the opinion of some they may have travelled farther south, right round Cape Farewell, and have populated the south-west coast as far north as Ny-Herrnhut by Godthaab. The Dane Schultz-Lorentzen [1904, p. 289][58] thinks that support may be found for this theory of the southern immigration from the east coast in the sharp line of demarcation that exists between the dialect spoken by the Eskimo in Godthaab and northward along the whole west coast, and that spoken to the south and on the east coast; furthermore, there are other points of difference: in the build and fitting together of the kayaks, in the use of partitions between the family compartments on the couches in houses and tents, etc. Although in an earlier work [1891, pp. 8, f.; Engl. ed. pp. 12, ff.] I put forward reasons that are opposed to such an immigration round the north of Greenland, I must admit that there is much in favour of the Eskimo who formerly lived on the northern east coast having come that way; on the other hand, it does not appear to me very likely that this should have been the case with the Eskimo of the southern east coast and of the west coast. The difference alluded to, at Godthaab, may be accounted for by a later immigration from the north to the northern west coast, which did not come any farther south than this. That the boundary-line between the two kinds of Eskimo should be so sharp just between Ny-Herrnhut and Godthaab, which lie close together on the same peninsula, is easily explained by the fact of the former settlement having always belonged to the recently abandoned German Moravian mission, while the latter was the seat of Egede’s and the later Danish mission. There is always the essential objection to be made against the Eskimo having migrated to the southern east coast round the north of Greenland, that the conditions of life for Eskimo, who live principally by sealing and whaling, were poor on the north coast of Greenland, where there are no seals worth mentioning and few bears; and they can scarcely have got enough musk-oxen to support themselves. Their diffusion to the east coast could not have gone on rapidly. In the ice-bound regions they may have forgotten the use of the kayak, as the Eskimo of Smith Sound had done until thirty years ago, when they became acquainted with it again through a chance immigration from the west. In any case their practice in building and using kayaks must have greatly fallen off. But when the Eskimo came southward on the east coast they again had use for both the kayak for sealing and the women’s boat for travelling, and it is scarcely likely that the craft they produced after such a break in the development should be so near to the women’s boats and handsome kayaks of the northern west coast as we now find them; unless, indeed, we are to suppose that they improved them again through contact with the Eskimo of the northern west coast, but in that case the whole theory appears somewhat strained.
Meeting of Eskimo and Europeans
We will now look at what the known historical authorities have to tell us about the Eskimo in Greenland during the early days of the Norse settlement. I have already stated ([pp. 12, ff.]) that the Norse name “Skræling” for Eskimo must originally have been used as a designation of fairies or mythical creatures. Furthermore, there is much that would imply that when the Icelanders first met with the Eskimo in Greenland they looked upon them as fairies; they therefore called them “trolls,” an ancient common name for various sorts of supernatural beings. This view persisted more or less in after times. Every European who has suddenly encountered Eskimo in the ice-covered wastes of Greenland, without ever having seen them before, will easily understand that they must have made such an impression on people who had the slightest tendency to superstition. The mighty natural surroundings, with huge glaciers, floating icebergs and drifting ice-floes, all on a vaster scale than anything they had seen before, might in themselves furnish additional food for superstition. Such an idea must from the very beginning have influenced the relations between the Norsemen and the natives, and is capable of explaining much that is curious in the mention of them, or rather the lack of mention of them, in the sagas, since they were supernatural beings of whom it was best to say nothing.
The fairy nature of the Skrælings
In connection with what has been said earlier ([pp. 12, ff.]) as to the Skrælings being regarded as fairies (of whom the name was originally used), it may be adduced that, as Storm pointed out, the word was always translated in Latin by “Pygmæi” in the Middle Ages (cf. above, [p. 12]). But the Pygmies were precisely “short, undergrown people of supernatural aspect”—that is, like fairies—and the Middle Ages inherited the belief in them from the Greeks and Romans, and, as Moltke Moe has pointed out, the northern Pygmies (Βόρειοι Πυγμαῖοι) were already spoken of in classical times as inhabiting the regions about Thule. But authors like Apollodorus and Strabo denied their existence, and consigned them, together with Dog-headed, One-eyed, One-footed, Mouthless, and other similar beings, to the ranks of fabulous creatures in which classical tradition was so rich. Through St. Augustine the enumeration of these creatures reached Isidore; and from him the knowledge of the Pygmies was disseminated over the whole of mediæval Europe—partly in the same sense, that of a more or less fabulous people from the uttermost parts of the earth; and partly in the sense of a fairy people [cf. the demons in the form of Pygmies in the “Imram Brenaind,” see above, [p. 10]]. Supported by popular belief in various countries, the latter meaning soon became general. Of this Moltke Moe gives a remarkable example from the Welshman Walter Mapes (latter half of the twelfth century), who in his curious collection of anecdotes, etc. (called “De nugis curialium”), has a tale of a prehistoric king of the Britons called Herla.[59]
To him came a fairy- or elf-king, “rex pygmæorum,” with a huge head, thick hair and big eyes; the pygmy-king foretells to King Herla something that is to happen, and when this is fulfilled King Herla promises as a mark of gratitude to be present at his wedding. The moment the pygmy-king turns his back he vanishes. Herla comes to the wedding of the fairy-king. Entering a vast cave he comes through darkness to the banqueting-hall inside the mountain, lighted by a multitude of lamps, where he is splendidly entertained. When he returns, believing he has been away for three days, he discovers that he has been absent for several hundred years.
