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Skraelharr
The AEsir of the White Seas tell tales of a strange people who live on the ice floes far off in the ocean. They call these people the skraelharr, and say that they are neither human nor AEsir nor giant, but unholy abominations who drink the blood of men and wear their flayed skins as clothing.
The skraelharr are described as short (by AEsir standards; they seem to be somewhat taller than humans) and flat-faced, with jaundiced yellow skins and mouths filled with long, narrow needle-teeth. Their eyes are sharply slanted and filled with empty blue, having no irises, pupils or lashes. Instead of eyelids, they have sideways-folding membranes like those of seals or white hawks. They have no speech, but are said to communicate by gestures and howls.
According to the tribal tales, the skraelharr are vicious but cowardly: they will not attack raiders prepared for battle, but seize infants and graybeards to devour. They prefer to ambush their victims after dark, for it is said that the sun causes them pain, and that is why they live so far north, where winter nights can go unbroken for months.
Skraelharr keep no treasure that men would recognize as such. They use no weapons and make no tools. Upon raiding AEsir settlements, they have never taken their victims' weapons, except to break them in apparent rage if they were used to kill skraelharr. It is unclear whether they understand how to make use of boats: some say they have seen skraelharr riding in crude bowl-shaped boats made of stretched hides and paddled with oars of bone and ice, but others say that this is impossible and that skraelharr simply ride floating ice floes, or leap from chunk to chunk when they must cross the White Seas.
Those who claim to have invaded their homes found nothing but miserable pits scratched into the ice, with nothing more than sea-ice walls and the flapping banners of their victims' skins to shield them from the wind. The skraelharr had no fires and nothing to burn for fuel, which -- the storytellers say -- is why they so prize the warm blood of their victims. Others say they hate and fear men for being warm-blooded, and that is why they slay all they can find.
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