Page:The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893.djvu/66

44 skill as craftsmen; both of them speak the language of their conquerors imperfectly, both are regarded as of inferior race and both are described as wearing blue or red caps, and gray kirtles of reindeer skin.

"It has often been asserted that the dwarfs, mentioned in the ancient Sagas, were not real men, but mythical and allegorical beings, meant to typify certain powers and conditions of nature. . . But in the description of dwarfs as given by the Sagas, we find too many and too distinct ethnological characters to admit of any such theory. The reason for supposing that the dwarfs have no historical reality is probably, in the first instance, that they are said to have performed several supernatural and impossible feats, or, in other words, that they practised sorcery. But this does not fully entitle us to deny their historical existence. In that case, not only the Laplanders in Europe, but, also, the whole Esquimaux race in America, ought, for the same reason, to be regarded as mythical and allegorical, because it is not long since that people living in their neighborhood believed, and probably still believe, the former to be sorcerers; and the Indian tribes in America think, even to this day, that the latter are still acquainted with the black art."

As a proof that the Eskimos were so regarded by Europeans, as well as by Red Indians, I may here interpolate Sir John Lubbock's observation that "when Frobisher's crew, in 1576, captured an old Esquimau woman, they took her for a witch, and pulled off her boots to see if she had cloven feet." And I shall also show that the term troll, which signifies "witch" and "wizard" as well as "dwarf," was applied to the natives of Greenland by the Scandinavians as recently as the fifteenth century.

It is impossible to repeat here all the various matter-of-fact incidents cited by Nilsson as showing that the dwarfs of Northern tradition "were corporeal and human beings, and considered as such by the narrators themselves, although of another race." But one passage specially deserves quotation. Referring to the numerous instances in which the dwarfs are spoken of as inhabiting caves, underground dwellings and