Hi:
I am not English speaker and I have a doubt.
What is a SCRAELING? I have looked for in britannica.com and others dictionaries and enciclopedies but there is nothing.
By using google I find they are a kind of North American native people.
May somebody give a definition?
Thanks,

Scraeling (or skraeling) was the Norse term for foreigner, basically. The scraelings of Newfoundland, which is generally agreed to be where the Vikings first came ashore, were the Beothuk. Although most of us are used to thinking of Europeans as being more advanced than Native Americans, at that point the Beothuk were technologically about at the same level as the Vikings when it came to weaponry, and there's some evidence at L'anse aux Meadows that a Beothuk attack helped wipe out the Viking settlement there.
The Beothuk, never very numerous, apparently died out by the end of the 19th century, and there is no recording of their language.

In Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy, "Skraeling" is the word used for, I think, Native Americans. I never knew where the word came from, until now.

Also, in Sara Douglass Axis and Wayfarer Redemption Trilogies, Scraelings are a type of monster from the frozen wastelands of the north.

I heard it used in the context of the local (and usually self appointed)judge of what was politically correct. It is the character who says who can be called what and which color ribbon was to be worn on which day. It is the constantly morally superior jerk who is always looking to be indignant at someone else's expense.

quote:

Originally posted by Jay:
Also, in Sara Douglass Axis and Wayfarer Redemption Trilogies, Scraelings are a type of monster from the frozen wastelands of the north.

Interesting side-note: I think Douglass actually got the word skraeling (plus one of her character names) from a much older sci/fi fantasy book. I wish I could remember what it was called, but I saw it in a second-hand shop one day - it seemed to have come from the 60s or 70s, and the main character, Raum, fought skraelings.

But anyway, yes. The word is used to refer to American Indians.

Skraeling is the term used in the Vinland Sagas (Grœnlendinga saga and Eiríks saga rauða) for the natives that fight and trade with the Vikings in Vinland. The events take place in the XIth century and the saga was probably written on the XIIIth.

Some authors with Norse settings have used Skraeling.