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Skraeling

Origin

Word Origin & History

Skraeling

1767, Norse name for inhabitants of Greenland encountered by the Viking settlers there, from O.N. Skræingar (pl.), apparently lit. "little men" (cf. Icel. skrælna "shrink"); another term for them was smair menn. The name may have been used first in ref. to the inhabitants of Vineland (who

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would have been Indians), then transf. to Eskimos, who adopted it into their own language as Kalaleq.

"Hans Egede, who published a dictionary of Greenland Eskimo in 1739, says that the Eskimos themselves told him that they got the name from the Norsemen who once lived in Greenland." [Gordon, p.217-8]

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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
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