--- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> --- andie nachgeborenen
> <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> >
> > Clearly they did
> > > a
> > > great deal of trading back and forth.
> >
> > Not so clearly, according to Diamond.
>
> I thought that there was trade of metalworked goods
> for ivory and so forth -- but then I also have an
> equally hazy memory of reading that the Inuit were
> not
> the skraelings mentioned in the Greenland Saga, but
> moved into the area later, and that the earlier
> inhabitants already had metalworking? (My knowledge
> of
> this dates from about 8 years ago when I was
> studying
> Icelandic.)
>
>
Yep, according to http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/archeo/oracles/norse/40.htm , the skraelings of the GS were _not_ Inuit:
"According to the Norse sagas, Eric the Red discovered Greenland in approximately A.D. 982, and within a few decades the Icelanders had established two settlements on the southwestern coast. The population of these settlements reached up to 3000 people, and the settlements themselves survived until the fifteenth century A.D. When Eric landed in this new country, he found no human occupants, but he did find evidence of former occupations: fragments of boats and stone tools, likely the remains of Dorset culture, the Eskimo or Eskimo-like race that had occupied Arctic North America since approximately 2000 B.C. and who are presumed to have been exterminated by the invading Inuit. When the Icelanders Thorgils Orrabeinsfostre, was shipwrecked for three years on the eastern coast of Greenland about A.D. 1000, he may have encountered these people. The sagas tell of the strange and terrible adventures experienced by Thorgils and his men. In one of the stories, they saw two "witches" butchering a sea mammal beside a hole in the ice. They cut off the hand of one witch, the witches fled and the Norse claimed the sea mammal.
Between A.D. 1000 and A.D. 1030, the Norse mounted at least four expeditions to Vinland and Markland. In Markland, they encountered people who slept under their boats, one of whom killed the expedition leader with an arrow. In Vinland, they met people who travelled in boats with whom they traded red cloth for furs, but the second contact with these people led to a battle. These Skraelings of Markland and Vinland were almost certainly Indians, the ancestors of the historic Montagnais and Beothuk peoples."
As far as trade between Norse and Inuit (after the Inuit arrived), the same site says:
"Traditional Inuit accounts suggest that the Norse may have been as eager to trade as to fight, and given the economic realities of mediaeval Greenland, this would seem likely. Metal was in short supply for the Greenlandic Norse as it had to be imported from Europe, as did their requirements of grain, timber and luxury goods. Payments for these imports were made in skins of walrus, polar bear and other animals, and primarily in walrus and narwhal ivory. In order to acquire the vast amounts of walrus ivory that records show were traded for European imports, the Norse had to travel 500 kilometres north of their settlements to the hunting grounds where walrus were numerous. Once there, it would have been to their advantage to trade small pieces of metal or worn-out tools to the Inuit for walrus ivory, hides and other local products, enabling them to return more speedily to their settlements where their manpower must have been needed. If this were the case, it would help to explain the widespread scatter of Norse objects among twelfth and thirteenth century Inuit sites in Arctic Canada."
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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