IN NORTHERN MISTS 



that they could not come from the north, but by the route 

 through Kroksfjord, wherever their original home may have 

 been. As they cannot well have come from inland, nor from 

 out at sea either, this statement may give one the impres- 

 sion of something semi-supernatural. It is significant that 

 the Skraelings themselves are not spoken of here either; 

 this may be due to the fact that there was nothing remarkable 

 in meeting with them; what, on the other hand, was 

 interesting was their distribution in the unknown regions far- 

 ther north. 



It was remarked in an earlier chapter (Vol. I, p. 297) that 

 the runic stone, found north of Uperinvik, shows that Norsemen 

 were there in the month of April, perhaps about 1300, and pos- 

 sibly it may also point to intercourse with the Eskimo. It was 

 further mentioned (Vol. I, p. 308) that the finding, in 1266, 

 " out at sea " of pieces of driftwood shaped with " small 

 axes" (stone axes?) and adzes (i.e., the Eskimo form of 

 ax), and with wedges of bone imbedded in them, shows 

 that there were Eskimo on the east coast of Greenland at 

 that time. It is true that nothing is said as to what part 

 of the sea the driftwood was found in; but from the context 

 it must have been between the west coast of Greenland and 

 Iceland; so that in any case it was within the region of 

 the East Greenland Current, and it cannot very well be 

 supposed that these pieces of driftwood came from any- 

 where but the east coast of Greenland, unless, indeed, they 

 should have come all the way from Bering Strait or Alaska. 

 The way in which they are spoken of shows that they were 

 regarded as something out of the common, which was not due 

 to Norsemen. 



The brevity of Icelandic literature in all that concerns 

 the Skraelings is again striking when we compare it with 

 the information about the Eskimo that appears in the maps 



in the most northerly regions, although they saw empty sites. As the Eskimo 

 leave their winter houses in the spring and lead a wandering life in tents, this 

 need not surprise us. 

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