Page:The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893.djvu/72

 50 these two "troll" women were female Skroelings is taken for granted by M. Beauvois, and as no other race is mentioned as then inhabiting or visiting Greenland, it is difficult to avoid arriving at this conclusion. "These trolls," says Beauvois, referring to an incident of later date, "could be no other than Eskimos, travellers not haying reported any other natives of Greenland than the Kalalis, called Skroelings by some writers and 'trolls' by others." The special incident which called forth his remark occurred in the latter part of the fourteenth century. In, or about the year 1385, an Icelander named Bjoern Einarsson was wrecked along with his followers, on the Greenland coast. During his stay there, he happened to rescue two young trolls, a brother and a sister who had taken refuge on a reef which the flowing tide would soon have submerged. They swore allegiance to him, and from that moment he never lacked food, for, by their skill in hunting and fishing, they were able to procure him everything he required. The young girl esteemed it a great favor when her mistress, Solveig, allowed her to carry and caress her infant. She also wished to have a head-dress like the lady's and made one for herself from whale-gut. The brother and sister killed themselves by leaping into the sea from the crags in endeavoring to follow the ship of their dear master, Bjoern, who had not wished to carry them with him to Iceland."

Contemporaneous with this episode is the visit of the Italian voyagers, Nicolo and Antonio Zeno to Greenland. Those whom the former saw in the northeast of Greenland are, as M. Beauvois says, obviously Eskimos, or Skroelings. Apparently, Zeno does not apply any special name to them, merely styling them "natives." But their skin canoes, as described by him, are the Eskimo kayaks.

Those seen by his brother, at Cape Farewell, the "half-wild people, of small stature and very timorous, who took refuge in caverns at the sight of man," "correspond well with the Skroelings of the Sagas"—to quote again the words of M. Beauvois.

Those Italian voyagers do not, of course, use the Norse