The Greenlanders (7 page)

In the summer that Thorleif’s ship went back to Bergen, Margret Asgeirsdottir went with Kristin the wife of Thord Magnusson to Siglufjord, and Hauk Gunnarsson declared that it was high time his nephew Gunnar learned to come upon birds and snare them, for even the bones of birds were useful around the farm for needles and hooks, not to mention their meat, feathers, and down. Hauk sat across the table from Gunnar, looking at him. “The birds about the farmstead are wary enough, not like birds in the Northsetur or in Markland, who come to perch on your arms and head if you sit still long enough. But they can still be caught, with a little care.” Gunnar nodded, but it seemed to him a tedious thing, to walk about, far up into the hills. Not even the dogs accompanied them, for Hauk preferred to hunt without dogs, as skraelings do.

The two left Vatna Hverfi and hiked westward, up into the mountains behind the church, taking their meat for the day; Hauk refused to carry Gunnar as Margret had, and made him match his own pace as well. When Gunnar was not a little annoyed by this, Hauk met his complaints with even-tempered silence, so that they fell off, and then ceased altogether with the speed and effort of the walking. Once Gunnar yawned. Just then, Hauk said, as if to himself, “All the farm folk will be out in the fields, spreading manure and forking it into the ground. There is a back-breaking day’s work, in my opinion.” Gunnar plodded behind him.

Soon they had reached barren pebbly ground above the low bilberry bushes that Gunnar knew from his walks with Margret. Here and there, in clefts, grew low birches and scrub willow. Hauk settled himself in one of these clefts without a word, and began fashioning bird snares out of seal gut. These he lay on the ground, covered with pebbles and leaves and neatly attached to bent willow twigs, then he moved Gunnar away, to another cleft, and sat patiently amongst the underbrush. Gunnar, who did not dare speak, fell into a doze. After a while, he was aroused by a loud cackling chorus, and he lifted his head to see his uncle wringing the necks of four brown ptarmigan and lashing them together with a strip of walrus hide. Then he picked up the other snares and beckoned Gunnar to follow him to another spot. Once Hauk said, “Seal gut is the best to use for making snares.” Sometime after that he said, “Ptarmigan are good in the winter only for starving men, because their winter flesh is bitter and unappetizing.” Gunnar nodded and yawned. He looked with longing at Hauk’s pouch of food, for he had seen Ingrid fill it with goat’s cheese and dried meat.

When they returned late that evening, Asgeir and Ingrid had already gone to their beds. Hauk hung his thirteen ptarmigan from the eaves of the farmstead, and Gunnar fell asleep on the bench over his evening meat. And so it went on in this wise for four more days, until Hauk told Asgeir that Gunnar had little bent for hunting, and was clumsy and noisy about even the simplest tasks. Although Asgeir did not talk about this, the farm folk said among themselves that he was very angry at the way in which Gunnar was growing up, for Olaf, too, had had no luck in imposing learning on the child, and he was hardly industrious around the farm. He kept to himself, and refused to play with the other children. Nor did he make friends of the horses, as children sometimes did. His early loquacity had vanished, although he could sometimes be heard in Hauk’s bedcloset, relating stories to his uncle in an excited tone. All in all, he was lazy and unsociable and he and Asgeir stayed far from each other. Asgeir often had Olaf with him, for Olaf was now grown into a heavyset, low-browed fellow, not much to look at, Asgeir said, but with a natural farmer’s touch, especially with the cows. Asgeir was in no hurry to send him back to Gardar and see him become a priest, and Olaf himself did not often speak of Gardar, where, it was said, the priests had to make do without butter, and without milk to drink, while at Gunnars Stead there was plenty of meat of all kinds, and cheese and butter and gathered berries and herbs. At the end of the summer half year, Margret returned from Siglufjord, and the family sat quietly at Gunnars Stead through the winter.

Now it happened in the spring, some four years after the coming of Thorleif, that another ship arrived at Gardar, but this was not a merchant ship, and it carried nothing except a few presents for Ivar Bardarson, some altar furnishings for the cathedral, and news of England, for the master of the ship was an English monk named Nicholas, who had come to Greenland out of curiosity. At the news of this, there was a great deal of talk about curiosity. The bishop, folk said, wasn’t even curious about his lands or his farms, much less about his flock, for it had now been twenty years since the death of the last bishop, and many who didn’t care to be were surely in a state of mortal sin without knowing it, and a monk could come from England out of mere curiosity, but a bishop could not come to do God’s work.

