The Greenlanders (75 page)

“Now you must find Thorkel and Arni Magnusson and go with me to the lawspeaker’s booth. It seems to me that we won’t be disappointed in our reception.” And they went off. After the betrothal was agreed upon, the Thing broke up, and folk went back to their own districts with much to talk about. Gunnar saw that Bjorn Bollason was indeed an easygoing fellow, for he made not the smallest objection to Sigrid’s plans. And he saw that he himself was as easygoing as Bjorn Bollason, although perhaps not as sanguine.

After the Thing it was decided that the wedding between Jon Andres Erlendsson and Helga Gunnarsdottir would take place just before the autumn seal hunt, that is, on the feast of St. Bartholomew, or as close to that as those with calendars might agree upon. And now Birgitta came out of her bedcloset, and went alone with many of her belongings to Gunnars Stead, so that she could oversee the preparations. The wedding itself was to take place at Ketils Stead, for it is not considered seemly for a bride to be married out of her own steading, unless she be widowed. And so it was the case that Birgitta was often thrown into the company of Jon Andres Erlendsson, and at first these meetings disquieted her very much, for she was reminded of the summer of her pregnancy with Gunnhild, when it seemed to her that Vigdis was casting the evil eye upon her. Although folk said that it was remarkable (or worse) how little Jon Andres looked and acted like his parents, nevertheless, Birgitta saw his mother’s eyes staring out at her from under the dark eyebrows, and was hard put to keep up the talk. But he was devilishly thoughtful of her, and always sent one of his fine horses for her to ride upon, with a handsome servingman to lead it, or else he came himself to Gunnars Stead, and they spoke at length of cheeses and dried meat and stews and roast ptarmigan, as well as tapestries that could be repaired, and benches and tables and the names of guests.

It seemed to her that the outbuildings of Gunnars Stead rested as peacefully in the wide sunny fields as icebergs floating in the blue fjord in midsummer. She said to Helga, “I have forgotten the pleasant aspect of this steading. The wind never blows here, more than to ruffle the outer hairs of the sheep. Ketils Stead has not such a favorable look about it.”

“It seems favorable enough to me. This will be good for Sigrid Bjornsdottir. She is accustomed to agreeable surroundings.”

“The servants there are well meaning, but ill-trained.”

“If they are well meaning, then they may be well trained.”

“Helga, have you no fears, then? Every bride goes to her husband as to a great enigma, hoping that not too much that is ill will be revealed, but in this case, it seems to me the enigma is insoluble, and that, every day, Jon Andres Erlendsson will be a great source of surprise to you.”

“I have no fears.” And Birgitta saw that this was the case. But it seemed to her anyway that Helga was doomed, and this came to her as a great certainty, but she drew from her certainty a special calm and saw that it is fruitless to argue with maidens about the husbands they choose.

Now the time of the wedding drew near, and Gunnar and Johanna and many of the servingfolk from Lavrans Stead put aside their work at that steading, and came to Vatna Hverfi, although Gunnar stayed far from Gunnars Stead. The weather continued warm and calm. Sira Pall Hallvardsson came to Undir Hofdi church, and opened up the priest’s house and lived there for three weeks, and each week he held the services and called the banns. The priest’s house was in great disarray, but Ofeig had apparently gone off to the south to some other district, for he was nowhere in Vatna Hverfi district all during the summer. Sira Pall Hallvardsson was so old now that he walked with a crutch, but folk still liked him better than Sira Eindridi Andresson, or the boy priest, Sira Andres Eindridason, who seemed to know little, and yet think quite well of himself. Of Sira Jon, who was still alive, no one spoke. No one even recalled him, except to say among themselves that once there had been a mad priest at Gardar, whose arms had swiveled in their sockets at the onset of his madness.

Now it happened that on the day before the wedding was to take place, a great ship sailed up Einars Fjord, and it was full of Icelanders, thirty-two of them, both men and women, and the case was that this ship was traveling to Iceland from Norway, and was blown off course, and the people on the ship were suffering greatly from hunger and exposure, for it was late in the season to be coming to Greenland, and the ice had already begun to float up from Cap Farvel and gather at the mouths of the fjords. When they heard this news, folk remarked that Larus the Prophet had indeed been right in his prophesying. And so it was that these thirty-two Icelanders, or at least those who had the strength for it, were invited to come to the wedding at Ketils Stead, and they brought a great deal of news and some good gifts, namely four chased silver goblets, a neatly carved ivory crucifix, and twelve of the new coins of Queen Margarethe, which were shiny silver crowns, beautiful but not so heavy as the old coins from the time of King Sverri.

