DECLINE OF GREENLAND SETTLEMENTS 



marks of being inexact, it shows at any rate that in Norway, 

 when it was taken down, the view prevailed that the 

 Western Settlement had been destroyed by an attack of the 

 Skr^lings. But nothing of the kind is really stated in the 

 account (cf. above, p. io8, note 3) ; and the possibly con- 

 temporary statement (of 1342?) which has already been 

 given (p. 100) shows that in Iceland, at any rate in the 

 seventeenth century, the contrary view prevailed, unless 

 indeed we are to explain this statement as having arisen 

 through a misunderstanding of Lyschander. 



Under the year 1379 the so-called " Gottskalks Annall " (of 

 the second half of the sixteenth century) has a statement which 

 cannot be regarded as certain, as it is not found in the other 

 Icelandic annals, but which may have been taken from older 

 sources. It reads [G. Storm's edition of " Islandske Annaler," 

 1888, p. 364] : 



" The Skraslings harried the Greenlanders and killed of them eighteen men 

 and took two boys and made slaves of them." 



It is possible that this may have some historical founda- 

 tion, and in that case it doubtless refers to some collision or 

 attack, perhaps at sea, in which the Eskimo were superior 

 and the Greenlanders were defeated, which latter circum- 

 stance is the reason of our hearing something about it; in 

 the contrary case it would not have been reported. That the 

 Eskimo took two boys is conceivable if they were quite 

 young, so that they could be trained for sealing; they would 

 thus provide an increase of the capital of the community. 

 It is not unlikely that rumors of some such collisions as this 

 may have contributed to form the ideas prevalent in Norway 

 as to the formidable character of the Skr^lings,^ while at 

 the same time there existed ideas of their flying from 

 Europeans, which appear in the reports of the Pygmies (cf. 



1 We find conceptions of the Skraelings as dangerous opponents or assail- 

 ants in Michel Beheim in 1450 [Vangensten, 1908, p. 18], Paulus Jovius in 1534, 

 Jacob Ziegler in 1532, Olaus Magnus in 1555, and others. But it is evident 

 that these conceptions are to a great extent due to myth and superstition. 



Ill 



