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''Skræling'' (Old Norse and Icelandic: ''skrælingi'', plural ''skrælingjar'') is the name the Norse Greenlanders used for the indigenous peoples they encountered in North America and Greenland. In surviving sources, it is first applied to the Thule people, the proto-Inuit group with whom the Norse coexisted in Greenland after about the 13th century. In the sagas, it is also used for the peoples of the region known as Vinland whom the Norse encountered during their expeditions there in the early 11th century. ==Etymology== The term is thought to have first been used by Ari Þorgilsson in his work Íslendingabók, also called ''The Book of the Icelanders'', written well after the period in which Norse explorers made their first contacts with indigenous Americans. By the time these sources were recorded, ''skræling'' was the common term Norse Greenlanders used for the Thule people, the ancestors to the modern Inuit. The Thule first arrived in Greenland from the North American mainland in the 13th century and were thereafter in contact with the Greenlanders. The ''Greenlanders' Saga'' and the ''Saga of Erik the Red'', which were written in the 13th century, use this same term for the people of the area known as Vinland whom the Norse met in the early 11th century. The word subsequently became well known, and has been used in the English language since the 18th century. The word ''skræling'' is the only word surviving from the Old Norse dialect spoken by the mediæval Norse Greenlanders. In modern Icelandic, ''skrælingi'' means a ''barbarian'' or foreigner. The origin of the word is not certain. William Thalbitzer (1932: 14) speculates that ''skræling'' might have been derived from the Norse verb ''skråla'', meaning "bawl, shout, or yell". An etymology by Michael Fortescue et al. (1994) proposes that the Icelandic word ''skrælingi'' (savage) may be related to the word "skrá", meaning "dried skin", in reference to the animal pelts worn by the Inuit.〔 Some scholars have speculated that ''skrælingi'' came from the Scandinavian word ''skral'' or the Icelandic word ''skrælna''. The word ''skral'' connotes "thin" or "scrawny". In the Scandinavian languages, it is often used as a synonym for feeling sick or weak, but this speculation is probably a case of folk etymology or linguistic "false friend"; the word skral does not exist in medieval Norse texts (for example the Icelandic sagas) nor in modern Icelandic. It is a 17th-century loanword from Low German into the Scandinavian languages: Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. ''Skræling'' or ''skrælling'' means ''weakling'' in modern Norwegian and Danish.〔(Dictionary lookup ) in authoritative Norwegian dictionary; unable to find an English-language source as the word is too obscure to be included in most English-Norwegian dictionaries.〕 ''Skrælna'' refers to shrinking or drying (plants for example). The term is moderately pejorative in Erik the Red's Saga as it is first used after a negative description of Native Newfoundlanders encountered in Vinland. First Nations people in Canada consider it offensive. The Greenlandic ethnonym ''Kalaalleq'' may be based on the Norse ''skræling'' (the combination ''skr'' is unknown in the Inuit language) or on the Norse ''klæði'' (meaning cloth). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Skræling」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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