The Ice-Shirt

by William T. Vollmann

  "Leif," said Freydis, "it is our wish to use your houses in Vinland. Will you let us have them?"

  The brother looked up. He was the last of Red Eirik's sons, and this is the last time that we vsdll see him. - "You're only a hanger-on in this," he said. "Why are you asking for my houses? Go bring Gudrid to me and let her ask me."

  Freydis smiled bitterly, but said nothing.

  Leif threw another log on the fire. - "Still here, are you?" he said contemptuously. "By the slit of your slut-mother, you're a stubbom one! Very well. You can borrow my houses, then."

  The Disappointments ofTfwrvard

  Thorvard had expected to feel an exhilarated sense of suspense before sailing to Vinland, and at first he did, but certain events instilled in him a melancholy fear and a sense of being dirtied, these involving the unexpected disapproval of others concerning actions of his which had seemed to him either well-handled or else so trivial as not to be worth any judgement. In particular was his use of Leif's houses there, which he thought his wife had gotten cheaply (i.e., for nothing), until one of his fiiends told him almost angrily that he had paid too much - for now he had incurred a great obligation. - He's jealous, Thorvard said to himself But this thought distressed him even more, that one of his fiiends could be so jealous of him as to hate him. - Of course no one was jealous of him at all. Everyone pitied and despised him somewhat, because he was Freydis's husband.

  FREYDIS EIRIKSDOTTIR

  A Ship amonq Ships

  199

  Freydis's ship had a sail with blue and red stripes. It was painted on the bows. Her husband had commented somewhat on the expense, but Freydis said, "The money is mine, not yours. Anyhow, don't you want to show Gudrid and the others that we are people of quality just as they are?" - Thorvard said that he had not thought of it that way, and after that he kept his peace. -Freydis's heart bounded up like a rushing sun when she heard men comparing her ship to Gudrid's and judging it the better of the two. It was now Gudrid's turn to be silent, which she was. So Freydis, unopposed by any word, thought that she had begun to come into her desires at last; for most of all she wanted her name on men's lips; she wanted to be remembered. Her gold necklace was sometimes a heavy, choking weight upon her throat, but she had to wear what suited her.

  The Norse Ship-Baths 1987

  On diat happiest summer of my life we walked along the cobbled beach, the real Greenlanders and I; and there were three rectangular berths for Viking ships, grass-grown now, each widi its rolUng Up of silt and sand; but die

  Greenlanders said you could still bring a ship in at high tide in the spring. Nearby was a stone trap for foxes, made by Greenlanders. On a bushy rise stood the remains of a many-roomed stone house where Tunersuit had lived. - "There are more houses over there, where the grass is green," said Jonar. But we did not look at them, because at that season the bushes were full of black spiders whose gluey webs stuck to your mouth.

  The Greenlanders ran up a rounded tundra ridge, exclaiming in delight whenever they saw a reindeer. The ridge was soft and wide. There were bright green shrubs; there was white lichen to cushion our steps. Ahead, beyond a grey pass, was a Mountain of ice.

  We found a stand of the kayak plant. A hundred years ago, reindeer hunters ate them to be strong. We chewed them; they tasted a little more astringent than wintergreen. - "Look!" cried the beautiful girls, picking yellow flowers. "It smell like licorice!" - We ran through a dwarf poplar jungle, and the girls leaped across a rushing stream, carrying the flowers in their mouths ...

  The Voyage to Viniand

  ca. 1007

  No man becomes master while he stays at home, nor finds a teacher behind the stove.

  Paracelsus, ca. 1590

  We were fain to grabble in the darke (as it were), like a blind man for his way.

  Edward Pellham, 1631

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  he Greenlanders, then, having decided to explore new^ countries, put out to sea from Eiriks^ord. For w^eeks they watched the weaves rise and fall and rise again unexhausted. Sometimes the w^ave-crests were spotted with the foam, so that they resembled marble. The ocean curled and foamed and drenched them vsdth its cold scum. Few icebergs pursued them south, for the colony was in its sunny early days, but even so the sea resembled curled ice, and the froth of it blew in their bearded faces as powdered snow wall fly when driven by the wind. Sometimes the ships were Hfted on the waves taller than mountains, so that the timbers creaked, and the voyagers could see a black hint of coastline far ofi*, or a dullish green wall of ice. They sailed through the stormy and excessive cold of the spring. After a squall the sea became insidiously smooth. They sometimes saw birds flying around their ship at these times. Some landed in the rigging to rest, and were killed by Freydis's crew. Others circled round and round in the mist until they were spent. Then they fell into the sea and were drowned. Their white bodies bobbed for awhile on the waves, which were sometimes green and sometimes as black as smoked glass.

  The Map ofSigurdur St^ansson ca. 1590

  To Freydis and her crew it must have seemed that they were enclosed by land, for they believed that Greenland joined Jotunheim, land of the Frost Giants, to the north and east, and Jotunheim eventually joined Norway, and Norway was a part of Europe which ran south to Africa; and meanwhile on the west Greenland was connected to Flindand, which was connected to Woodland, which was connected to Skraelingland, which was connected to Wineland.