This is a typical elf-myth, with many of the features characteristic of elves and fairies: the low stature, the big, hairy head with large eyes, the gift of prophecy, and the power of making themselves invisible in an instant, their dwelling in caves and mountains far from the light of day, the way thither through darkness and mist, the rapid disappearance of time in the fairy world, etc. But we recognise most of these, and even more fairy features, precisely in the Icelandic descriptions of the Skrælings in Wineland, Markland and Greenland, as appears from what is said about them on [pp. 12, ff.]; and when, for instance, ugly hair (“ilt hár”) and big eyes are expressly attributed to the Skrælings, this applies neither to Indians nor Eskimo, but it applies exactly to fairies. Further, we may point to the Skrælings of Markland being governed by kings (cf. [p. 20]), which again does not apply either to Indians or to Eskimo, while the elves and huldre-folk have kings. It was mentioned earlier ([p. 20]) that the name “Vætilldi” or “Vethilldi” may be Vætthildr, compounded of the word “vættr” or “vettr” (fairy).
Everything points in the same direction, that the Skrælings of Wineland, Markland and Greenland were regarded as a kind of fairy people. Nor can this surprise us when we consider that even the Lapps of Finmark, who lived so near to and were so well known by the Norwegians, were regarded as a half-supernatural people, and had various magical properties attributed to them.
The oldest authorities on the Skrælings
From the statement quoted earlier from Are Frode’s Íslendingabók (circa 1130) it appears that the Skrælings, or Eskimo, had been in South Greenland before Eric the Red and his men, and that the latter found dwelling-sites and other traces of them, from which they could tell that the same kind of people had been there who “inhabited Wineland and whom the Greenlanders call Skrælings (‘Vinland hefer bygt oc Grönlendingar calla Scrælinga’).” These words of Are have generally been understood to imply that he did not know of any meeting of Norsemen and Skrælings in Greenland, but only in Wineland, and that consequently it must have been after his time that the Norsemen encountered the Eskimo in Greenland. I am unable to read Are’s meaning in this way. He uses the present tense: “calla,” and what one “calls Skrælings” must presumably be a people one knows, and not one that one’s ancestors had met with more than a hundred years ago. In that case we should rather expect it to be those ancestors who “called” them by this nickname.[60] I have already suggested ([p. 16]) the possibility of a connection between this statement and the view of the Skrælings as trolls; but we have besides a remarkable parallel to Are’s whole account of the first coming of the Icelanders to Greenland and the natives there in his account of the Norwegians’ first settlement of Iceland, where he says that there were Christian men before they came, “whom the Norwegians call (‘calla’) Papar” (i.e., priests). They left behind them traces “from which it could be seen that they were Irish men.” From these words it might be concluded, with as much justification as from the statement about the traces of Skrælings, that the newcomers did not come in contact with the earlier people; but in the latter case this is incredible, and moreover conflicts with Are’s own words in the passages immediately preceding, according to which the Christians left after the heathen Norsemen arrived. Three kinds of traces are mentioned in each case: the Papar left Irish books, bells and croziers; the Skrælings left dwelling-places, fragments of boats, and stone implements. This may have somewhat the look of a turn of style in the sober Are, who thought it of more value to lay stress on visible signs of this kind than to give a possibly less trustworthy statement about the people themselves. We must also bear in mind how terse and condensed the form of the Íslendingabók is. I therefore read Are’s words as though he meant to say something like the following: “As early as Eric’s first voyage to Greenland they found at once dwelling-places both in the Eastern and Western Settlements, and fragments of boats, and stone implements, so that from this it can be seen that over the whole of that region there had been present the same kind of people who also live in Wineland, and who are the same as those the Greenlanders call Skrælings.” Nothing is said about the waste districts of Greenland, where the Skrælings especially lived, and it is only in passing that Wineland is mentioned in this one passage. Are’s Íslendingabók cannot therefore be used as evidence that the Norsemen had not yet met with the Skrælings of Greenland in Are’s time. As he expressly says that they found “manna vistir bæþe austr oc vestr á lande” (human dwelling-places both east and west in the land—i.e., both in the Eastern and Western Settlements), this, too, shows that the stay of the Eskimo in south Greenland cannot have been merely a short and cursory summer visit; but there must have been many of them who stayed there a long time, for otherwise they would hardly have left remains so conspicuous and distributed over so wide an area as to be mentioned with such emphasis as this.