The Greenlanders (57 page)

Now Jon Andres began to speak. “Lords,” he said to the judges, “and lawspeaker, it has not come to me before this to plead a case at the Thing. In Vatna Hverfi district, we talk among ourselves, and conflicts are resolved, and indeed, many of my neighbors must think this is enough, since they have not come to the Thing this year. It must be this way, that you will forgive me for speaking informally, as if we were just talking among ourselves, for that is how I am used to doing it, and the only way I know.” His smiled flashed again. “This is a serious charge, that my companions and I willfully did injury to this boy, Kollgrim Gunnarsson, and it is made more serious by something else that I freely admit, namely the history of enmity between Kollgrim’s family and my own. In fact, my mother lives at Gunnars Stead. I live, of course, at Ketils Stead, now, so you see, there is that flaw in Gunnar Asgeirsson’s case, that he has summoned a man who does not exist, Jon Andres Erlendsson of Gunnars Stead. But even so, I am summoned, I understand the serious nature of the charge, and what’s more, I freely admit to committing the act, and indeed, I am heartily sorry for the way things have turned out. Folk have said to me that Kollgrim was a good hunter and that he had other good qualities as well, but indeed, he is not dead, is he? He is not even here. Perhaps he is out hunting even now.

“I would wish that such enmity as exists between our families did not exist, but it does, and it is not my mother who made me know of it, but Kollgrim himself, who has for the past six summers and winters presented himself before me as an apparition might, saying nothing, offering nothing, doing little mischief, but some, nevertheless, such as tying together the tails of the cows or emptying the cistern that catches eave runoff at Gunnars Stead, or perhaps only lingering nearby, casting his gaze upon me as I went about my work, or following me and my friends as we rode out for visits among our neighbors. When this began, Kollgrim Gunnarsson was but a child. Even so, his attentions were a little tedious, and got more so as he grew older. And so we did these things—we asked him to go off, and he didn’t hear us. We threatened him, but he paid no attention. We drove him off, but he came back. We ignored him, but he came closer, and teased us more. No place was free of him. As a good hunter, he was always away from Hvalsey Fjord, though what game there is in Vatna Hverfi I have yet to know. And so it happened that one day when we saw him, a devilish impulse really to drive him off, for good, came over us, and it was not just the three of us who are called in this case, but six of us, another small flaw in Gunnar Asgeirsson’s case, that he has summoned only half of the perpetrators. Now they shall all stand forth, not only Ofeig Thorkelsson and Mar Marsson, but Einar Marsson and Andres Bjartsson and Halldor Bessason, and we all admit that each of us had a hand in this deed, and I may say for all of us, but especially for Ofeig and myself, that we had great regret of this, and of others of our deeds that we have done in our youth.” Now the five young men, with Ofeig first, stepped into the circle and looked about, but furtively, as if truly ashamed. Even Ofeig had been pacified, and he stood as meekly as the others. Thorkel, standing not far off from Gunnar, colored and clenched his fists, and Gunnar saw this, and saw that Jon Andres saw it, too. And Jon Andres went on, “Now I will not say that our remorse was easily arrived at, for some of us were more angry than others, and are of a more naturally difficult nature. But, indeed, I speak for all, and I offer Gunnar Asgeirsson full self-judgment in this case, and also my apologies and those of my friends.”

