188 H. P. STEENSBY. 
pean travellers have had, when they came in contact with hirtherto 
untouched aborigines. 
I am thinking of a feature like that of the axe, that the Skrælings 
immediately considered it worthless when it could not cut stone. Or of 
the one from the trading-scene, when the Skrelings gave just as much 
for the narrow strips of cloth as for the broad ones. That sort of incident . 
cannot possibly have arisen in the imagination of one or another Icelander. 
It must originate from real experiences. - 
The problem has been discussed as to whether the Skrælings at 
Höp were Indians or Eskimos. Some are of the opinion that the name 
might imply that they were Eskimos. Meanwhile I quite agree with 
Storm, that the Norsemen, as a matter of course, must have regarded 
these people to be of the same sort as those of whom they had found 
traces in Greenland. It is a transfer of our habitual thoughts when we 
so sharply raise the question of Indians or Eskimos. The Norsemen 
cannot possibly have been led to a distinction by their cursory know- 
ledge. Let us remember that the first Spanish discoverers could attach 
a name already in use elsewhere, such as Indians for the newly dis- 
covered Americans. 
The name therefore does not guide us. But on the other hand 
it appears to me that the description of the appearance of the strangers 
— perhaps more in its entirety than in its details — absolutely is more 
remindful of Indians than of Eskimos.! Something similar is the case 
with the whole record of these Skrælings as regards their personal be- 
haviour, and their implements and weapons. 
The only point which speaks for the Eskimos is that skinboats are 
mentioned, whilst one would expect to find bark-boats with Indians on 
the St. Lawrence River. Meanwhile it could, as Storm emphasizes, be 
quite possible that the Norsemen here have fallen into an error, since 
they supposed the boats to be covered with skins, like the boats of the 
more northern Skrælings, with which one must suppose they had been 
acquainted. If the Norsemen did not submit the bark-boats to a very 
close examination, they could easily confound them with skin-boats. 
Of course it is also possible — as Hovgaard supposes — that the expres- 
sion “skin-boat” was a later interpolation in the saga, after it had become 
generally known in the northern world that the Skrælings in Greenland 
used boats covered with skins, wherefore it was taken for granted that 
the Skrælings in Wineland also did so. 
Of the weapons used by the Skrelings, the spear, the stone-axe, 
“the valslongva” (a kind of sling), and finally the big “ball” which was 
sling out from a pole are mentioned or alluded to. With regard to the 
spears, it is on that assumption that the poles they swung in the boats 
in fact were spears; that will apparently mean a wooden spear, without 
any special point of stone or bone. 
1 Cf. Storm p. 352f. — 
