The Greenlanders (95 page)

Now Bjorn Bollason strode into the circle, and he was very richly dressed, in layers of white wadmal, with a great seal of St. Olaf the Greenlander dangling on his chest. He wore a number of ornaments that the Icelanders had given him as gifts, and he looked proud and imposing. And it was the case that he did not look at anyone, neither those standing about, nor Jon Andres, nor the judges, but only looked off, over the fjord, once, and up toward the mountains once. And then he began to speak in a proud voice, and he said, “I, Bjorn Bollason, have been lawspeaker of the Greenlanders for many summers, and before that, my foster father Hoskuld had great knowledge of the law. Never in the memory of men has such a case been brought before the Thing, where a man who is a judge has been threatened with outlawry for carrying out the laws as they were decided upon. This action is absurd at the least and dangerous at the most, for in this way every decision of the judges can be challenged whenever and for as long as men wish to challenge it, and that is all I have to say in the matter.” And he strode out of the circle as proudly as he had strode into it. And now it was getting on toward the evening meat, and so the judges retired to make their decision, and what they decided was not unexpected by anyone, including Gunnar and Jon Andres. Folk gathered about, pressing hard upon the little circle, and the chief judge below Bjorn Bollason, a man from Brattahlid named Bessi Hallsteinsson, announced that the case could not be made, and that the lawspeaker had committed no crime, and indeed, would have committed a crime had he not endeavored his utmost to carry out the punishment that had been decided upon.

Now a great shouting arose, and some men began to press backwards from the circle where the judges had their places, and others began to press forwards, from where the booths were set up, and folk saw that the men from Hvalsey Fjord and Vatna Hverfi district were much more numerous than it had seemed before, and that, all at once, they were armed with axes and clubs and bows and arrows. The men from Brattahlid and Dyrnes who were Bjorn Bollason’s supporters, and Bjorn and his sons, as well, ran from the Thing field to the place where weapons were laid down on the first day of the Thing, and they grabbed everything they could find, whether it belonged to them or not, and they turned and made their stand at that place, for the Vatna Hverfi men were upon them almost at once.

It seemed to Gunnar Asgeirsson that the shouting at the verdict arose around him, but then he understood that his own mouth was stretched open, and his own throat was pouring forth curses upon the heads of Bjorn Bollason and his hand-picked judges. Had someone told him that his hair was in flames, he would not have been surprised to hear it, so hotly did the rage and enmity burn within him. Bjorn Bollason had not deigned to look at the assembled folk, so proud was he, so ostentatiously clothed in white, and just that, that turn of the head, as he looked from Eriks Fjord to the mountains behind, drew all of Gunnar’s anger forth, like meltwater pouring off the glacier in spring. When the Vatna Hverfi men came up behind him, as had been planned in the case of such a verdict, Gunnar received his ax in his hand, but he could not have said who gave it to him, for his eyes were all for Bjorn Bollason, who had turned, and staggered, and was now running toward the pile of weapons, and Gunnar ran after him. In the crowd of men, with folk before him and after him, he never lost sight of Bjorn Bollason for a moment, nor felt his rage diminish for a part of a moment. Indeed, such rage as he felt in one moment was as nothing to what he felt in the next, and it was his fixed intention not merely to kill Bjorn Bollason, but to make him feel in his bones every ache and torment that Kollgrim had felt, and also that he, Gunnar Asgeirsson, had felt in the time since that death, every moment of fury and of grief. Could he visit upon the man, through blows, the sight of Birgitta Lavransdottir with her innards half showing through her self-inflicted cuts, and then, the sight of her lifeless corpus rolled against a stone by the side of the steading, the bird arrow jutting bloodily from her breast? Could he make the lawspeaker hear the sound of such screams and weeping as filled his steading and his ears for days on end at his return from the Thing field? She had needed no one to tell her the news, for it had come to her through her second sight, or through her maternal flesh, the news of Kollgrim’s death, and she had greeted him at the door to his steading as a madwoman might, undone by grief, twisted with the joint ill, yet standing, stiff with agony, to meet him. There were the others, too, not least Elisabet Thorolfsdottir, who tore the hair from her head, and Helga, who simply moaned and clutched her child to her breast, and Jon Andres, that man of peace, who planned, coldly, and step by knowing step, every move to this moment, the moment of crushing and destroying Bjorn Bollason and his sons. With that proud turn of the head, Gunnar could see and hear Bjorn Bollason say what he must have said, “He could be soaked with seal oil,” and it seemed to him that the fire in him would burn hotter and hotter until Bjorn Bollason lay still on the ground, unrecognizable, torn piece from bloody piece.