This statement was received with approval by the assembled farmers, and also by the judges, who saw with relief that they would not have to make a judgment in the difficult case. Now Gunnar walked off quickly with Thorkel, and returned to his booth, for it is the law in Greenland that pleaders who are given self-judgment have until the next meal to consider their demands, and the judges are not allowed to take their meat until the terms of the judgment have been proposed and accepted. At first, Gunnar was much pleased with the outcome, and declared that many goods as well as lesser outlawry could be exacted from the six of them, or they could be put to work as hunters for the Lavrans Stead folk, or he could demand some head of cattle. Thorkel said nothing, but only sat quietly in the booth for a while. At last he said to Gunnar, “Do you not see the trick he has played on us, and the eloquence with which he has gulled the judges? And even of those who know him and his band, only we were not taken in by his remorse and his charm.” Gunnar saw at once that such was the case. He said, “Yes, my friend, the fact is that folk will speak harshly against us if we punish these men as they deserve. We will seem like fathers who return blows for their children’s loving words. And indeed, talking of children, who should know better than I do that Kollgrim was not entirely guiltless in this affair? Hasn’t that urge to send him off once and for all, that urge not to be teased, but to have some peace, come over me as well as it has over these young men? What allies do we have from Vatna Hverfi and Hvalsey Fjord who don’t know Kollgrim and his ways, who haven’t themselves untied the tails of their cows or found their cheese vats on the roof of the byre? No, we will get some hay of these boys, or a sheep or two, but Jon Andres will feel no sting of punishment or dishonor. Even those who dragged Kollgrim out of the water and carried him senseless to Lavrans Stead are more dazzled by what they see before them than by what they remember from half a year ago. But this is not the last of my relations with Ketils Stead, and it seems to me that it won’t go even this well in the future.” And so, just before the time for evening meat, Gunnar went before the judges and demanded half the game caught by the six men during the summer, until the time of the autumn seal hunt, to be brought to Lavrans Stead in Hvalsey Fjord in good condition, for the use of the family there. And then the judges went to their meat. The next day there were three more cases, and then the Thing broke up, and the tale that went back to every district was that Gunnar Asgeirsson had gotten little honor from his case, and folk who had not gone to the Thing were surprised by this, for they remembered the malice of Jon Andres and his friends, and the grievous injuries done to the boy.

During the summer, Jon Andres himself came to Lavrans Stead from time to time, bringing game, and it cannot be said that he brought very much, for these Vatna Hverfi men were not especially skilled with bow or spear or snare, nor did they know where the good hunting grounds were. In the middle of the summer, Jon Andres brought some ewes with lambs. These ewes were fat and big compared to Hvalsey Fjord sheep, but even so, when Jon Andres herded them among the rest of Birgitta’s flock, he was full of praise for her sheep. The Lavrans Stead sheep, he said, were lovely sheep, perfectly formed, with thick, long, oily wool, and so forth. His own sheep were so obviously superior that his praise disconcerted Gunnar and made him suspicious. After that, Gunnar told Olaf to watch for the coming of the Vatna Hverfi man, as he himself didn’t want to meet him again.

In this summer, no sign foretold the end of the famine. The sheep scattered far and wide into the mountains, looking for forage, but there was little to be found. The grass in the homefields greened late and grew slowly, for there was little sun. Folk began talking about how to catch hares and foxes and the little fish that swarmed in the fjords around the feast of St. Petur and St. Pall. Birgitta made her milk into cheese, and gave the family water to drink, but other wives made the other choice, to bring their families through the summer on milk and let the winter take care of itself. Men marveled at how ten cows could no longer get by on the land that had once supported nearly a hundred.

Now one day shortly after Jon Andres had brought the sheep to Hvalsey Fjord, Birgitta was sitting over her weaving and looking out the door of the steading at the water in the fjord, and she saw this sign: a boat rowed up to the jetty and two seals flopped out of it and began to climb the hillside, and as they neared the steading, they turned into men. Just then, Gunnar came from the direction of the dairy, and greeted them and talked to them. Soon they returned to their boat and rowed off to another steading, and Gunnar came with a smile into the steading. It was not the custom of Birgitta and Gunnar to speak much to one another, for they had been estranged many years, but now he told her that a whale had stranded at Herjolfsnes, a huge whale like a mountain of flesh, and that he and Kollgrim and Olaf would go off that day and get some meat. Recalling the sign she had seen, Birgitta cast her eyes down, and said, “It seems to me that this is not the boon that it appears to be.” But Gunnar scowled at having his news greeted in such an ill-tempered manner and said nothing. Sometime later the men went off.

