The Greenlanders (52 page)

But every day, Birgitta saw signs of improvement in the boy, and the real beginnings of adulthood. And it soon came to be that Birgitta and Gunnar could not talk about the simplest thing without talking of these two children, even if neither name was actually spoken. Of Helga there is little to say; Helga was a good and virtuous child, attentive to her duties, courteous toward everyone, and devoted to Kollgrim.

Now they rowed swiftly along in the quiet water, and from time to time Birgitta looked at Kollgrim, and from time to time she looked at Gunnar, and after they had been rowing for a while, Birgitta spoke. She said, “It seems to me that the best course for Johanna will be to go out next spring, when she is of the proper age, to the steading of your cousin Thorkel Gellison, for he is a wealthy man and Jona Vigmundsdottir is a skilled housewife.”

Gunnar replied, “The bird has not sung such a tune about her other nestlings.”

“Folk say that it is better for a girl not to become too attached to her parents’ steading, as Helga has. It will be with her as with Margret Asgeirsdottir.”

And now Gunnar let go his oar and struck his wife a blow upon the cheek, and Birgitta fell against the gunwale of the boat, and seeing this, Kollgrim turned toward his father with a cry, and was only restrained from returning the blow by the actions of one of the menservants. These things set the boat to rocking so that much water came into it and drenched the packs lying on the bottom, and so all of the folk became quiet for a time, and the servant and Kollgrim exchanged places, and they rowed on in this way. And no more blows were exchanged, but when the party returned to Lavrans Stead, Birgitta moved her things to her father’s bedcloset, and Gunnar and Birgitta had little to do with each other from this time forward for many years.

The winter that followed this great Thing was notable for bad weather—ice storms, followed by rainstorms followed by freezing weather, and the result was another serious hunger during Lent, and this time all over the settlement, not in isolated districts, as had been the case with the last hunger. And now folk remembered with disbelief the good luck of Bjorn Einarsson, that had been so great that it had radiated out from him, and from Kambstead Fjord to Hvalsey Fjord to Dyrnes and Brattahlid, so that the nearer folk were to him, the better their hay crop, the healthier their sheep and cattle, the more plentiful their stock of seaweed and bilberries. So, too, had the seal hunts and reindeer hunts been especially good in those years, and folk recalled how the seals had swarmed into Kambstead Fjord and even up onto the sands there, and the reindeer had come down from the north in herds and gathered near to Kambstead Fjord so that folk from those districts had not had to drag them far to get them home. Such was the talk that went back and forth during this famine, along with talk of the Northsetur, and the weather of earlier times, and the size of sheep in the days of Erik the Red and the quantity of seed that Thorleif had brought in his ship, and the good hay this seed had produced. And another thing folk remarked upon was the way in which, in these present days, especially good luck seemed to produce just enough to get through the winter on, while the usual run of luck produced less hunger or more at the end of the spring. Their fathers, folk recalled, had sometimes ended the winter with a small stack of hay left, a little mound outside the byre for the cows to chew over. At the end of recent winters it was the case that steadings that once had ten cows and five horses now had three of the one and one or two of the other. Steadings that had once had five cows had none. Folk had many more goats, and this was always considered a sign of bad times in Greenland.

Not so many folk had died, and it was said that those who died, died of fear, for when they saw their stores dwindling and their sheep starving, they were possessed to eat up everything they had, even if it made them sick, and then when they crept around to their neighbors, who had husbanded their provisions more carefully, there was little or none to share with them, and they were driven off, and some died and some did not, and at any rate these events caused bad blood in every district. And it caused also the abandonment of more farms, for indeed, this was the last thing that folk had to offer their neighbors in exchange for food and life, and though Sira Pall Hallvardsson and Sira Audun and Sira Isleif spoke against this practice, folk who had any surplus of food at all were not slow to accept such a trade. In this way, Vigdis of Gunnars Stead came into possession of two more large farms, and now, with Ketils Stead and Gunnars Stead, she was the most powerful farmer in Vatna Hverfi district, and Jon Andres, her son, was a man of many friends.

