IN NORTHERN MISTS 



Are Frode, speaking of them in Greenland, only mentions 

 dwelling-places and remains of boats and stone implements 

 that they had left behind (cf. Vol. I, p. 260), as a sign that they 

 had been both in the east and west of the country, while the 

 people themselves are never mentioned; this is like troll- 

 folk, who leave their traces without being seen themselves. 

 One might suppose that such a mode of expression agreed 

 best with the current Icelandic view of them as trolls. In 

 a similar way it might be related of the first discoverer of an 

 earlier Norway, inhabited only by supernatural beings, that 

 he found traces both in the east and the west of the land 

 which showed that the kind of folk (" (?j6S ") had been there 

 that inhabit Risaland, and that the Norwegians call giants. 

 In this way possibly this passage in Are may be understood 

 (but cf. p. 77); it might be objected that this expression; 

 who " inhabited Wineland " (" hefer bygt ") does not 

 suggest troll-folk, but real human beings; if, however, the 

 existence of these troll-folk is supported by the actual finding 

 of natives, in any case in Greenland (and doubtless also in 

 Markland), then such an expression cannot appear unreason- 

 able. Besides, there would be a general tendency on the part 

 of the rationalizing Icelanders, with their pronounced sense 

 of realistic description, to make these trolls or brownies or 

 " demons " into living human beings in Wineland. while 

 the designation of . troll still persisted for a long time in 

 Greenland, side by side with Skraeling — as a name approxi- 

 mately synonymous therewith. The realistic description of 

 the Uniped affords a parallel to this. One is inclined to think 

 that the Skraelings of the saga have come about through a 

 combination of the original mythical creatures (like the 

 sid-people in the Irish happy lands) to whom at first the 

 name belonged, with the Eskimo that the Icelanders found 

 in Greenland, and perhaps the Eskimo and Indians that 

 they found on the north-east coast of North America. It is, 

 as in fact Moltke Moe has maintained in his lectures, by the 

 fusing of materials taken from the world of myth and from real- 

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