The Greenlanders (26 page)

At this Easter the Greenlanders rejoiced greatly in resurrection, they said, and not only the resurrection of the Lord. The dead in Eriks Fjord and Isafjord, where the snows had been deepest, numbered fifteen, while in Vatna Hverfi district and south, the weather had been milder, and only cattle had died off from lack of fodder. Jonas Skulason was blessed and buried at the east side of Thjodhilds church at Brattahlid, for this was what Marta Thordardottir insisted upon, although Osmund her brother spoke against it.

In this spring it happened that not long before Easter, another child was born to Birgitta Lavransdottir, and this girl was blessed and baptized with the name Helga, after Helga Ingvadottir. Helga Gunnarsdottir was not so jolly as her sister Gunnhild, but cried and complained every day, and all day, until midsummer, when, as if by a miracle she was relieved of her pain through a mixture of sheep’s urine and angelica leaves warmed and rubbed onto her belly, and then tied tightly with a band, so that every day this treatment was done to little Helga, for fear that the pains would return, and Birgitta continued this for a long time, until the child was four winters old. After the infant’s recovery, Birgitta began to gain the reputation of skill in healing, and to go about to other farms in the district suggesting remedies for various ills, especially those of children. As she always brought with her large pieces of the good Gunnars Stead cheeses and lengths of thick Gunnars Stead wadmal (for she greatly believed in the efficacy of wrapping the affected part tightly in cloths), she got to be not a little sought out for her skills. Folk said that what she did for the belly made up for everything else, and in any case, that was usually harmless enough.

Unn, the “wife” of Nikolaus the Priest, was now so old and blind that she could hardly step out of the priest’s house and wouldn’t know the difference between a fistula and a fever anyway. Even so, some women visited her when they were ill, for she was much pleased to give advice. It was said that Nikolaus and his “wife” were ninety years old, nearing a hundred, in fact, and could easily remember the days of King Erik, but if this was true, it was something they never spoke of. It was also said that Nikolaus and Unn were somewhat over sixty years in age, that is that they could remember only as far back as King Magnus, which was no rare thing at all, but even so, it was said that these two were the oldest folk in the eastern settlement.

In this summer, Kollbein Sigurdsson, because of the boredom of his sailors in Greenland, agreed to give a fine prize to the winner of a swimming contest. This prize was to be either a richly colored wallhanging or a carved ivory altar with two hinged leaves and small enough to be slipped into a pocket, as the winner might choose, and in addition there was to be a great feast to last three days, with a swimming contest each day, so that the winner would not be known until the last day. The site chosen was at the hot springs in Hrafns Fjord. Greenlanders were not much used to swimming, except those who lived in the vicinity of the hot springs, for the water in Greenland is colder than in Iceland or other places, and a man can freeze to death even in the summer, but the Norwegian sailors were eager to show off their skills.

As it happened, other contests were added to the swimming contests, and these were ones, such as rowing, that the Greenlanders excelled in, but Kollbein declared that the prize should go only to swimmers. From this as from the ombudsman’s every other action, it was known that the Norwegian was niggardly and foolish. Even so, when the time for the contests was at hand, most of the folk from most of the farmsteads were not a little pleased to congregate in Hrafns Fjord and enjoy the hot springs and the feasting.

On the first day, there were two contests of endurance, one of swimming back and forth in the cold waters of Hrafns Fjord until the arms and legs were so cold that they could no longer be moved and the men were hauled out and taken to the hot springs to be revived. The winner of this contest was a sailor by the name of Egil Halldorsson. The second contest involved how long a man could hold his breath under water. In this game, a man would be held down by two other men while two judges counted the time, and when the man began fighting and flailing he would be let up for breath. Each man got three chances, and the winner of this contest was the young son of Thord and Kristin of Siglufjord, whose name was Ingvi Thordarson. After these contests, the benches were set up outside the booths, and everyone ate with much appetite. When the benches were taken away, the sailors began to chant a number of their songs and to dance in a circle. These songs were bawdy, but tuneful and pleasant. After this, a man named Steinthor, who had traveled to the feast from Isafjord, brought out a flute he had carved from a narwhal tusk, and played it for a while. Other Greenlanders sang their Greenlandic songs, and Gunnar Asgeirsson and Axel Njalsson each told a tale. Kollbein Sigurdsson declared that this was good entertainment for a place so lacking in beer and other joy-inducing refreshments.

