The Greenlanders (80 page)

Now, in Greenland, she saw what a mistake she had made in accepting Thorgrim, a failing of will that she had expected to regret at the time, and did regret now. But her days among the Norwegians had been unhappy ones, and the only Norwegian farmer who had made an offer for her hand was a fellow with a great goiter at his neck, and although he was wealthy and powerful, she saw at once that he had never had a chance among the Norwegian girls, but had thought so little of her that he had been confident of her acceptance. A woman who had lands in Iceland, especially lands partly covered with smoking lava, was not such a prize to a Norwegian. Even if her father had been lawspeaker, her father was dead now, and his death in a volcanic avalanche so peculiar as to put folk off, unless they were Icelandic.

Thorgrim was fair enough, and it had been a great pleasure to Steinunn to speak to him of things they both knew. It seemed to her that her melancholia lifted when he was about, or else she made it lift for his sake. It lifted little now, except when she raised her eyes to the mountains of Greenland and reflected that none of them were volcanoes, that their shapes and their quiescence were changeless and eternal. The winter would pass, and the summer would come on, and Snorri would make up his mind to go off to Iceland and see what his wife had done with his farms over the years.

The sun had set, and twilight deepened over Gardar field. Only the snowy tips of the mountains cast any light back to the sky. Steinunn turned away from the boats, and began the climb back up the hillside, and she was so sunk in thoughts that she nearly stumbled over a man who was kneeling in her path between two of the boats. He leapt up and caught her, so that she did not fall, and she saw that it was the tall fellow who had been betrothed to the girl Sigrid, but she could not recall his name. She had seen him only once or twice. “Indeed,” she said, “the darkness makes me careless,” and it seemed to her that though she spoke of the lack of light, she was referring to her thoughts, and this fetched from her a deep and melancholy sigh.

“You have strayed from the flock gathered to hear the priest.”

“And you, as well.”

“Priestly talk does not much interest me.”

“This Sira Eindridi likes to attract attention.”

“That may be. I know nothing about it.”

“Then why have you come to the feasting?”

“I heard there would be Icelandic tales. I thought they would beguile the mother of my son.”

“Why does she need to be beguiled?”

“Because she is a woman, it seems to me. I know not what she is determined upon, whether life or death. Tales are entertaining to most folk. Perhaps they will draw off her thoughts from whatever they linger over now. Why have you strayed from the flock?”

“I grew breathless among them.”

“I have seen you before. Among the chatterers, you have the least to say.”

“Is that the case?”

“It seems so to me.”

Now they fell silent, and he took her hand and placed it through his arm, and led her among the boats to a space above them, where she would have clear walking back to the cathedral, but as they stood in this space, she did not want to give up his arm, nor did he give up her hand. They stood silently for some little while, neither looking at one another nor looking away from one another, and it seemed to Steinunn that her earlier disquiet was stilled by the fellow’s presence. Now he released her, and put his hand lightly on her shoulder, and pushed her away from him, and she began up the hillside, and he went back to the strand, and continued with whatever he had been doing. When she got to the cathedral, Steinunn recollected the fellow’s name, Kollgrim Gunnarsson, a great object of joking among the Icelanders for his betrothal to Sigrid Bjornsdottir.

Now the time came for the first evening’s feast, and all the folk poured into the great hall of the bishop’s house, and sat themselves at the benches, and the women and servingmaids went about with bowls of ptarmigan stewed with seal flipper and seasoned with thyme, and this was considered a good dish, even among the Icelanders. After this came bowls of sourmilk, thick and cold, sweetened with bilberries, and these had been gathered for the feast over three separate days in the hills between Gardar and Hvalsey Fjord, and they were fat and juicy. After this came svid and also roast mutton, and this mutton was a little tough and overgrown, but savory all the same, and folk considered that they had done well to make their way to the Gardar feast. Now there was another dish, and this was dried capelin with sour butter, and this is a dish that Greenlanders are very fond of, for the little fish snap and crackle between the teeth and the butter makes the lips pucker. The Icelanders were not especially taken with this dish. Now was the moment in the feast when folk begin to push themselves away from the table, but even so, look around a bit for just a single last thing to taste before they finish. And so the women and servingmaids came about with something most folk had never tasted before, and this was angelica stalks seethed in honey, and this was so delicious and sweet that folk’s teeth ached with the pleasure of it.

