Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1767, Norse name for inhabitants of Greenland encountered by the Viking settlers there, from Old Norse Skræingjar (plural), apparently literally "little men" (compare Icelandic skrælna "shrink"); another term for them was smair menn. The name may have been used first in reference to the inhabitants of Vineland (who would have been Indians), then transferred to Eskimos, who adopted it into their own language as Kalaleq.\nHans Egede, who published a dictionary of Greenland Eskimo in 1739, says that the Eskimos themselves told him that they got the name from the Norsemen who once lived in Greenland.
[Gordon, p.217-8]
Wikipedia
Skræling ( Old Norse and Icelandic: skrælingi, plural skrælingjar) is the name the Norse Greenlanders used for the 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.
Usage examples of "skraeling".
Up and down the trench the predominant sound was of the harsh breathing of the defenders intermixed with the excited whisperings of the wraithsinterspersed occasionally with an agonised cry as a man fell victim to the hungry teeth of a Skraeling.
We hurt them badly above Gorkenfort, and for months the Skraeling masses were scattered all over Ichtar, too disorganised to push further south.
Scores fell, Skraelings clinging to their faces and necks, their teeth sunk deep into the sweet flesh of the manlings, almost delirious with joy as they tasted their flesh.
The Skraelings rushed the walls in a massed attack, hooking their talons into the minute cracks in the masonry and gradually clawing their way towards the battlements, their silver eyes gleaming obscenely in the dim light that the torches threw down.
The Skraelings had almost completely abandoned their wraithlike forms once they came through the cracks.
For as far back as tribal memory stretched the Skraeling wraiths had existed.
The Skraelings had sheltered him and loved him, but Gorgrael had led a miserable life among the silly wraiths until the day that, scampering across a small ice field, he had seen the cloaked figure striding towards him.
If the bands of Skraelings were relatively small, the wraiths were vicious and the fighting bitter, and his patrol had come home smaller than it had left.
He had numerous thousands of Skraelings to work with, and he had learned early that it was better to use the wraiths in concentrated attacks than mass surges down the entire width of the WildDog Plains.
The Skraeling wraiths, massing in southern Ichtar since autumn, had finally begun their push south during Snow-month, but their efforts and determination had increased dramatically in the past three weeks.
Having been the crucial factor in the collapse of Gorkentown, vomiting their loads of Skraeling wraiths over the fortified walls, the IceWorms were again proving devastating here in Jervois Landing.
The defenses rested on the system of canals siphoning the Skraelings into narrow areas where the wraiths could be more easily attacked and killed than if men had been forced to fight them in open spaces.
But this was dangerous, very dangerous, for both SkraeBolds and Gryphon learned quickly to await that moment when a significant number of the Icarii had landed, their eyes to the ground searching for arrows among the disintegrating Skraeling wraiths, and then launch an attack.
We are tied to Sigholt, Belial, by the Skraelings moving south through the WildDog Plains.
Axis cursed himself as Belial reminded him that Sigholt, nay, Achar, could not survive if both brothers went to war against each other while the Skraeling threat was so bad.