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Jongseong | 11 years ago

From the other side, Norse accounts describe often hostile encounters with natives, whom they called Skrælings. This term referred to the Greenland Inuits and the (probably Algonquian-speaking) Canadian Indians in Vinland. Intriguingly, some accounts might possibly also describe encounters with the Dorset people, who still maintained some presence in Northwestern Greenland for a few centuries after the Norse settled in Greenland. Of course, the Inuit also have oral traditions about the now-extinct Dorset people.

I don't know of any oral traditions about the Norse from Canadian Indians, though. Unlike the settlements in Greenland, L'Anse aux Meadows was just an exploration base that never developed into a permanent settlement. So unlike the prolonged periods of contact between the Norse and the Inuit, there might have been just a few isolated encounters between the Norse and the Canadian Indians that didn't leave enough of an impression to be preserved in oral tradition.

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