After this famine three years passed that were neither good nor bad, and during this time, the grandson of Ragnvald Einarsson, named Olaf Vebjarnarson, who had been pitched into the fjord when Ragnvald was running from the skraelings, was declared to be a saint on the evidence of three cures and a vision which was attested by Bjorn Bollason and his wife, who had lived at Solar Fell for five years now, and also on the strength of his martyrdom. A small shrine was built on the strand beside the spot where the child went into the water, and folk got into the habit of going there for cures and other intercessions, especially as it was not far from any district, and Bjorn Bollason and his folk were considered to be quite hospitable. The child was called St. Olaf the Greenlander and the water where he was drowned often gave off a holy glow. Many folk saw it. Folk discovered that he was most effective in problems of childbirth, and sufficient prayers to him could make a breech baby turn of itself and present its head, or slow gushing blood to a trickle. Some folk about Solar Fell who had lived there in the days of Ragnvald remembered that the baby’s crying could be stilled by the sight of a crucifix, at which he would smile and gurgle with pleasure.

Sira Pall Hallvardsson did not know the rule about saints, and had little to say when he heard the news of the cures, and of the fact that folk had begun calling the child St. Olaf the Greenlander. When the new bishop arrived, Sira Pall remarked, he would look into the miracles and make a decision. Meanwhile, folk considered that if the lawspeaker himself referred to the child as St. Olaf, then others might do so.

It was the case, however, that St. Olaf the Greenlander had no effect on the weather, which was chill and damp and sunless every year, so that the hay crop was always poor. Cattle became fewer and fewer. Even at Gardar, only thirty cows stood through the winter in stalls built for eighty. And those cows that survived seemed not so sturdy nor so healthy as most cattle had once been. Now folk began paying attention to their sheep and goats, and taking the sort of pride in them that they had taken in their cows, and the news got about that the rams at Lavrans Stead in Hvalsey Fjord were especially large and potent, so that a ewe bred to one of these rams would almost always produce twins, and almost always both would survive. And so for a year or two folk got into the practice of bringing their ewes to Hvalsey Fjord just after Yule, when Birgitta preferred to breed her sheep, so that they would be born in the good weather, and Lavrans Stead prospered. When Johanna Gunnarsdottir went off to Hestur Stead in Vatna Hverfi to live with Thorkel Gellison and Jona Vigmundsdottir, at ten winters of age, she took with her fine things in her chests, and when she went through these things, Jona Vigmundsdottir saw that her husband’s cousin Gunnar was not such a man of ill luck as he was reputed to be.

Jona Vigmundsdottir had become a red-faced and loud woman with a hot temper but a kindly manner, and folk said that she was well matched with Thorkel Gellison, who was cooler and more calculating most of the time, but not unlike his wife in the way he welcomed folk to his steading and took pleasure in the roar of many voices about the place. If there were no visitors, Jona and Thorkel would gossip with servants. If the servants were working, the two would walk back and forth in front of the steading, looking out for travelers or itinerant servingfolk who might be going from steading to steading. Horse breeding and large fertile fields and access to both Vatna Hverfi district and Einars Fjord had made Thorkel a wealthy man. Thorkel prospered through these hard years, for indeed, in all times some folk prosper, even when most do not. These folk had grown sons living at home with their wives, and one of these wives had two infants, one of one winter in age, the other newly born. It was the duty of Johanna Gunnarsdottir to help care for these children, to follow the one about and carry the other, and to chew meat for the older one, as he did not yet have his teeth, and to look after their comfort in all ways.

It was the case that Johanna was not to go to Hvalsey Fjord even at Yuletide. Such visits, Birgitta said, had been confusing to Gunnhild when she made them. But the trip from Lavrans Stead to Hestur Stead was a short one, a hike through the valley that connected Hvalsey Fjord and Einars Fjord, then a crossing of Einars Fjord at its narrowest point, and it was easy both winter and summer, and so it happened that Gunnar found a great deal of business to do with Thorkel Gellison. One day when Gunnar had spent the night with Thorkel and was just getting up and preparing to return to Hvalsey Fjord, he went outside to wash in the washing vat and to see what the weather might be, and when he came out of the house he saw a group of men on horseback passing not far from the steading; indeed, they had just stopped to have a look at the horses in Thorkel’s round horse paddock, and were setting off again. Gunnar recognized none of them. But then, as he was turning away, he saw that there was another rider a bit farther away. And then he saw that this rider was his own son Kollgrim.

Kollgrim was little practiced at riding and he sat the horse awkwardly. He rode up to Gunnar without hesitation and greeted him.

