The Greenlanders (38 page)

If there needed to be any proof that an imp was in partial possession of the child, then this was it, that after jumping about so, and causing such difficulty, Kollgrim opened his eyes, with their fan of lashes, and looked at Gunnar in guileless question, as innocent and well disposed as any child could be, as Johanna herself looked when she awakened between Birgitta and Gunnar in the morning. Now Gunnar said, “It is true, boy, that my father Asgeir was greatly disappointed with me, and went about asking whether he could change my name from Gunnar, which was the name of his father, to Ingvi, which was a strange name, and the name of a stranger, my mother’s father in Iceland. But it seems to me that he would have been much pleased with the likes of you, for you bustle about, even in your sleep, as Asgeir bustled about from dawn to dark on the longest days.”

“Lavrans sits all day in his chair beside the fire.”

“Lavrans is close to seventy winters old, and much afflicted in his joints. But my father was some forty-five or forty-eight winters when he died, still a young man with bright yellow hair, although he seemed to me at the time as old and set in his ways and bitter to me as Lavrans does to you.”

“Did he greet you angrily, as Lavrans does me?”

“Every time he saw me, his countenance fell, for all folk considered me a do-nothing, and it is true that it seemed for a time as if a sleeping curse was upon me, especially after my father’s brother was killed on the ice far to the north.”

“Did he go among the skraelings?”

“Hauk Gunnarsson went often among the skraelings, and was not averse to their ways. He wore the skins of birds for his underclothing, and my old nurse was greatly scandalized at such a thing. But folk didn’t speak of the skraelings then as they do now, for the skraelings hadn’t shown their true devilish natures, and hadn’t killed Christians as they have now. Nor were they about in such numbers as they are now. Hauk Gunnarsson ate his meat raw sometimes, at the end of winter, as skraelings do, and foxes and bears, and he said it wasn’t a sin to do so, but a necessity in the far north, where the world is white from year’s end to year’s end.”

“Lavrans is a do-nothing, and yet everyone serves him, day and night.”

“After a long day, folk rest at night. After a long summer, folk play games and sit about in the winter. After a long life folk sit about the fire and stay warm, for the chill of death is upon them, and even the thickest bearskin can’t keep off the shivering.”

“But folk say that Lavrans was never prosperous or hardworking, and that is why Lavrans Stead is so mean. And Gunnhild sometimes speaks of Gunnars Stead at night in bed, and she says that the fields and the lakes there were like the meadows of Paradise.”

“It is true that Gunnars Stead is a fine farm, and any man would long from time to time for such a place. But when I see Lavrans beside the fire, I am fond of him, for this reason, that one time, after the death of Asgeir Gunnarsson, I went to the Thing at Gardar, and I had few friends, if any, and my booth was small and made of a piece of wadmal, not of white reindeer skins, as it is now. Although my father was Asgeir Gunnarsson and I lived at the great farm of Gunnars Stead, men pushed past me without seeing me, or they looked me up and down and recollected what was said about me and laughed into their beards. And so it happened that I wandered away from the Thing field, and I saw a young girl standing on the hillside, right on the hillside out there, where the Gardar stream runs down, before it divides and flows into the homefield.”

“Was that girl my mother?”

“Indeed it was she, and she had just passed her fourteenth birthday. And now it happened that as I was looking at her, she turned her head and looked at me, and from that long way, I could see the blue color of her eyes, and I climbed the hill toward her, gazing at her eyes the whole way. She was not like any other girl I had known, for my sister was tall and much inside herself, and her hair was always braided perfectly, as if her head had been carved from stone, but Birgitta was slight and not a little disheveled. However, she looked at things as if her soul went out to them and fixed upon them. And so I went and sat down on the hillside next to her, and we talked and became friends, and it seemed to me that this young girl and only she would have the strength to save me and make me a man.

