46 THE VINLAND VOYAGES 



(peel, or skin) is to be found in Icelandic, as well as 

 kindred words like "skrsela" (to dry up, or peel), 

 "skr2elna" (to parch, or wither), and "skrsel-thur" 

 (parched). Ari the Learned doubtless wrote his 

 Islendingabok long before the Saga of Eric the Red 

 was penned. He says that the Greenlanders call the 

 natives of Vinland "Skrselingar" (Skraslings) and 

 that one can see from fragments of boats and stone 

 implements which the Icelandic settlers, pioneers of 

 Greenland, found there that a similar race had been 

 there. ^^ When Thorfinn was in Greenland, and even 

 when Ari wrote his book, the Icelanders there had not 

 encountered the Eskimos. Ari does not say that the 

 Greenlanders called the Eskimos Skrselings, but they 

 did so call the people that Thorfinn and his men came 

 across in Vinland. On the other hand, when the Ice- 

 landic settlers in Greenland later met the natives and 

 were attacked by them, they gave them the name that 

 had been previously applied to the natives of Vin- 

 land, a name by which the Eskimos are characterized 

 in Iceland to this day. 



Now the question arises whether it is true that the 

 same people were native to Greenland and Vinland 

 and identical with that race which the Greenlanders 

 met in the twelfth century and called Skrselings. 



^^ Ari Thorgilsson, The Book of the Icelanders^ edit, and transl. 

 by H. Hermannsson, Ithaca, N. Y., 1930, pp. 51-52, 64.. 