On the second day, participants in the contests had to dive, first for a heavy marked stone, which they were to bring up, and then for a small soapstone weight, which they were to find and bring up. Many participated in these contests, and so many were able to bring up the great stone that the game had to be repeated three times, each time with a bulkier and more awkward weight. This contest was also won by Egil Halldorsson, for he was the most accomplished of the sailors in these sorts of sports. Another sailor, named Olaf Bogulfsson, won the test of finding the small loomweight. After this six rowboats made a race from one farmer’s jetty across the fjord and back. This race was won by a Greenlandic boat. After these events there was feasting, as well, and the talk turned to past feasts, especially to the great feast at Gunnars Stead, where all, even the women, had gotten much intoxicated with Asgeir’s mead, and the result had been the rape of Sigrun Ketilsdottir and all that followed it. The Norwegians spoke with longing of feasts in their own home districts, and with such conversation the evening ended.

Now on the third day there was but a single contest, but it took all day. All those participating were to go together into the spring and attempt to hold each other under the water until the wiliest man with the strongest lungs was the last one left. If this ended up to be Egil Halldorsson, then he would win the prize, but if another man should be strongest, then he and Egil would at once, without resting, run a foot race between two designated points, and that would show the strongest man. It so happened that Kollbein Sigurdsson insisted on participating in this contest, much against the advice of his English accountant, Martin of Chester, and his other friends, both Greenlanders and Norwegians.

The spring chosen was large and deep, but not so warm as the others. In spots it was so deep that no one had ever touched the bottom, and everywhere it was deep enough so that no man could be weighed down or pinned against the bottom by another. At a signal from one of Kollbein’s party, all of the men leaped into the water, which at once began to seethe with the jumping, diving, and arm swinging of the contestants. For a while, everyone struggled with great spirit, and no one raised his hand to show that he was ready to come out, for this was the rule, that each man was the best judge of his own strength and wind. Certain strong older men, who were not competing, stood around the edge of the pool to gather up those who might be rendered senseless during the contest. Folk always consider such a game to be amusing, and there was not a little shouting and calling out from the spectators. After a certain while, hands began going up, and men started being pulled, sputtering and spitting water, from the pool. Soon there were four men where there had been thirty, and these were Egil Halldorsson, two other sailors, and a big man from Siglufjord named Starkad the Strong.

One of the sailors had a thick black beard, and Starkad at once swam up to him from behind and grabbed his beard, pulled his head back, and submerged him. This sailor now brought his legs up to his head and attempted to kick at Starkad with his heels, but he could not get his beard free of the Greenlander’s fingers and began to swing his arms. Soon his hand went up, and Starkad let go his grip. The man had taken in much water, and came out coughing. He flung himself on the grass and heaved. In the meantime, Egil swam up to the other sailor and brought his legs tightly around the other man’s waist, hooking his feet together so that his clasp could not be broken. Then he grasped the other man by the ears and pushed his face under while pulling the rest of him down with his legs. This sailor, who was Egil’s friend and familiar with his trick, brought the sides of his hands hard into Egil’s ribs, causing him to let go, but now Egil caught the man around the jaw and teeth, and grabbed his tongue, so that he could not bite, and he forced the man under the water. He still clasped the man around the waist with his legs. Very soon the man’s hand went up, and he was pulled from the pool. Now the contest was between Egil and Starkad, and Starkad was the larger of the two men, one of the largest men in Greenland, and it was generally thought that the Greenlanders were larger than the Norwegians on the whole. Starkad was also known to be a good runner, and folk said that it would be a fine thing for a prize such as Kollbein had offered to come into the possession of a Greenlander.

As soon as Egil let go of his opponent, Starkad was upon him, and he took his hair in one hand and his nose in the other and forced the Norwegian’s face into the water, but Egil brought his legs up underwater and dealt Starkad a hard blow in the groin, so that the Greenlander relinquished the sailor’s nose and he took a breath. Now Egil’s arms came down on Starkad’s shoulders, and pushed him a little under the water, then, quick as an eyeblink, his legs came up and grasped the Greenlander about the head. He hooked his feet and there seemed to be little hope for the Greenlander, as his opponent’s body was out of reach. He went under, and the water grew quiet. After this, there was a long moment when Starkad was striving to break the other man’s hold, and he succeeded in doing this, but he did not appear at the surface, and Egil found himself treading water alone in the middle of the pool. Just then, Starkad came up again, took a breath, and went down again. When he surfaced the second time, he carried a large object which showed itself to be the corpus of Kollbein Sigurdsson.