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  Waves andhomdncss

  They continued to sail southward and west on die grey foggy sea, which presendy subsided somewhat in its wave-peaks and became a dreary plain of chill, widi die white mist parting beneadi dieir keel like fat under a knife. At times die sky was mist, and die sea was mist, so diat it seemed diat they were suspended in a cloud, and Freydis wondered if Blue-Shirt had deceived her, and diere were no Vinland; being of a solitary, mistrustful nature, she even suspected her brodiers Leif and Thorvald of having plotted to send her to Jotunheim. She felt as her fadier had felt when he was oudawed. - But just as sadness itself has its borders, which may be discovered by blundering through its white fog, across its grey sea, until suddenly die sky becomes visible, though slatey, and then after another long weary time come the first blue intimations of heaven, so the northern waters, too, had their margin, decorated with kelp-runes in imitation of the Flateyjarbok. - Freydis saw them first, for her ship was the best wave-biter. - So the wave-hills rolled more smoothly: although it might have been that by countenancing this the ocean merely gained clarity to express its unhappy urgency, which beaded every face with cold and salty drops, and thrust up whitecaps more jaggedly shordived than starfire, to illuminate its cold and salty sickness.

  Ginmvnga Gap*

  South of the white line of pack-ice, the sea was specked with swirls of ice-powder like a pebble beach. The ice formed dazzling white polygons bunched together so that in appearance the form they made was similar to that of a Nevada desert salt-wash, except that one could see the white jigsaw pieces undulating in the waves, and the ocean could sometimes be seen between the cracks. The distinction between sea, sky and ice was confiised. Everything was blue and white, blue and white; there were so many broken pattems. This was Ginnunga Gap, the abyss where the nine worlds had been created fi-om fire and ice, for to the south was Muspelheim, the Kingdom of Fire, whose sparks rose up to make the stars; and to the north was Niflheim, the Kingdom of Cold; and rime-breath met heat-breath in Ginnunga Gap and melted into drops, fi-om which the first being, evil Ymir the Frost Giant, was bom. His offspring killed him. The sky was made fi*om his skull; and in Helluland I

  * Probably Davis Strait, between Greenland and Baffin Island.

  have seen the mountains created from his bones. - Ginnunga Gap endured. It was now the channel to the sea called MARE OCEANUM that enclosed the entire world in its ring; and at the bottom of the Mare Oce
anum lay LOKl's hateful offspring, the Serpent of Midgaard, that stretched around the world with its tail in its mouth, waiting for the bad day when Fenrir the wicked Wolf was going to swallow the moon and the Troll-Child would destroy the sun so that the sunshine became black; and the Serpent of Midgaard lashed the waves with its hideous tail that was longer than all the continents and the black waves rose and eagles screamed in the wind-scream and the world-tree Yggdrasil creaked and groaned, and then the men from Muspel came sailing across the sea with LOKI as their steersman and LOKI was laughing and laughing very awfully with tears of poison crawling down the sear-tracks in His cheeks and His eye-sockets were black and blind because the Gods had tied Him to a rock beneath another serpent that spat acid in His eyes, for He had murdered BALDUR the Good, so that no punishment could be terrible enough for Him; but now the Murderer was free and He was going to murder the world! So He steered the Muspel-men blindly, laughing in the wind because everything was going to be destroyed; and now Fenrir gaped his jaws, and his mouth was Odin's grave; and then Valhalla was destroyed with all its gods and the earth died; and that was the doom that had to be, but that did not mean that we could not face our death with hate and brave defiance, as when Thor went fishing and drew the Serpent of Midgaard up from the deeps with His fish-hook, and the lividly spotted Serpent squirmed and stared with hatred at its mortal enemy whom it could not yet harm, and it spat venom at ThoR and ThoR beat the Serpent with great blows and finally threw it back to the bottom of the Mare Oceanum.

  Harder by Helluland,* a plain of ice stole to the horizon, impregnated with great adjoining ovals surrounded by leads, the effect being one of a microscope slide of crystalline cytoplasm; and then there came the sharp lines of the shattered ice-mirror, some still showing from above the lines of their original joining, but there were missing shards, too, their place held by water. The closer the Greenlanders came to Helluland, the more solid the ice became. When there were dark blue sea-places, they were frosted over. Presently Finnbogi called out that he saw the headland, which was hardly anything but knife-ridges outthrust into the ice, presenting fingers that were cliffs on either side, with snow above and snow below; and then came more islands fuU of snow, and pale blue frozen lakes, and channels of the rich blue

  * "Slab-Land" or "Hint-Land" (Baffin Island).

  sea, so rich a blue (almost indigo) as cannot be described, each glittering with its translucent crystals of ice. At last came die slabs from which Slab-Land got its name, great slabs diat were really mountains sunken into the snow and topped with snow. These blue cliffs gave way to black cliffs arranged in a circle like stadium seats, all around a blank flat circle of snow (here, Freydis thought to herself, there must be some secret), and dien over a frozen river were more black hills, and so on to the horizon.

