Skraeling Island is located off the northwest coast of Ellesmere Island, not far from Greenland. There, over the course of 15 years, archeologists excavated clusters of 800-year-old Thule Inuit winter houses built of sod, stone and whalebone, and uncovered a mixture of well-preserved Norse and Thule artifacts. On Skraeling Island a small carving was found under a floor with slivers in its head and its face stretched into a terrible grimace. Many Norse items were abandoned at Skraeling Island, and Schedlermann feels Inuit looked at these as curiosities, without any particular value, even for trade. For example, one of the most remarkable finds on Skraeling Island, a small Norse hand plane of Greenlandic birch, was found without its blade.