“Who are these men?” said Gunnar.

“There is Ofeig Thorkelsson,” replied Kollgrim. “And another who I believe is named Mar. The others are strangers to me.” He spoke as if he had thought little of these men before speaking to Gunnar about them. Gunnar was much perplexed. He said, “Where is Finn, then?”

Kollgrim smiled and shrugged, saying, “After reindeer, I suppose. That was his intention.”

“Who owns this horse, then?”

“A man to the north. But, indeed, it is a poor horse, not like Thorkel Gellison’s horses at all.” And before Gunnar could ask how the animal had come into Kollgrim’s possession, the boy gave it a great kick and turned and galloped away. Now Gunnar went to the paddock himself, in search of a horse to borrow, but the paddock was full of mares with unweaned foals, and so he had to look farther afield, and the result was that when he had finally mounted, all of the riders, including Kollgrim, were nowhere to be seen. Gunnar rode a ways to the north and then to the south, for the fjord was behind him and a large lake before him. He went back to Hestur Stead, where Thorkel and Jona were sitting outside the steading, partaking of their morning meat. Gunnar went and sat beside them. He said, “What news do you have of your son Ofeig?”

“Little,” said Thorkel, “and even that is unwelcome.”

“Where does he stay, then?”

“He is fostered with Magnus Arnason, but it seems to me that he spends little time there. A group of Vatna Hverfi boys goes about with a certain someone. They do a little mischief, mostly among the servingmaids. In other times they would be taking ships to Norway and learning manners from strangers.” Thorkel shrugged.

“In these times, from whom do they learn manners?”

Now Jona spoke up. “From Jon Andres Erlendsson, for he is the leader of the band. When one of their number is killed or outlawed through their mischief, that is when they will stop, and not before. Skeggi and Ingolf and Ogmund were not such as these are.” These were her other sons. Gunnar got up and walked off before she could enter into a discussion of the childhoods of these three boys. Shortly he began his journey homeward, and of every person he met on the way, he inquired about Finn and Kollgrim, but the two had not been seen in many days. It had seemed to Gunnar that Finn’s favorite hunting spots were to the north, past Dyrnes and almost to the now abandoned part of the settlement that had once been known as the middle settlement. In Einars Fjord and even in the wastelands just to the north of Vatna Hverfi there was little game to be had.

Some days passed until the return of Finn Thormodsson and Kollgrim Gunnarsson. They brought a great quantity of game with them, and Kollgrim described without the least urging or hesitation the days of their trip, including a day when Finn rested at the steading of a friend and Kollgrim took one of the horses belonging to the steading and rode about Vatna Hverfi district, admiring the wealth of the grazing lands. Gunnar looked to Finn for confirmation of this tale. Finn smiled and nodded, and told of how fatigued he had been after chasing a whale that he had thought was going to strand itself among the inlets at the head of Einars Fjord, and then he had seen some reindeer, and so had been three days sleepless, and so on. Gunnar knew these things were not to be believed, but saw no way into these falsehoods, and so remained silent. Nor did he mention to anyone what he had seen at Hestur Stead.

On another visit, he asked Jona and Thorkel whether they had ever heard Ofeig speak of Kollgrim Gunnarsson, but they had not, and anyway were more interested in relating to Gunnar tales of the fondness that the infants showed for Johanna, for indeed, the older child preferred the girl to her own mother, and always called out for her when Johanna went out of the child’s sight.

It must also be said that in these years after the lesser famine, Gunnar spent a great deal of time at his writing, summer and winter, and became more fluent, and one of the things he wrote about was Sira Jon, the mad priest who haunted Gardar. He set down the tales that folk told concerning the priest, but the truth of the case was difficult to discern, for Sira Pall Hallvardsson had drawn off from his old friends and associates, and now spoke to everyone only in the most formal and benign manner and disclosed nothing.

Now what is known as the great famine came on, and it did not come on unexpectedly, for most folk understood that life in Greenland had become more dangerous as the weather worsened and the numbers of folk on the farms dwindled, but it had always been the case that bad weather for cows was good weather for seals and reindeer. It happened, however, some eight summers after the departure of Bjorn Einarsson, that when the Greenlanders went out in the spring to herd the seals onto the beaches and kill them for the summer’s and winter’s food and oil there were no seals to be found, or only one or two where there had been scores and hundreds.