the Norse sagas claimed that several hundred travelers, led either by a married couple called Thorfinn Karlsefni and Gudríd Thorbjarnardóttir, or by an explorer called Leif Eriksson, made their way to a place they called Vinland. Here they encountered native peoples they derisively named skrælingar (loosely, “savages”), with whom they bartered and fought, and from whom they abducted children and caught diseases. Historians’ suspect these skrælingar were related to the now-extinct First Nations people known as the Beothuk.25 But it is not easy to be certain.