After this, the tables were taken away, and folk pushed the benches back, and the Icelanders began their entertainments, and it was the case that the Icelanders had been among the Greenlanders for a year, long enough for some of the Greenlanders, but especially the Solar Fell folk, to learn steps and words to a few of the rhyming songs, and so eight women, including Sigrid Bjornsdottir, and eight men stood up and made the figures while Thorstein Olafsson shouted out the song. And this was a song, an outlandish rhyme about a fellow named Troilus, who was a hero of early times, and his concubine, named Criseda, who sinned and was greatly punished for her sin. Some time passed, through the telling of other, less scandalous tales, and folk were called again into the cathedral for the second service. The first to enter the church discovered Larus the Prophet there, on his face on the stones before the crucifix, and he had to be lifted up and carried out, for he seemed insensible, and after folk spoke among themselves, it was revealed that Larus had not partaken of the feasting, but had spent the entire time at prayer in the cathedral, with Ashild and little Tota nearby. These two fell asleep, and had to be roused for the service.

This service was given by Sira Andres, who was but seventeen winters of age, and although his ways were more congenial than those of his father, he knew even less of the mass, and mumbled a great deal more. He, too, liked to make his sermons on the subject of the wages of sin, but the wages he predicted were less dire than those of Sira Eindridi, and sometimes he got lost in his text, which afforded folk a small degree of relief. This service was shorter than the earlier one, and after it, folk went to their booths and their chambers to sleep.

Now it was the case that Sira Pall Hallvardsson was to say both masses on the second day of the feast, and folk were pleased with this, because he knew all the prayers in the right order, and never mumbled, and the communion he gave was considered to be holier than the communion given by the other two, and so all of the second day there was a great deal of shriving going on, and many folk were in and out of the cathedral all day long. The first of these, who came into the darkened church long before dawn, discovered Larus the Prophet before the Crucifix, and he stayed there all day, prayers on his lips, but he was not shriven.

On this day there was a morning service, followed by a daylight feast, to be followed by an early evening service, and then folk who lived nearby would go off, and in the morning the rest of the folk would go off. It happened before the morning service that the Icelandic woman Steinunn Hrafnsdottir went out of Gardar hall and began wandering about below the buildings, not far from where the boats were drawn up on the strand, and her husband, Thorgrim Solvason, went out after her, and when he caught up with her, they fell into conversation. Thorgrim said, “My Steinunn, your sister requires your presence, for indeed, she needs you to arrange her headdress for her.”

“She has arranged her headdress for many mornings before this one without my help.”

“Even so, she asks after you. And this is true, as well, that it is not seemly for you to walk about like this, for there are many folk at this feast who are unknown to us.”

“You and Thorunn think too ill of these Greenlanders.”

“They are rough folk.”

“Nay, they are ill-looking, and dress oddly, in furs and such, but they are no rougher than any other folk we might know, in Norway or in Iceland.”

“How have you knowledge of this?”

Now she cocked her head and looked him in the eye. “My Thorgrim, I, too, have lived in Greenland for a year, and I, too, have spoken with Bjorn Bollason and his sons and other such folk as are about Solar Fell. May I not make up my own mind on this score?”

“It seems to me that a woman must be guided by her husband and her sister in such things.”

“Thorunn is three winters younger than I am.”

“But she is of a different and more cautious nature. She saw that you slipped out of the service last night and how long you absented yourself.”

“Indeed, the place was very close.”

“If you had found me, I would have taken you out, and we could have strolled about together, as a husband and wife should do.”

“We may do that now, my Thorgrim.” And so they did so, down the hill and back up it, and soon enough it was time for the service, and they went into the cathedral and found places to sit.

