Page Content (OCR)
would naturally assume that these were supernatural beings who came from some region under the earth - as that was always considered to be the abode of fairies, gnomes and similar creatures." And according to Nansen this is precisely what happened. He says: "I have already stated that the Norse name 'Skraeling' for Eskimo must have originally been used as a designation of fairies or mythical creatures. Furthermore there is much that would imply that when the Icelanders first met with the Eskimo in Greenland they looked upon them as fairies. They, therefore, called them ‘trolls,' an ancient common name for various sorts of supernatural beings. This view persisted more or less in later times." Nansen goes on to tell us that when these Skraelings, or Eskimos, were mentioned in Latin writings, the word was translated as "Pygmaei," meaning "short, undergrown people of supernatural aspect." In the middle ages they were supposed to inhabit Thule, which refers to the ultimate land beyond the north. This belief in Thule, a land beyond the Pole, inhabited by a strange people, was very widespread. Nansen tells us that from St. Augustine the knowledge of these pigmies reached Isidore, and from him it passed over all of medieval Europe - in the sense of a fabulous people from the uttermost parts of the north, a fairy people. A Welshman, Walter Mapes, in the latter part of the twelfth century, in his collection of anecdotes, tells of a prehistoric king of Briton called Herla, who met with the Skraelings or Eskimos, who took him beneath the earth. Many early legends tell of people going under the earth into a strange realm, staying there for a long period of time and later returning. The ancient Irish had a legend of a land beyond the sea where the sun always shone and it was always summer weather. They even thought that some of their heroes had gone there and returned - after which they were never satisfied with their own country. A thirteenth century Norwegian writer is quoted by Nansen, according to whom the Eskimos were believed at this time to be a supernatural people, small in stature, and hence different in their origin than the other inhabitants of the earth. Gardner writes: "Nansen says that Eskimo settlements increase not only by the tribe growing in numbers, but by * fresh immigration from the north,' which clearly points to further additions from the interior of the earth. "That they originally came from a land of constant sunshine, from a country much past the northern ice barrier is the tradition of the Eskimos themselves, and it is a tradition which must be given full weight, for it could not have arisen among them in the first place without cause. On this point Dr. Senn says: ‘When questioned as to the land of their origin, they invariably point north without having the faintest perception what this means.' "Naturally the Eskimos do not know that the earth is hollow and that ages ago they lived in its interior, but they have clung to that one simple fact -