The Brattahlid men drew themselves up in a ragged line, their weapons raised, and the Vatna Hverfi men fell upon them with the full force of their speed, so that some men ran through the line and found themselves behind their adversaries, while others were stopped in their flight by the strength of the enemy. The Brattahlid men were much outnumbered, but in fact they were better armed, for the other men had left a few of their weapons, for appearance’ sake, on the pile. Now there was the sound of grunting and huffing and the fall of blows and the screams of injury, as men set to fighting in earnest.

At first, Bjorn Bollason hung back, in a kind of surprise. Indeed, he did not know how things had come to this pass, nor quite what to do about it. And his belly had grown so broad with the good Solar Fell meat that running from the judges’ circle to the weapon pile had shortened his breath and made him considerably dizzy. And then it happened that he was knocked down on his knees, and kicked in the head, so that he fell forward onto his face, and this surprised him so that it did not occur to him to lie still, as if dead, but he strove to arise again, and to turn and look at his attacker, for indeed, it surprised him that he, such a popular and lucky man, should be attacked at all. But as soon as he got to his knees again, a club fell, first on his shoulder, a glancing blow, and then on his back, and a pain seared through him, so that it seemed better to lie down, after all, but still he tried to turn over, to see who was afflicting him like this, but indeed, he could not turn over, until a hand grasped him by the hair and wrenched him onto his back, and he saw the face of Jon Andres Erlendsson, and behind him, the face of Gunnar Asgeirsson, and that was the last thing he saw, for each then struck him an ax blow on the head and one of these was his death blow, although it could not be said clearly which one, and that was part of Jon Andres Erlendsson’s plan, as well.

And here was the toll of death after this battle: in addition to Bjorn Bollason, his two sons, Sigurd and Hoskuld, were killed on the field, and the third, Ami, was carried off with his death wound. Another man on the Brattahlid side was killed with an arrow shot, and the eye of a man from Dyrnes was gouged out. Of the Vatna Hverfi men, one, Karl, the second son of the widow Ulfhild, of Mosfell, was killed outright, and another man had an ax sunk so deeply in his thigh that he died the following Yule. There were many bruises and cuts, and other painful hurts, and many of the fighters were hard put after this battle to recover themselves. The Thing was broken up without deciding any more cases, and the judges went home to their steadings, as if in flight. Indeed, everyone there went home as if in flight, for they knew not how to regain the normal ways that had been lost through this event.

Gunnar and Jon Andres escaped without injury, and returned to Vatna Hverfi district, and it was generally agreed that they had been strongly provoked in this case, and were not to be blamed too harshly for what had come about, for men must avenge the injuries done to them, if they are strong enough to do it. If those whom they avenge themselves upon are, in their turn, not strong enough to exact payment from them, then justice has been done.

Now on the evening of this battle, Sira Pall Hallvardsson was sitting in his accustomed place in the cathedral, looking upon the split visage of the Lord that hung over the altar, and no one had as yet brought in the seal oil lamps, and so the place was not a little gloomy. As he was sitting there, the door to the hall was flung open, and Sira Eindridi and Larus the Prophet came into the cathedral in a great flurry. And they stopped in the darkness, and looked about until Sira Pall announced his whereabouts, and then Sira Eindridi came to him, panting, and told him the news of the battle at Brattahlid, and Sira Pall listened in silence, and then said, calmly, “These are grievous tidings indeed, and I must rise and go to my chamber and think upon them,” and he held out his arm so that Sira Eindridi might lift him and help him to his sticks, but just in this moment, the old priest let out a great moan, and fell forward so that Sira Eindridi had not the strength to prevent him from falling, and as he fell he hit his head upon the bench. And it happened shortly after this that it was discovered that Sira Pall Hallvardsson was dead, and it was considered that although Sira Eindridi had not administered his rites to him, since he was praying at the time of his death, then he was assured of entrance into Heaven. This was the view of Larus the Prophet. Afterward, folk spoke of Sira Pall as a casualty of the Brattahlid battle as much as any of the others, for, they said, his heart broke at the news, and none could prove that it had not.

One day in this summer, Gunnar was sitting on the pleasant hillside outside the steading at Gunnars Stead, and Margret was walking back and forth in front of him, spinning. He watched her spindle twirl and drop as she walked in one direction, and then he watched her wind the yarn upon it as she walked in the other direction and it seemed to him that the spindle and the lengthening thread cast a spell over him, and that this spell led him to speak in a way that he had never spoken before. He said, “How do men journey back from passion?” He looked up at her face, and it was as if he were a child again, and she his older sister, and he had just asked her how butter is made, or how the Lord knows who is good and who is not—such was the innocence that he felt behind his question, after a long and sinful life. Margret paused in her pacing and looked down upon him, and she said, “It seems to me that most do not.” And Gunnar saw at once that this was the case, but he said, “What will happen next?” And Margret stopped again in her progress and looked down upon him again, and said, “Certainly we will die, though perhaps it will not be us who die of this very passion.”

