It may further be mentioned that in legendary tales and in many of the fanciful sagas we hear of trolls in Greenland, who may originally have been derived from the Skrælings, but who have acquired more of the troll- or giant-nature of fairy-tale. In the tale of the shipwreck of the Icelandic chief Björn Thorleifsson and his wife on the coast of Greenland,[62] the two were saved by a troll man and a hag who each took one of them in panniers on their shoulders and carried them to the homestead enclosure at Gardar. In the "Þáttr af Jökli Búasyni" Jökul is wrecked in the fjord "Öllum Lengri" on the east coast of Greenland, which was peopled by trolls and giants, and where a friendly troll woman helps him to slay King Skrámr, etc. [Grönl. hist. Mind., iii. p. 521]. It will be seen that here there is nothing left of the Skrælings' nature, but the usual Norse ideas of trolls and giants predominate.
The most important records of Skrælings in Greenland in older times, in addition to the works named above and the Íslendingabók, are: the "Icelandic Annals," where they are mentioned in one year, 1379, besides the allusion to the voyage from Nordrsetur in 1267 (cf. vol. i. p. 308), Ivar Bárdsson's description of Greenland [Grönl. hist. Mind., iii. p. 259], and finally Gisle Oddsson's Annals, where they are called "the people of America" [Grönl. hist. Mind., iii. p. 459; G. Storm, 1890a, p. 355].
As the Norsemen, at all events during early days in Greenland, were to a great extent dependent on keeping cattle, as they had been in Iceland, they must have stayed a good deal at their homesteads within the fjords; while the Eskimo, being engaged in fishing and sealing, kept to the outer coast. And even if the latter, after the arrival of the Icelanders in the country, had lived scattered along the southern part of the coast, there may thus have been little contact between them and the Norsemen.
From the statements cited earlier (vol. i. pp. 308, f.) about the Nordrsetur expeditions we may conclude that the Greenlanders came across Skrælings in those northern districts. It is true that the expression "Skrælingja vistir" has usually been interpreted as Skræling sites or abandoned dwelling-places; but in this account a distinction is made between "Skrælingja vistir" and "Skrælingja vistir fornligar." The latter are old dwelling-places that have been abandoned, while the former must be dwelling-places still in use. In the account of the voyage to the north, about 1267, we read that at the farthest north there were found some old Skræling dwelling-places ("vistir fornligar"), while farther south, on some islands, were found some "Skrælingja vistir"--that is, inhabited ones. In agreement with this it is also stated of the men who came from the north in 1266 that