Toward evening, the rain stopped and the clouds rolled out to sea. The next day was the first bright clear day of the summer, and by noon the grass on the hillside was so dry that Birgitta and Helga brought the bedclothes out of the steading and spread them out, for they were damp and musty from the wet weather. After that they began emptying the clothing chests, and Helga went about her work happily, chatting of this and that, but Birgitta stepped heavily, and her spirits were not lifted, for it seemed to her that this heat boded no good. Nevertheless, all of the goods were dry and sweet-smelling by dusk, and Helga and Birgitta began to remake the beds. When she was just finishing, spreading the white bearskin over Gunnar’s bedcloset, Birgitta was suddenly seized by a fit of weeping so that she could not stand, but fell on the floor beside the bedcloset. Helga, coming into the steading with an armload of clothes and unstitched wadmal, put down her bundle at the door and ran and lifted up her mother’s head. Now Birgitta wept for a long while, and when she had subsided, she said to Helga, “It seemed to me when I put my hands into Gunnar’s bearskin that I saw myself as a child in this very bedcloset, and my mother had not died yet, nor did I expect her to, but only expected that my infant pleasures should go on and on, and I remembered this one that I have not thought of in thirty-five or forty years, the feel of plaiting her hair, of lifting the heavy strands and twisting them into each other, not as I do now, without a thought, but as I did then, painstaking and diligent, because I wanted greatly to learn the patterns. And the weave of her dress and the brownish color of the wadmal, and also the slope of her shoulder and the look of her neck seemed to press upon me, and I seemed to hear the sound of her voice, for it was the case that she spoke in a round, low tone that is not as I speak, or as you speak, and so is lost. And it seemed to me that I was a dupe and a ninny as all children are, as I still am, going from day to day with schemes and prospects. It seems to me that we have come to the ending of the world, for in Greenland the world must end as it goes on, that is with hunger and storms and freezing, though elsewhere it may end in other ways.” Now she looked into Helga’s face, and she saw there fondness, but not understanding.

The next day shone clear and sunny, and the day after that and the day after that, and on the fifth day, Kollgrim, Olaf, and Gunnar returned from Herjolfsnes with the whalemeat in a net in the cold water beside the boat, and Birgitta hurried to dry it and to seethe it, for it is the case that whalemeat goes off more quickly than other kinds of meat, and then cannot be eaten without certainty of illness. Birgitta kept to herself; her spirits did not lift, and Gunnar blamed her greatly for this throughout the summer.

One day Finn and Kollgrim returned from a hunting trip with a pair of beautiful big seals, although the time of the seal hunt was over, and Finn admitted that he had received them from some skraelings at the mouth of Isafjord, in exchange for a set of cunningly made arrows of Finn’s own design. Gunnar was pleased with the meat and hides, but indeed, the price was high, for a set of such arrows, made in pieces and fitted together so that they could break apart inside a bird and come out without tearing the flesh, took almost a whole winter to make. The skraelings, Finn said, had had many seals with them, and had been fat and well clothed besides, but of all Finn’s gear, these arrows were the only things the demons cared to trade for, so it was these or nothing.

Now the autumn seal hunt came around, and after the men went off, Birgitta and Helga went to the storehouse to count up provisions for the winter so that Birgitta could estimate how many sheep would have to be slaughtered. The whalemeat had given them just enough relief, so that with the two seals traded from the skraelings, and a reasonable result from the autumn seal hunt, the folk at Lavrans Stead would come to Easter with cheese in their mouths and sheep in their byre, but Birgitta knew that this would not be the case with some of her neighbors. Now she went out and began to count the ewes and half-grown lambs, although in fact she counted these over and over as the year went by and always knew just how many she had and where they were. Even so, she went among them, and saw at once the larger Vatna Hverfi sheep, for these stood out among the others like large bits of meat in a stew. In addition to that, these sheep always nosed out the best swatches of grass and chased the others off. Now Birgitta called the shepherd to her and told him to cut out the larger sheep and take them to the farm of Hakon Haraldsson, which was not far off, and to present them to the young farmwife, whose name was Ragnhild, for she had two babies at home and expected a third before Yule, and would surely not get through the winter with her family and her flock together. Osvif went off, and Birgitta walked back and forth, watching the sheep and spinning. Helga came out to her and she said, “Now we have placed our trust in Heaven, and we must pray that the Lord will give back to us what we have freely given to others. It seems to me that sometimes in the past, Sira Pall Hallvardsson and Gunnar have spoken in the evenings of how Jehovah used to try the faith of the Jews through sundry hardships. Now we will try the mercy of the Lord.”

“Sira Pall Hallvardsson would say that the Lord little likes to be tested.”