Now Gunnar said, “Did you ever think of our father Asgeir’s travels to Norway and Iceland? Men elsewhere must live differently than Greenlanders do.”

“When I was living among the Icelanders, Snorri Torfason always used to say that the Greenlanders sin with the pride of thinking themselves the worst off until they hear news of other folk, then they sin with the pride of thinking themselves the best.”

“When I dealt Bjorn Bollason his death blow, it seemed to me that I had done a little thing, for it passed in a moment. My passion ran on beyond it, and was unfulfilled. Now it still seems to me a little thing, but a little thing like a snag, upon which my robe has caught. But instead of disentangling myself from this little snag, every thought and every movement nets me more and more tightly to it, so that sooner or later I will be strangled upon it.”

“The lawspeaker’s supporters will be glad to hear this, since that will relieve them of the burden of retaliation.” And Margret began pacing back and forth again, as deliberately as before, and so she went on for a while, with the spindle twirling and the thread lengthening, and Gunnar watched as he had before, and the sun shone brightly on the homefield, as it had for nearly half a millennium, since the time of Erik the Red, and the first Gunnar who had farmed this steading, and first fenced the homefield and fertilized it with the manure of his cows and sheep and horses. Then he said, “My sister, what is it that you seek in the world?” And Margret said, “It has always seemed to me that I seek to be as a stone, and when I was a young woman, it seemed to me that such was the progress toward death—a hardening that would come over the flesh bit by bit, until the corpus lay there in the bedcloset, or was thrown out into the snow to await burial in the spring. Now it seems to me that the flesh quivers with still more life in every year, and that I will never achieve what I seek. I fear, indeed, that death is not death, but life everlasting after all.” And she resumed her pacing and her spinning, and some time later, Johanna came to them and said that the evening meat was upon the table.

During the autumn seal hunt and through the fall, there were many discussions and arguments among the Greenlanders about who would be the new lawspeaker, or whether there would be any new lawspeaker at all, and it was the case that Bjorn Bollason had not sought to teach the body of the law to anyone, except perhaps, to Sigurd Bjornsson, who had died with his father at Brattahlid, and this was accountable to folk only through the speculation that Bjorn Bollason had considered himself such a lucky fellow that he would never die, as other men do. Or, perhaps, folk said, he had not as yet gotten around to it, for there were many things that Bjorn Bollason was more interested in than sitting down and going over the laws. Such entertainments as had been the rule at Solar Fell, especially in the years when the Icelanders lived there, must have filled a great deal of the lawspeaker’s time, after all. It was also the case that Bjorn Bollason could be said not to have learned the laws especially well himself, since the telling of them had shrunk in his time from a three-day cycle to less than a one-day cycle.

And to this, some folk said, what did it matter, after all? Such cases as had been going to the Thing were better decided in the districts, or among the folk who were principals in the cases, and if they were decided with blows, once in a while, was that so different from what had happened to Bjorn Bollason himself? The case had been decided in his favor, and yet he was dead with no one to avenge his death, since the foster brothers in Dyrnes had spoken not a word about it all summer, even though Signy had gone to live with them. To go to the Thing, especially as it was at Brattahlid, was a considerable inconvenience these days, when there were so few men about every steading to keep up with the work. There had been a time when the Thing lasted seven days, or more, with all the laws and all the cases, but now it seemed as though as soon as a man had put up his booth, it was time to take it down again, and so folk talked about this all fall and all winter, and no move was made, by Sira Eindridi or anyone else, to replace the lawspeaker. Though no one knew all of the laws, did not everyone know, in a general way, what was to be expected of one another? And if they did not, then Sira Eindridi might be consulted, since folk had to go to Gardar anyway. And now some of the older folk remembered the time of the bishop and of Sira Jon, when hardly anyone had gone to the Thing at all. Such times come and go, they said. Men will always find a way to govern themselves. And so the winter passed, and the spring came on, and with it the spring seal hunt, and nothing was decided, except that when the Thing should be held again, it should not be held at Brattahlid, but at Gardar, as it had been, but no Thing was held in this year, though a few men showed up at Gardar during the regular Thing time, and spoke to Sira Eindridi Andresson about their concerns, and he advised them, and also consulted with Larus the Prophet, who had cast off Ashild and little Tota, and lived celibately at Gardar in the chamber that Sira Audun had once had for himself.