''Skræling'' (

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...

and Icelandic: ''skrælingi'', plural ''skrælingjar'') is the name the

Norse Norse is a demonym for Norsemen, a medieval North Germanic ethnolinguistic group ancestral to modern Scandinavians, defined as speakers of Old Norse from about the 9th to the 13th centuries. Norse may also refer to: Culture and religion * Nor ...

Greenlanders used for the peoples they encountered in North America (Canada and Greenland). In surviving sources, it is first applied to the Thule people, the proto-

Inuit Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, ...

group with whom the Norse coexisted in Greenland after about the 13th century. In the

saga is a series of science fantasy role-playing video games by Square Enix. The series originated on the Game Boy in 1989 as the creation of Akitoshi Kawazu at Square (video game company), Square. It has since continued across multiple platforms, ...

s, it is also used for the peoples of the region known as Vinland whom the Norse encountered and fought during their expeditions there in the early 11th century.

Etymology

The word is most likely related to the Old Norse word , meaning "dried skin", in reference to the animal pelts worn by the Inuit.

William Thalbitzer __NOTOC__ William C. Thalbitzer (5 February 1873 in Helsingør – 18 September 1958 in Usserød) was a Danish philologist and professor of Eskimo studies at the University of Copenhagen. He studied Danish, English and Latin at the university, but ...

(1932: 14) speculated that might have been derived from the Old Norse verb , meaning "bawl, shout, or yell". In modern Icelandic, means " barbarian", whereas the Danish descendant, , means "weakling". The term is thought to have first been used by in his work , also called ''The Book of the Icelanders'', written well after the period in which

explorers made their first contacts with

indigenous Americans Native Americans or Native American may refer to: Ethnic groups * Indigenous peoples of the Americas, the pre-Columbian peoples of North and South America and their descendants * Native Americans in the United States * Indigenous peoples in Can ...

. By the time these sources were recorded, was the common term Norse Greenlanders used for the Thule people, the ancestors to the modern

. The Thule first arrived in Greenland from the

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

n mainland in the 13th century and were thereafter in contact with the Greenlanders. The ''

Greenlanders' Saga ''Grœnlendinga saga'' () (spelled ''Grænlendinga saga'' in modern Icelandic and translated into English as the Saga of the Greenlanders) is one of the sagas of Icelanders. Like the ''Saga of Erik the Red'', it is one of the two main sources on t ...

'' and the '' Saga of Erik the Red'', which were written in the 13th century, use this same term for the people of the area known as Vinland whom the Norse met in the early 11th century. The word subsequently became well known, and has been used in the English language since the 18th century. " Kalaallit", the name of the largest ethnic group of Greenlandic Inuit, is likely derived from ''skræling''. In 1750, Paul Egede mentions that the Inuit used "Inuit" among themselves, but used Kalaalit when speaking to non-Inuit, stating that this was the term used by Norse settlers.

Norse exploration of the New World

Norse exploration of the New World began with the initial sighting of North America by an Icelander named

Bjarni Herjólfsson Bjarni Herjólfsson ( 10th century) was a Norse- Icelandic explorer who is believed to be the first known European discoverer of the mainland of the Americas, which he sighted in 986. Life Bjarni was born to Herjólfr, son of Bárdi Herjólfsso ...

, who spotted land after drifting off course on a journey to Greenland in 985 or 986. His voyage piqued the interest of later explorers including Leif Eriksson, who would explore and name the areas of Helluland, Markland and Vinland.

First contact

Leif laid the groundwork for later colonizing efforts by establishing a foothold on Vinland, where he constructed some "large houses." Upon his return to Greenland,

Thorvald Thorvald is from the ''Old Norse'' name ''Þórvaldr'', which means "Thor's ruler". Despite this pagan origin, the name survived the conversion of Scandinavians to Christianity and remains popular up to the present. Thorvald may refer to: * Thorv ...

has the first contact with the native population which would come to be known as the ''skrælings''. After capturing and killing eight of the natives, they were attacked beside their beached ships, which they defended:

Thorfinn Karlsefni

Thorfinn Karlsefni was the first Norse explorer to attempt to truly colonize the newly discovered Vinland, on the same site as his predecessors Thorvald and Leif Eriksson. According to the Saga of Erik the Red, he set sail with three ships and 140 men.Keneva Kunz (Translator) ''The Saga of Erik the Red'', in ''The Saga of Icelanders'', Penguin Books, New York, 2001. Upon reaching Vinland, their intended destination, they found the now famous grapes and self-sown wheat for which the land was named. They spent a very hard winter at this site, barely surviving by fishing, hunting game inland, and gathering eggs on the island. The following summer they sailed to the island of Hop where they had the first peaceful interactions with the native people, with whom they traded. Thorfinn forbade his men to trade their swords and spears, so they mainly exchanged red cloth for pelts. They described the aboriginal inhabitants: Shortly thereafter, the Norsemen were attacked by natives frightened by a bull that broke loose from the Norse encampment. They were forced to retreat to a more defensible location before engaging their attackers; at the end of the battle two of his men had been slain, while "many of the natives" were killed. As with any inhabited foreign land, Thorfinn and his men realized that After this adventure, they returned to Greenland. Their three-year excursion would be the longest lasting known European colony in the New World, until Columbus's voyages nearly 500 years later initiated full-scale European conquest of the Americas.

Inuit folktales of the Norse

There are also accounts from the Inuit: Kavdlunait (plural) was the Inuit word for foreigner or European. Compare modern Greenlandic '' qallunaaq'' ("Dane"), formerly spelled ''ĸavdlunâĸ''.

References

*Hans Christian Gulløv, ed., ''Grønlands Forhistorie'', Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2005. *Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Pálsson (Translators), ''The Vinland Sagas : The Norse Discovery of America'', Penguin Books, 1965 Translation, 13th reprint of 1985, p. 65, *Kane, Njord (2015) The Vikings: The Story of a People (Spangenhelm Publishing)

External links

Online etymology dictionary

{{DEFAULTSORT:Skraeling Indigenous peoples of North America Norse colonization of North America Ethno-cultural designations Exonyms