Now Sira Pall Hallvardsson began to pray, and then he gave a sermon of thanksgiving for the bounty of the Lord in all things, and these were some of the things he spoke of: the children of the Greenlanders, whose faces shine about every farmstead like purple stonebreak at the feast of St. Jon the Baptist, the houses of the Greenlanders, so thickly turfed that two or three seal oil lamps keep them warm in the winter; the reindeer, who give fur and flesh and bone; the seals, who give fat and fur and flesh; the winter, which gives rest; and the summer, which gives work and sunlight; the yearly round of planting and hunting and milking and harvesting and hunting again, from Yule that reminds men of birth into the world, to Easter, that reminds men of rebirth into Heaven, to the feast of all the saints, which reminds men of how to get from one to the other. And folk were much lulled by this talk, and regretted that it ended quickly, for indeed, Sira Pall Hallvardsson could not stand for a long sermon, and especially two in one day. After the service was over, folk walked out into the light. It had snowed above Gardar in the night, but the south slope of the hillside was warm and pleasant in the morning sun. And now folk talked of the coming winter, and all were sanguine about their stores of food and the health of their flocks, and some folk, who had had to do with the Icelanders, reflected among themselves that these foreign folk would do well to keep their ship in Greenland and take over some of the abandoned farmsteads that lay about in every district. Were conditions not as they had been in the days of Erik the Red, with much good land lying about for the taking? The answer was that conditions were better, for the land was improved already, with houses and byres more suited to the weather than the old sorts that Erik and his fellows had built, with their long halls and greedy great fires. Such was the gist of the Greenlanders’ talk as they went in to the second feast. They were much pleased with themselves.

Toward dusk Sira Pall began upon the second service, and he spoke the prayers in a low sonorous voice that was pleasant to hear. The cathedral was as full of folk as it had been for the first service, for, indeed, even those from the farthest districts were loath to miss any of Sira Pall Hallvardsson’s service, for he was an old man, and who was to say that he would survive the winter? Not everyone did.

It happened as he was finishing the Kyrie that Larus the Prophet spoke up and said in a loud voice, in Norse, “The Lord is with me! Hear me speak!” and a farmer who lived in his district, standing near him, said, “Indeed, Larus, you speak out of turn. Now it is time to hear the priest speak.” Some other men put their hands on Larus’ shoulders, but he shook them off. “Nay,” he cried, “the Word of the True Lord is never out of turn, but calls out from the mouths of babes, or from the wind that howls in the mountains, if it must. Here is what I say to you: Rome has abandoned you! The pope thinks of you not! The archbishop of Nidaros sleeps peacefully every night, untroubled by the knowledge of your longings! Those who guide your souls care not whether you fall into sin daily, or hourly, or moment by moment! They spend not a crown nor do they lift a finger to help you toward your salvation. They think more of their underlinen than they do of your souls! They have forbidden you to save yourselves, and now they refuse to save you! Have you wafers? Have you wine? Do you think that the blood of the Lord was water and His flesh was seaweed? It is not written so. Indeed, Greenlanders, you are cursed, not blessed, however you fill your bellies, because the path to salvation is closed to you. Perhaps the Lord Himself speaks to the archbishop of Nidaros, and bids him in his ear to send the Greenlanders a ship, and some priests that have been duly consecrated, not like these false Greenlanders who call themselves Sira, but have never been ordained, but the archbishop of Nidaros stops his ears. He hears not the word of the Lord, nor does he hear the cries of the Greenlanders for salvation. All these folk that have died here, these wives and husbands and mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters who have died of the vomiting ill and the stomach ill and through mischance and starvation and freezing to death and drowning, think you that they have made their way to Heaven? Think you that they sit at the feet of the Lord, and listen each day to the singing of angels? Nay, ’tis not so. They burn in Hell, for they are unshriven of their sins, they are not in communion with the Lord, they are the abandoned of the earth, and Jesus Himself hears not their cries. This is what I say to you!” And after he had spoken, Larus looked about himself, and the Greenlanders were hard put for words, for no man had the knowledge in him to deny what Larus had said.