Michel Beheim, who travelled in Norway in 1450, gives in his poem about the journey [Vangensten, 1908, p. 18] a mythical description of the Skrælings (“schrelinge”), who are only three “spans” high, but are nevertheless dangerous opponents both on sea and land. They live in caves which they dig out in the mountains, make ships of hides, eat raw meat and raw fish, and drink blood with it. This points to his having found in Norway ideas about the Skrælings as supernatural beings of a similar kind to those already mentioned.
In a letter to Pope Nicholas V. (1447-1455) it is related [cf. G. Storm, 1899]: “And when one travels west [from Norway] towards the mountains of this country [Greenland], there dwell there Pygmies in the shape of little men, only a cubit high. When they see human beings they collect and hide themselves in the caves of the country like a swarm of ants. One cannot conquer them; for they do not wait until they are attacked. They live on raw meat and boiled fish.” This resembles what is said about the Pygmies in Clavus, but as additional information is given here, it is probable that both Clavus and the author of this letter, and perhaps also Beheim, have derived their statements from older sources, perhaps of the fourteenth century, which either were Norwegian or had obtained information from Norway. The description of the Pygmies and how they fly on the approach of strangers points to knowledge of the Eskimo and their habits. The idea about caves is, perhaps, more likely to be connected with pixies and fairies, who lived in mounds and caves (cf. pp. [15], [76]); but reports of the half-underground Eskimo houses may also have had something to do with it. It is possible that the common source may be the lost work of the English author Nicholas of Lynn, who travelled in Norway in the fourteenth century (cf. [chapter xii.] on Martin Behaim’s globe).
Archbishop Erik Walkendorf (in his description of Finmark of about 1520) has a similar allusion to the Eskimo, which may well have the same origin. He transfers them to the north-north-west of Finmark, like the Pygmies on Claudius Clavus’ map. He says: “Finmark has on its north-north-west a people of short and small stature, namely a cubit and a half, who are commonly called ‘Skrælinger’; they are an unwarlike people, for fifteen of them do not dare to approach one Christian or Russian either for combat or parley. They live in underground houses, so that one can neither examine them nor capture them. They worship gods” [Walkendorf, 1902, p. 12].[66]
We thus see that while Icelandic literature, subsequent to Are Frode, affords scarcely any information about the Greenland Skrælings themselves, it is a Norwegian author, as early as the thirteenth century, who makes the first statements about them and their culture; and a Danish author of the fifteenth century, whose statements may originally have been derived from Norway (like those in the letter to the Pope and in Walkendorf), mentions no other inhabitants of Greenland but the Eskimo (Pygmies and Karelians);[67] but they are still referred to as semi-mythical and troll-like beings.
The explanation must doubtless be sought in a fundamental difference in the point of view. To the Icelandic authors, brought up as they were in saga-writing (and for the most part priests), the life and struggles of their ancestors in Greenland were the only important thing, while ethnographical interest in the primitive people of the country, the heathen, troll-like Skrælings, was foreign to them. To this must be added the reasons already pointed out ([p. 81]). In Norway, on the other hand, kinship with the Icelandic Norsemen in Greenland was more distant, and interest in the strange, outlandish Skrælings was correspondingly greater. Here also different intellectual associations, and intercourse with a variety of nationalities, caused on the whole a greater awakening of the ethnographical sense.
Silence of the “King’s Mirror” about the Skrælings
A remarkable exception is the “King’s Mirror” (circa 1250), which makes no mention of the Skrælings, although a good deal of space is devoted to Greenland and the Greenlanders. But this, as it happens, throws light upon the curious silence on the Skrælings in Icelandic literature. From the “Historia Norwegiæ,” which seems to have been written approximately at the same time as or soon after the “King’s Mirror” (perhaps between 1260 and 1264), it appears, as we have said, that the Greenland Skrælings were known in Norway at that time; and in that case it is incredible that the well-informed author of the “King’s Mirror,” who shows such intimate knowledge of conditions in Greenland, should not have heard of them. If he, nevertheless, does not allude to them, it appears that this must be for a similar reason to that which caused them to be so little mentioned in Icelandic literature. That the Skrælings should have been spoken of in a missing portion of the “King’s Mirror,” which perhaps was never finished by the author, is improbable, as the account of Greenland and its natural conditions seems to be concluded.[68]
Concerning the “King’s Mirror” as a whole one ought to be cautious in drawing conclusions from its silence on various subjects; from its mentioning whales in the Iceland sea and seals in Greenland but not in Norway one might conclude that neither whale nor seal occurred in Norway; and the same is the case with the aurora borealis, which is only mentioned in Greenland.
Summary of the allusions to Skrælings in Greenland
If we attempt to sum up what we may conclude from the historical sources as to the Eskimo or Skrælings of Greenland during the first centuries of the Norse settlement there, something like the following is the result: When Eric the Red arrived in Greenland he found everywhere along the west coast traces left by the Skrælings, but whether and to what extent he met with the people themselves we do not hear. The probability is that the primitive people retired from those parts of the coast, the Eastern and Western Settlements, where the warlike and violent Norsemen established themselves; while they continued to live in the “wastes” to the north. The Historia Norwegiæ (besides the accounts of the voyages to the north from Nordrsetur in 1266 and 1267) shows that the Norsemen met with them there, but at the same time speaks of immediate fighting. The mythical tale of Thorgils Orrabeinsfostre ([p. 81]) also points in the latter direction, as does the myth in Eric the Red’s Saga of the Greenlanders in Markland stealing Skræling children. We have further the stories in Claudius Clavus and Olaus Magnus of hide-boats and Eskimo (Pygmies) that were captured at sea. This points to the Norsemen of that early time having looked upon the Skrælings as legitimate spoil, wherever they met them. Doubtless upon occasion the latter may have offered resistance or taken revenge, as may be shown by the statement in the Icelandic Annals of the “harrying” in 1379; but as a rule they certainly fled, as is their usual habit. I have myself seen on the east coast of Greenland how the Eskimo take to their heels and leave their dwellings on the unexpected appearance of strangers, and this has been the common experience of other travellers in former and recent times. It is not likely that the ancient Norsemen, when they came upon a dwelling-place thus suddenly abandoned, had any hesitation about appropriating whatever might be useful to them; unless indeed a superstitious fear of these heathen “trolls” restrained them from doing so. It is therefore natural that the Skrælings avoided that part of Greenland where the Norsemen lived in large numbers. But where they came in contact we may suppose that friendly relations sometimes arose between Eskimo and European at that time, as has been the case since; nor can the Norsemen of those days have been so inhuman as to make this impossible; and gradually as time went by the relations between them probably became altogether changed, as will be discussed in the next chapter, particularly when imports from outside ceased and the Norsemen were reduced to living wholly on the products of the country; they then had much to learn from the Eskimo culture, which in these surroundings was superior.