Nordic Skraeling, Tiny people of the north pole

                                        The Skraeling

 

 The first written accounts of Arctic elves come from Viking Sagas- texts written by medieval Norsemen in ancient Nordic and Germanic history. 

Among the most famous of these is the saga of Erik the Red.

Erik the Red, a  Norse farmer who lived in Iceland in the late 10^th Century. 

In 982 A.D., he was banished from Iceland for committing a murder. 

Accompanied by a handful of  friends and relatives, he left his home and headed out to sea, bound for a mysterious land to the west which had been spotted by Icelandic sailors blown off course.

Erik the Red and his crew spent three years exploring this new land, and discovered that it had areas which were suitable for farming. 

In 985, he returned to Iceland and told  tales of what he dubbed “Groenland”, or “Greenland”. Having convinced a number of Norsemen to help him settle this new territory, Erik the Red returned to Greenland that year and established a colony there.

In 999 A.D., one of Erik the Red’s sons, called Leif Eriksson, traveled to Norway, his father’s birthplace, where he converted from Norse paganism to Christianity. 

 

Determined to bring the Christian religion to Greenland, he headed out into the North Atlantic. During his voyage, he was blown off course, and landed on a strange shore where wild grapes grew in abundance. 

He called this New World “Vinland”, or “Wineland”, and later returned there to establish a colony of his own. Some historians believe that Leif Eriksson’s Vinlandic colony was what we know today as L’Anse aux Meadows, a cluster of Viking ruins discovered on the northern tip of Newfoundland.

 

 

Icelanders  told of Erik the Red and Leif Eriksson’s adventure in New World.

 

This collection of story's would later become the Icelandic Sagas.

Many of the Sagas mention the Norsemen's  encounter with small humans in the New World, in both Vinland and Greenland. 

 

The Vikings called these people “Skraeling”. According to the 13^th Century Saga of Erik the Red, the Skraeling “were short in height with threatening features and tangled hair on their heads. Their eyes were large and their cheeks broad.”

Many historians believe that the Skraeling were the Thule people, the ancestors of the modern Inuit. , Inuit folklore even contains some references to bearded, sword-wielding giants called “Kavdlunait”, believed by many to be Viking explorers. 

Others claim that the Skraeling were the ancient Dorset people, whom the Inuit eventually displaced.

Though some maintain that the Sagas’ references to Skraeling constitute the first written records describing a lost tribe of Arctic dwarfs, remnants of which, some say, still inhabit the Northland to this very day.(see captain foxes discovery in previous post)

..............................

🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄

next weeks post will be the last one for 2021...

🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄

.......

 So what do you think, is it possible there is still a hidden race of small people living the arctic to this day?

Captain Luke Foxe and the Norther Elves..

 

 

 Elves Dwarves Skraeling faý little people fairy's gnomes and the list goes on it seems every culture has at least one legend or myth evolving small human like beings sometimes only a few inchs tall others 3-4 feet in height

During an arctic expedition in the 16  hundreds one captain and his crew may have discovered an "eleven" burial sight.

elf by tess eisinger
 https://www.deviantart.com/tess-eisinger/art/Elf-859514719

🎄🎄🎄🎆🎇✨🎄🎄🎄

Captain Luke Foxe and the Norther Elf's

 

Captain Luke Foxe, was  a 17th Century English explorer and adventurer who followed in the footsteps of Martin Frobisher and Henry Hudson, and set sail on the icy waters of Northern Canada in search of the Northwest Passage. 

Captain Foxe's first and only Arctic expedition was during  the spring of 1631. 

Beginning in  Kirkwall, Orkney, he and his crew sailed west across the Atlantic to Frobisher Bay, situated near the northern lip of Hudson’s Bay. 

 

He sailed through the Hudson Strait and, after visiting the crew of Welsh Captain Thomas James, who was also searching for the Northwest Passage, headed west

 

 On July 27, 1631, Foxe and his crew disembarked at Southampton Island, a large island located at the northern end of Hudson’s Bay. There, they discovered a strange above-ground cemetery the final resting place of a number of small coffins made from wood and stone. 

 

Inside these coffins were “tiny" human skeletons only four feet in length, surrounded by bows, arrows, and bone lances. They were all adults, and there is some implication that not all of them were skeletons, but might have been whole frozen bodies.”

 

 

 

The first part of Foxe’s report, which he included in his personal journal, went as follows:

“The newes from land was that this Island was a Sepulchre, for the Savages had laid their dead (I cannot say interred), for it is all stone, as they cannot dig therein, but lay the Corpses on the stones, and wall them about with the same, coffining them also by laying the sides of old sleddes about which have been artificially made. The boards are some 9 or 10 foot long, 4 inches thicke. In what manner the tree they have bin made out of what cloven or sawen, it was so smooth that we could not discerne, the burials had been so old.

“And, as in other places in those countries, they bury all their Vtensils, as bows, arrows, strings, darts, lances, and other implements carved in bone. The longest Corpses was not above 4 foot long, 2 with their heads laid to the West. It may be that they travell, as the Tartars and the Samoides; for, if they had remained here, there would have been some newer burials. There was one place walled 4 square, and seated within the earth; each side was 4 or 5 yards in length’ in the middle was 3 stones, laid one above another, man’s height. We tooke this to be some place of Ceremony at the buriall of the dead.”

In a footnote, Foxe added, “They seem to be people of small stature. God send me better for my adventures than these.”.....

 

Another  winter/Christmas post next week🎄🎇🎆✨🎄