One item of news was that the antipope still held court for the French in Avignon. Another bit was that Queen Margarethe had brought about the union of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark under one house, not only through fighting, but also through marrying and making treaties, and there were Germans and Danes overrunning everything in the north—no northern men did anything but sit at their farms, plotting against the queen, but indeed, the farms were so emptied out from the Great Death, that all these men could do was plot, for there were no armies to be made—all the peasants were in the fields, tilling, sowing, and reaping as hard as they could—and asking high wages to do it. What about the pope of Jerusalem, said the Greenlanders. The Icelanders greeted this with perplexity—were not two popes sufficient? But indeed, there had been a great conqueror in the east, by the name of Timur the Ferocious. After putting great cities to the sword, cities such as Damascus, where St. Paul received the Lord, and Baghdad, this demon would hitch a hundred beautiful maidens to his golden chariot and whip the clothing off them so that they pulled him until they dropped dead. And this was the least of the horrors he perpetrated. But there was no pope in Jerusalem. And folk said that this Timur had himself died not so long ago. It seemed a great thing to Jon Andres Erlendsson to have these Icelanders at his wedding, a good sign of what was to come. He set their gifts right beside those he had given Helga and those she had given to him.

Now the time came for the procession to the church, and Helga was brought out of one of the smaller rooms of the steading, and she wore only this, a simple robe of rich weaving, of a green color, decorated with white tablet weaving, and also a silver circlet around her head that was the bridal crown in the Ketils Stead lineage, and Gunnar held her by the arm, and when they came near to Jon Andres Erlendsson, he felt her jerk away from him, but not meaning to, only called out of herself by the presence of the husband she was about to take, and this movement of hers filled Gunnar with pleasure. Now the bride and groom went up beside one another, and began to walk through the valley to the church, and all the folk who had been invited to the feast walked behind them. The air was still and the sun shone brightly on the late summer green of the fields, and as Gunnar watched the backs of these two heads, his daughter and his former enemy, it seemed to him that he had shed the capacity of enmity itself, that he was preserved forevermore from acts of revenge. The groom turned his curly head and smiled upon the bride, who turned and smiled back at him, and Gunnar whispered to Birgitta, “This cub cannot be of the Ketils Stead lineage, but must be of the angels, for he has cast away the Greenlander’s greatest pleasure, which is doing injury to those who have injured you.”

Birgitta leaned toward him and cupped her ear, and he only said, “All signs seem favorable to me.” And soon the bridal couple were at the church door, where they knelt and received Sira Pall Hallvardsson’s blessing, then went inside for the mass and the wedding service. Jon Andres’ servants had decorated the church with branches of birch and willow scrub, and many seal oil lamps burnt brightly about the walls. Afterward they returned for the feast, and folk marveled at the variety of viands, more at one time than most folk might see in a year, and this was the doing of Birgitta Lavransdottir, old and bent as she was. The feast went on for two days after the bedding of the bride, and then the time for the autumn seal hunt drew on, and the feast formed the substance of much of the talk on the seal hunt, the feast and the coming of the Icelanders, whom everyone wanted to catch sight of and hear about.

The leader of this ship was a man named Snorri Torfason, and he was a slight man compared to the Greenlanders, wiry and nearly bald, although folk said that he was but a young man, only thirty-five winters in age. He was quiet-spoken, almost sullen, folk said, but his ship was large and well fitted out. Those he had with him paid attention when he spoke, and looked to him in all things. There were six women on the ship, two of them sisters, and these were quite imposing women. Their names were Thorunn and Steinunn, and they were the daughters of a man prominent back in Iceland, whose name was Hrafn. They were married to a pair of cousins. Thorunn was married to Onund Sigmundsson, who was Snorri’s special companion, and of the two women, Thorunn was the more outspoken and richly dressed. Steinunn was married to Thorgrim Solvason, who was a young man of looks and promise. All the Greenlanders were impressed by him. This Steinunn was more reserved than her sister, and always stood a little behind the other Icelanders. She was broad-shouldered and full-breasted, and altogether a fine-looking woman. There were, however, no unmarried women or nuns on the ship, as Larus had prophesied, and it did not seem to the Greenlanders that these six women would be leading them into the ways of holiness any time soon.