This threw the assembled throng into a great stir. Starkad and Egil carried the ombudsman from the water and laid him upon the grass. Folk recalled when he had last been seen, and contestants recalled their struggles with him, but all alleged that they had hardly touched the man, for fear of his office, but had held him under a little, to go along with the game, and then let him up. Several men attested that they had seen others act in this courteous fashion. Starkad the Strong related how as Egil had forced him under, he had pushed off downwards and felt the flesh of the ombudsman, lying on the bottom of the pool, with his foot. The ombudsman was lifted up and made to give forth the water in his gullet, but this did not revive him.

There was a law in Greenland in those times that a drowned man, if recovered from the waters and not frozen, was to be placed before the altar of St. Nikolaus at the cathedral for six days, for St. Nikolaus was the patron of sailors and drowned men, and more than a few such unfortunates had been brought back from death through the intercession of the saint. But some of the Norwegians and some of the Greenlanders fell into a dispute about the quickest and best way of carrying the ombudsman back to Gardar, the Norwegians desiring to row out Hrafns Fjord, around the peninsula, and up Einars Fjord, and the Greenlanders wishing to take a smaller boat up the streams and ponds of Vatna Hverfi, which would mean that the corpus would have to be carried part of the way, but would get there in one day rather than two. This dispute soon grew acrimonious, and the Norwegians declared that the Greenlanders intended disrespect to the ombudsman, while the Greenlanders scoffed at the ignorance of the Norwegians, who knew nothing of the treacheries of the open sea at this time of year, especially if challenged in a small boat such as those that were the only ones to be had in Hrafns Fjord just then. After this, the Norwegians began accusing those Greenlanders of blindness and stupidity, whose task it had been to watch for contestants in distress, and some of the men fell to fighting and there was no one with sufficient authority to halt the fray, for Osmund Thordarson the lawspeaker had stayed at home in Eriks Fjord, and the bishop, of course, was at Gardar. Now the fight spread all over the field, and some women standing together were knocked down and the corpus itself was stepped on, so that the fighters desisted and were shamefaced.

The corpus was put into a small boat with four oarsmen, two Greenlanders and two Norwegians, and was rowed up Hrafns Fjord to the waterfall to the south of Vatna Hverfi district, and from there by various streams and lakes, it went to Einars Fjord and Gardar, where it lay before the altar but did not revive, and so the ombudsman was buried on the south side of the cathedral, and there was much discussion concerning who would now be the representative of the king in Norway. Martin of Chester and the Norwegians considered that this post should fall to another Norwegian, but among themselves the Greenlanders declared that with Kollbein Sigurdsson and Skuli Gudmundsson both dead, there was little to make of King Hakon and Queen Margarethe in Greenland.

Soon enough the end of summer came round, and the Norwegians looked about themselves at the snowy waste, and in the spring they set sail for Bergen. The Greenlanders considered their ship to be poorly provisioned and ill-repaired, and no Greenlanders chose to go off with them. In later years it was said by some that the ship had been wrecked on the ice at Cap Farvel, and that pieces of it had drifted back to Herjolfsnes, and others said that the ship had come to Norway late in the year, all aboard safe. But these tales were merely Greenlanders’ tales and the truth of the matter was never discovered.

And it came to pass that a year to the day after the death of Kollbein Sigurdsson, that is, two days before the mass of St. Bartholomew, the servingwoman Anna Jonsdottir discovered Bishop Alf dead in his bed when she went to him in the morning, and she saw that his eyes were open wide and his hands gripping the coverlet so tightly that she could not take it from them. Anna stood quietly near the bedcloset for a long while, for though she was an old woman and had seen many dead folk, as had every Greenlander, she had never known such a one as Sira Jon, priest or layman, and she shrank not a little from carrying her news to him. The talk among the servants was that he didn’t even know how ill the bishop was, so little notice did he seem to take of the old man, but each day spoke to him of all the episcopal concerns. Nor did he prepare his uncle to meet the Lord of Heaven, as the servingwomen considered that he should, saying prayers with him or confessing the old man’s sins, but he chattered on and on about masses or cattle or the weather or the accounts, as if Alf had not left that behind him months or years past. Anna looked at the bishop’s face and the grip of his hands. It was said among the Greenlanders that every man saw something in his mortal moment. Anna always imagined seeing her brother Bjartur, who had drowned as a boy, standing among the saints.