WINELAND THE GOOD 



ity that the human imagination is rendered most fertile and cre- 

 ative in the formation of legend. The points of departure may 

 often be pure accidents, resemblances of one kind or another, 

 which have a fructifying effect. 



That the Skrselings, from being originally living natives, 

 should later have become trolls or brownies, is an idea that 

 Storm among others seems to have entertained (cf. note, p. 

 ii); but this would be the reverse of what usually happens. 

 That the Eskimo should have made a strange and supernatural 

 impression on the superstitious Norsemen when they first met 

 them is natural, and so it is that this impression should 

 have persisted so long, until it gradually wore off through 

 more intimate acquaintance with them in Greenland; but the 

 contrary, that the supernatural ideas about them should only 

 have developed gradually, although they were constantly meet- 

 ing them, is incredible. 



In Scandinavian literature also we find mythical ideas 

 attached to the Skraelings of Greenland. In the Norwegian 

 " Historia Norvegiae " (thirteenth century) it is said that 

 when " they are struck with weapons while alive, their 

 wounds are white and do not bleed, but when they are dead 

 the blood scarcely stops running." The Dane Claudius 

 Clavus (fifteenth century) relates that there were pygmies in 

 Greenland two feet high (like our elves and brownies), and 

 the same is reported in a letter to Pope Nicholas V. (circa 1450), 

 with the addition that they hide themselves in the caves of the 

 country like ants (see next chapter) ; that is, like underground 

 beings, although this trait may well be derived from knowl- 

 edge of the Eskimo. Mythical tales about the Green- 

 land Eskimo also appear in Glaus Magnus, and in Jacob 

 Ziegler's " Scondia " (sixteenth century) [cf. Gronl. hist. Mind., 

 iii. pp. 465, 501]. 



A little touch like that of Thorvald Ericson drawing the 

 Uniped's arrow out of his intestines and saying : " There is 

 fat in the bowels, a good land have we found . . ." shows 

 how the saga writer embroidered his romance: Thorvald was 



17 