Bjorn Bollason was much impressed with these Icelanders, and brought Snorri and some of the others to live with him at Solar Fell, where he showed them the shrine of St. Olaf the Greenlander, and told them the story of Ragnvald and the martyrdom of St. Olaf. Other Icelanders lived about the eastern settlement, some at Gardar, a few at Brattahlid, one with Thorkel Gellison. A few of the sailors took over two adjoining abandoned steadings in Vatna Hverfi district, and the Greenlanders gave them some sheep and some reindeer meat. Now the time of the seal hunt and the reindeer hunt passed, and autumn came on, and farmers began slaughtering their sheep for the winter. One day after the ground and the fjords had frozen, but before the deep snows, Gunnar went on foot and on skates up to Gardar, where he sought out conversation with Sira Pall Hallvardsson, and instead found Bjorn Bollason, and his family, and the Icelanders visiting and praying.

Now Gunnar came into the bishop’s house, and there he saw Sigrid Bjornsdottir and spoke kindly to her and embraced her, for the wedding between her and Kollgrim had been set for Yule, and preparations were beginning, and it seemed to Gunnar that it might be a favorable thing after all, for indeed, the girl was pretty and neat, and everything she turned her hand to was well done. In addition to this, she spoke such merry and witty sayings, one after another, that Gunnar was quite taken with her. He said, “How seems my Kollgrim, then?”

“He seems as always, quiet and reserved, and much turned in upon himself, but it seems to me that he is pleased with things as they stand.”

“I am not your father, Sigrid, but soon I will have such a fondness for you as a father has. With this in mind, I pray that you will be generous to my boy, for he knows not what he does, although his heart is warm, and his intentions are noble ones. It seems to me that he loves you as a man should love his wife, but you must teach him how to know it and let you know it.”

“That does not daunt me.” And Gunnar smiled at the fearlessness of women. Now he went to seek Snorri Torfason, and found him eating from a bowl of sourmilk. Bjorn and the others had gone into the cathedral. Snorri put down his spoon, and greeted Gunnar in a friendly fashion, and Gunnar told him to go on eating. “For I disturb you only on the chance that you may have news of folk that are dear to us, that is Bjorn Einarsson Jorsalfari, or his foster son Einar, who is married to my daughter Gunnhild.”

“These are Borgarfjord folk, and not well known to me, for we are from the south of Iceland, near Hlidarendi, but indeed, who has not spoken in his time with envy of Bjorn Einarsson Jorsalfari, who is a man of great luck.”

“Is Bjorn still living then? For he has not been heard from in these seventeen winters, since my daughter went away a child, and unmarried at that, for she was but fifteen winters old.”

“It seems to me that Bjorn is not still living, but indeed, I have not been in Iceland for four winters myself, but have been living in Sunnfjord. Of Einar, I know nothing, but it may be that others of the ship’s folk will know something, as a few of them are from the western districts near Borgarfjord.”

“I hope to hear good news of Gunnhild, but every father must resolve to hear of the evils of childbirth, and so I am ready for that, too. But even with all of this, I am pleased that she finds herself in Iceland, as the affairs of the Greenlanders have gone so ill in late years.”

Now Snorri sat up and grunted, and looked Gunnar up and down. “It seems to me,” he said, “that the Greenlanders do quite well for themselves. The country is so rich in game that seals and reindeer hang drying about every steading, and the sheep are plentiful and free of plagues.”

“We have few cows, anymore, though, and few horses enough. Our hillsides are overrun with goats. Not many folk cherish their goats.”

“Even so, the Lord saves special punishments for the Icelanders, it seems to me. This girl, Steinunn, and her sister, Thorunn, whom we have with us—their steading was destroyed sixteen winters ago, and they were saved only because they were infants being fostered out at another steading.”

“How destroyed?”

“Such explosions at Hekla the volcano as sounded even in the farthest districts of the westfjords, and these were accompanied by hellfire shooting into the heavens, not only from the top of the mountain, but also from the surrounding forests, where the trees were seared as they stood, and this went on for two days and nights, and was followed by two days as black as midnight, and the air so thick with ash that folk considered that the earth had risen of itself and covered them. After this subsided, folk saw that a great avalanche had covered the entire steading of Langahlid, and scores of folk came out to look for Hrafn Bodulfsson but nothing of him was found, although the wife was uncovered and given burial. Some servingfolk were found dead in the byre, too. These girls, Steinunn and Thorunn, were with their mother’s mother at another steading.”