“The next day was the last day of the Thing, and all morning men were striking their booths and taking to their boats and leaving, and I knew that I should go to Lavrans, but I had no friends to take with me, and I was afraid. I also knew that Lavrans lived far away, in Hvalsey Fjord at the mouth of the fjord, and that the Hvalsey Fjorders were usually the first to leave. But I walked about in fear and did not approach him, and before long almost everyone was gone, and it was time for me to go, too, for I had come in a boat with a man from Vatna Hverfi who was eager to leave. Finally I saw that Lavrans’ booth was still up, but that his servants were beginning to take it down, so in a panic I ran to where he was packing up his belongings, and I said that Birgitta Lavransdottir was my only friend in the whole world and I wished to have her for my wife. Now another man such as Asgeir or even myself as I am now, with five handsome daughters, might have knocked me down for such a speech, but Lavrans has never acted as other men do. He only smiled and looked at me with a gaze that was somehow like Birgitta’s and somehow different, and less, perhaps, since Birgitta has second sight and Lavrans doesn’t, and he said that such a thing was not as he had desired when the child was born, for then King Hakon had been an unmarried man, and available, but now, alas, the news was that King Hakon had taken Queen Margarethe to his wife, and so Birgitta Lavransdottir would have to look elsewhere, and in short, he gave her to me, and she did as I thought she would, though she was but a child, and I even more of a child, though five winters older.”

Now Kollgrim yawned and declared that this was a nice tale for Gunnar to tell, but not as nice as the tale of the Sandnes polar bear, who used to speak to folk at a big farm in the western settlement just as they were falling asleep or waking from sleep, and tell them what the animals said about them. Kollgrim fell asleep against him, and Gunnar slipped him among the reindeer hides. Then he carried two or three hides away from the boy and settled himself down. The rooms at Gardar were so well turfed that the tiny lamp and their breath were enough to keep them warm all night.

There was much activity at Gardar, of animals and men and farm business and church business and other business. The news of Sira Jon’s dream seemed to imbue everyone with a fresh sense of haste, and folk ran here and there, straightening, polishing, shining, and arranging, as if the new bishop’s ship had already been sighted in the fjord. Even so, Gunnar felt a great longing for Lavrans Stead come upon him, so that every conversation seemed tedious to him, and all the news he gathered stale and dubious. Kollgrim was especially tiresome, for he refused to stay among the other children, and was always going among the cattle or wetting himself in the water below the landing spot. The day stretched out in length, and Gunnar spent much of it down by the water, admiring Einar’s ship. Even among Bjorn’s larger ones, this one attracted the eye by its trim lines.

For Sira Pall Hallvardsson, the day seemed to pass with painful quickness, for there was much to talk about, and not only to Sira Jon, with whom Pall Hallvardsson, of course, had business, but also with Sira Audun and the other boys and with folk from other districts who were visiting for various reasons. In fact, for the first time ever, Sira Pall Hallvardsson could not help conceiving something of a horror against returning to Hvalsey Fjord and the loneliness there. As a young man new in Greenland he had gone from district to district, filling in for absent priests and visiting many farmsteads, but now Sira Audun and an assistant, Gizur, did this, and they complained bitterly about it. It was hard to find boats, and hard to persuade folk to lend servants as rowers, and harder still to come to the churches, most of which had fallen into bad repair, especially in the southern part of the settlement, so that Sira Audun had written a verse, as follows:

Men who come to cut turf with the priest
Men who come to lift stones with the priest
Women who come to sweep sand out of the church
Women who change broken lamps for whole ones
All these are as blessed as the kneelers;
Our Lord hears loudly their voiceless prayers
.

But Sira Pall Hallvardsson expected that the younger man merely longed to be among the comforts of Gardar, and it was true, that being himself a Greenlander, Sira Audun would hardly be received with the sort of curiosity that had opened doors to himself. Sira Audun’s father was a man well known in the south for parsimonious dealings with his neighbors, and perhaps Sira Audun was something like his father, or seen to be, which amounted to the same thing. Nonetheless, his hymns and verses were pleasing.

And now, the night before, Sira Audun had sat upon the tall stool in his room, where he entertained Sira Pall Hallvardsson for a few minutes, and he had said, “Indeed, brother, I little like to be away from here, and I always leave with a sense of apprehension and return with a sense of foreboding. I begin looking out for the buildings as soon as they can be seen, or for messengers sent out to meet me.”

“What is it you fear, then?” said Sira Pall.

“Not that he will harm others.”

Sira Pall did not need to ask who it might be who wouldn’t harm others. He said, “He is busy and has all the threads of the bishopric sorted out in his hand.”

“Even so.”