Nevertheless, the Monk Nicholas was a charming man with many stories to tell about the Church, and about life in England since the Great Death and in other places, such as France and among the Dutch, for he was a well-traveled man. Some said that his stories were not those of most monks, for he also knew what the women were wearing and how rich men were furnishing their houses. He asked many questions of the Greenlanders, and encouraged Ivar Bardarson not only to tell him everything he had learned about the eastern settlement and the western settlement, but was eager for him to write it down, as he had spoken of, for, Nicholas said, the people of Europe hardly believed that Greenland existed anymore. And this was the beginning of Ivar Bardarson’s project, which lasted the following winter.

Now it happened one day that the Monk Nicholas appeared at Gunnars Stead, and sought out Hauk Gunnarsson, who was snaring rabbits in the hills, and he was full of questions: How many days’ sail was it to the Northsetur? What was the sailing weather like at this time of the year? Was it true that Ivar Bardarson and some men had rowed a boat to the western settlement in six days? How far to the north had Hauk ever gone? What sort of folk were the skraelings there? Did they speak their prayers backward and recoil at the sign of the cross? Was it their clothing that was furry, or were they themselves covered with fur, like beasts? Where was it that the ice turned to fire in the north, as it must according to old books? And all Hauk said to any of these questions about the northern regions was “I know not. The hunting is good there.” Later, after Nicholas went back to Gardar, Hauk said, “This fellow seems a fool to me. Any man may hunt in the northern regions, and prosper, but these notions of his have no purpose.”

“You may say,” Asgeir returned, “that the English are often thus: they talk merely to talk, and go idly on great journeys merely to see the sights.”

Some days after this, Nicholas appeared again, and he found Hauk at his morning meat, and he sat down with him at once, and leaned forward and pushed his trencher aside, although Hauk had just been eating from it, and he said, “Hauk Gunnarsson, it is my fixed intention to sail north this summer, and I desire your guidance.” Hauk laughed, and said that it was too late in the summer for such a journey.

“But,” said Nicholas, “it is my fixed intention to find the Greenland bottoms, and to see such skraelings as may be found, for that is why I have come to Greenland.”

Hauk laughed again, and said that he must put off his intention, for it was no one else’s intention to comply.

And Nicholas returned a few days later, and he said that he had found a crew of Greenlanders who wished to hunt in the old hunting grounds, and the most prominent of these was Osmund Thordarson, of Brattahlid. Eindridi Gudmundsson and Sigurd Sighvatsson were also eager to go, for they had prospered in the north before. Indeed, many folk remembered the prosperity of the old days, when men went north every year and brought back quantities of walrus hide and narwhal horn, and the settlement was rich in items that the archbishop of Nidaros and the merchants of Bergen cared for. Thorleif had carried away what was stored in the bishop’s storehouse, and now folk were hard pressed to pay in sheepskins, cheeses, and wadmal what they had once paid in hides and ropes and horns. Hauk said to Asgeir that Nicholas was like a madman with this project. “The bottoms will be full of drift ice, and soon, anyway, there will be little to see in the dark, whether of ice turning to fire, or skraelings turning to demons.” And now Nicholas came again, with Osmund, and they said that the ship was ready. Osmund walked off a little to the side with Hauk, and he said, “The voyage to the Northsetur is little like a voyage to Markland, for the winds are usually favorable, and there is no lack of provisions. Are there not sheep and goats still in the pastures of the western settlement? Indeed, my friend,” said Osmund, “you are strangely unwilling, when you yourself have often gone off to the north any time of the year, and stayed there.” Now Asgeir came up to them, and he had been talking with Nicholas, and he said, “My brother, will not the sailors be Greenlanders, all except for Nicholas himself? Greenlanders know something about the ways of the ice. And a few walrus tusks and narwhal horns might ease the difficulty of the tithe. It is seven cows we lost last winter, and the sheep cast fewer lambs than they have been doing.” And so Hauk Gunnarsson was persuaded to take ship with the Englishman, and guide it north so that Nicholas could have a look at things.

