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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >They lived because they weren't out 
> to convert or kill those "dirty heathens."
> 

Convert, no.  But kill?   The Vikings were famous for their racially bigoted 
attitude toward non-Europeans.  It led to the extinction of the Greenland 
colony where the Vikings refused to entertain hunting for seals and whales 
that 
would have saved them because they would have to do it like those filthy 
'skraelings' (the term the Norse used to describe aboriginal people meaning 
'wretch').

In the "Greenlander's Saga" the Norse describe encounters with the 
"skraelings" as "we met a group of them and killed them all.  And oh, we had 
codfish for 
lunch" as if it were nothing remarkable at all.  Apparently the Skraelings 
felt otherwise and drove the colony back into the sea and back to Iceland.

James