“So what is it you fear?”

But Sira Audun could not say. Sira Pall walked off calmly, as if dismissing such concerns from his thoughts, but when he went in for his interview with Sira Jon, he could not help looking at him closely.

Of the condition of the church and steading at Hvalsey Fjord, the condition of the poor folk under the church’s protection, and the size of the revenues he had received so far in the year from the Hvalsey Fjorders he spoke at length. He was careful to figure in repairs to St. Birgitta’s sheep fold as well as the services of the younger Lavrans Stead ram, an animal of Birgitta Lavransdottir’s own breeding, who produced exceptionally fine offspring even if the ewe was not very large or thick of wool. Sira Jon became annoyed with these items, and declared, “Is it in such bits and pieces that you expect the church to eke out her due?” but Sira Pall Hallvardsson was not disconcerted, and said only “Yes” in a mild and soothing tone of voice. In addition to these things enumerated, Sira Pall Hallvardsson went on, St. Birgitta’s church had a great excess of whale meat and whale oil left over from the winter, and these commodities could easily be transported to Gardar for use there.

“Such oil always burns with a stink that is repellent to us, worse even than seal oil. And the meat is good only for dogs after a day or so, even if it has been dried.”

After his report, Sira Pall Hallvardsson knelt before the other priest, thinking that the other man would never accommodate himself to life among the Greenlanders, and then he made his confession, and among the sins he confessed was covetousness toward Einar, the foster son of Bjorn Jorsalfari, for even on such a journey as the visitors were on, Einar went daily among writings and books and manuscripts as Pall Hallvardsson hadn’t seen since his boyhood in Ghent, and he spoke of authors, and recited fragments of poetry in Latin and Norse and German as set Pall Hallvardsson’s heart afire with longing. In addition to this, Einar was now betrothed to the child Gunnhild Gunnarsdottir, a child Pall Hallvardsson had always known well and felt much love for, as she was beautiful and good-natured and like unto her mother in the calmness of her temperament. And these thoughts of the books and the girl, not to mention the travels, tormented his thoughts, although he liked Einar well enough.

This confession seemed, for a time, to render Sira Jon speechless, for he said nothing, and his silence drew Sira Pall Hallvardsson onward, to speak more and more fully of what it was that he envied of the Icelander. Now, Sira Jon cut him short with a brief sentence of absolution, then suddenly ran off, and some while later, Pall Hallvardsson heard him speaking to one of the servingwomen. At the evening meal, he presided with his customary aplomb, only, as usual, glancing often at Bjorn, who was eating beside him. When Pall Hallvardsson came out of the hall, Einar was nearby, in the yard, and Pall Hallvardsson went up to him, for indeed, he could not stay away from the man, for as folk say, when envy does not engender hatred, it engenders love, and this was what happened to Sira Pall Hallvardsson.

There were folk who did not care for Einar, for he was always ready to contradict what was being said, and to take a greater part in the conversation than some thought proper. In addition to this, he could not forbear correcting folk. If a man declared that a cool but rainy summer was better for the hay than a sunny but dry one, Einar was sure to insist the opposite. After this, a few would offer stories of the starvation of eight winters before, when no rain at all fell until after the hay crop was all burned up, but Einar persisted with tales of the grass rotting in the fields and the hooves of livestock softening and disintegrating, and the weight of his stories was so great that talk would stop.

Or discussion would arise of the efficacy of certain relics. St. Olaf’s finger bone at Gardar would be recalled to have cured a madness, and Einar would declare that the relics of St. Olaf were well known for curing scrofula and other skin ills, but not for curing madness. At this someone would assert that his father or grandfather had been there when the cure took place, or was a member of the household, at which Einar would declare that in that case, it must not be the finger bone of St. Olaf, but of some other saint, perhaps St. Hallvard, or even a saint from Germany or France, such as St. Clothilda or St. Otto, and folk did not know how to answer these notions, for they had not heard of these saints, and hesitated to admit it. It was true that Einar’s tales had this effect on people, that when he was finished speaking, they were reluctant to admit how little they knew in comparison to him. It was also the case that he often corrected his foster father when Bjorn related tales or made talk, but Bjorn did not mind, and indeed, thanked the younger man for remembering things he himself had forgotten.