Seven days after leaving Gardar, the ship’s crew put in to Lysufjord in the western settlement and rowed to the Sandnes church, where they drew the boat up onto the strand and looked about for a place to rest for a day. The farmsteads were deserted and many roofs and walls had fallen in. The hay in the fields was sometimes thick, but in other places, sand had drifted in. The sheep and goats that the Greenlanders had hoped to find were dead, or had wandered away, but there were many cod in the fjord, and voyagers ate well and bedded down in a large farmstead of many rooms. One man found a spindle whorl and a loom weight where he was sleeping, and he kept them, although many said such abandoned things were ill-omened and would bring misfortune to the journey. In the night, Hauk Gunnarsson, who had said little since leaving Gardar, woke up shouting with an evil dream. In it, he said, a giantess with the face of a walrus was found on a piece of ice, dismembering and eating a little boy, although the boy was still alive. At the telling of this dream, many of the Greenlanders declared that the wisest course would be to end their journey and return to the eastern settlement, but the Monk Nicholas scoffed at their fears, saying that not all dreams were visions, and that many dreams were the result of the previous day’s activities, or of something the dreamer chanced to eat. In fact, he said, the coming of the dream in the early part of the night showed that it could not be a vision, for the old books all said that visions could come only toward morning. Nicholas was a man of great learning, and Hauk Gunnarsson declared that he was perfectly willing to go on, and so after another day in the settlement, they rowed out of Lysufjord and began their journey north, away from the settlements and the homes of men.

They coasted north for some days, frequently harpooning seals or snaring birds or sighting polar bears and reindeer. The Monk Nicholas charted the height of the sun using a peculiar instrument that none of the Greenlanders were allowed to touch, for it was rare and very costly, said Nicholas, and was called an astrolabe. From time to time they sighted the skin boats of skraelings at a distance, but they could not come close enough to the little boats for Nicholas to satisfy his curiosity about these beings.

Now they came to a walrus island that some of the older men had visited before, and they saw that many walrus were hauled out on this island, piled high on top of one another, males, females, and half grown calves, scores upon scores. It seemed to the Greenlanders that this was what they had come north for, to make a walrus kill, and they began talking among themselves about how to go about this hunt. The case was that only Hauk Gunnarsson, Sigurd Sighvatsson, and Eindridi Gudmundsson had knowledge of walrus hunting, but the others were even more eager to try their skill, and so Hauk gave them a plan, and this is what they did.

Some little while before high tide, but after dark, they rowed the boat up to the island and clambered onto the ledge, which stood about two ells above the surface of the water, but would stand about eight ells above the water at low tide. The walruses were in their autumn humor, which is phlegmatic and inattentive, but even so, a few of the bulls would be raising their giant heads and gazing about at all times, so the Greenlanders got down upon their stomachs, and slithered from the shore into the group, and they went without speaking, and were still if any nearby bull lifted his gaze.

Now it happened that the men had spread out, and had their longest spears ready in their hands, and they looked to Hauk, who gave them a signal, and when he gave this signal, the men leaped up and began to run among the walruses, spearing them in their chests and drawing forth their heart’s blood, for this is the way a walrus must be killed, not with blows to the head, like seals, for every walrus has a head like a stone, and is invulnerable there. And as soon as the first blows were struck, the walruses all roused themselves and began to heave about, with a great bellowing and scraping of flesh over rock. Some of these beasts did go toward the water, and the men made sure to stay out of their way, but other beasts, in their confusion, went away from the water, and the men pursued them and speared them and the wet rocks were soon slippery with blood. And it was the case that Sigurd Sighvatsson stumbled and fell in front of two bull walruses, and he was speared with their tusks and crushed with their weight, but all of the other Greenlanders kept their feet and no other men were lost.

Now the sun began to come up, and the men began to parley among themselves about the butchering of the beasts, for though a good length of walrus hide rope is a valuable thing, folk get it only at the cost of great inconvenience, at the cost of bathing in the blood of these animals. On the other hand, men may quickly go among their kill and chop off the tusks and faces of the beasts, and half of the Greenlanders wished to arrange things in this way, while others wished to take the rope. Now Hauk Gunnarsson said, “We may butcher until the tide rises again, and take the tusks, or we may butcher until the tide rises the second time and take some of the rope, but by the time of the second high tide, we will expect company, and so we must set lookouts on the shore to watch for bears,” for it is the case that in the north, bears come together for one thing only, and that is to eat the walruses that men have killed for them.