  HettuComf

  That first land they sighted, then, they called Slab-Land, for it seemed to be nothing but a slab of rock crowned by glaciers. The shore was without grass. When they landed on it, tfiey found the beach littered with slabs as long as two men lying end-to-end. Considering the country worthless, diey returned to their ships and set sail. - Not a great deal has been written about Slab-Land, so I will print here the Narrative of Seth Pilsk, as told to me in 1987. How hard it is in Wineland to beHeve in this Country of Flints! -because here today it is so sunny and warm and the afternoon is blue and the houses are yellow and gold and happy.

  The Voyage ofSetfi Pilsk the Thin 1984

  "Well, when I got to Baffin Island, I was feeling really good, 'cause it was sunny all the way up, and it was just so exciting to look down and know where I was, and what it looked like. It was funny, too, 'cause we went into Frobisher Bay on a 727 and they served us a drink and that kind of stuff, 'cause it was mainly businessmen: - oilmen and natural gas men going up to Frobisher Bay. It looked like I was the only camper. Also there were some Eskimos going up, that had been just visiting down south. When we got to Frobisher Bay, I got my pack and just started walking. I had a layover for a day before I could go up to Baffin Island. And so I just walked up from the airport, out towards the §ord where I was going to camp. It was great, 'cause as soon as I got away from the airport and that strange-looking town, all the sudden I got off the gravel road, and I was on the tundra and I felt really good, 'cause I was familiar with it from the summer before. I really felt like I was at home and I knew what I was doing, and I felt really confident; I felt great. And all the little flowers were out. And I got to camp on this nice

  The Ice-Shirt

  high spot overlooking this river, and everything was pretty idyllic. It was pretty warm, too. And so the next day I got on this nice big propeller plane which took me up to Pangnirtung. That was also really nice, too. It was cloudy, but nice. But the thing about the whole trip was that I was feeling so confident, so utterly unrealistic about my abilities. I thought I knew everything, because Vd been to Anaktuvuk Pass, and I'd hitchhiked some, and I just felt invincible and superhuman. I felt like I knew what I was doing, and in reality I knew nothing about the way nature works, and I still don't. You know, I could learn all the names of every single species of plant in the world, and it won't mean a thing. - At that time I didn't even know any of the plants. I didn't hardly know how to recognize one plant from another, or where I was, or why

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  the rocks were there. Anything, And I guess I had a false feeHng, because the Arctic really made me feel good. And so I got into Pangnirtung. I just signed what I had to sign, and started walking. I got to die end of the road, past the garbage dump, and there you are.

  "It was a really wonderful walk, just going dirough diis tundra. To the right were some mountains that keep getting bigger as you go along, and to die left was a §ord. That first day I just walked until I got acclimated, kind of getting used to walking on die tundra. I had a real heavy pack. It must have been about a hundred and forty pounds at the beginning of the trip. I was able to stash some food and some of the gear with some fiiends in Montreal, so it was probably around a hundred and fifteen or so - you know, a heavy pack. So every step I'd take, I'd just sink into die tundra. You know the feeling. So I just got used to that, and I walked a good ways, and I was able to camp in between where the vaUey would rise up into the real high hills and a litde rise or point between me and the §ord. It was on a nice swale, so it was really dry, and you know what that tundra is like to sleep on. It's just better than any mattress you could ever buy. And so everything was just so petfect I had plenty of clean water, it was a perfect place, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and everything was Absolutely Ideal, and I just felt so high, so superhuman ...

  "The next day I went out, and I did a whole day of hiking. A lot of it was quite careless hiking. I would go right on the shore between the land and the §ord, where there was a lot of ice, which was so much easier to walk on; a kind of snow-covered ice, with plenty of traction, but I was utterly careless. I had this huge pack on, and I would just have a bounce in my step, and think nothing of jumping over crevasses or going over real iflfy footholds that were just absolutely stupid; I could very easily have broken a leg or something. I saw a lot of beautiftxl waterfowl along the way. I had an encounter with a mother goose and her litde ones, which I took for amusing, but looking back on it I'm kind of ashamed that I even got so close and threatened her goslings like that. But I did. I kept going, and I'd been going all day with a heavy pack, and I was really tired. And I got to this really major stream which braided out to - I don't know, oh, a dozen braids, maybe, big and small braids, out to the §ord.

  "And so I just crossed these litde braids with no problem, and I got to this one reaUy major braid. It was a really tough current. It
was really deep, and there was a lot of slippery rock undemeath. So I wasn't sure exacdy what to do. I was really tired, and I had my camp spot picked out on the other side. It was very similar to the one the night before. I just let my laziness and

  The Ice-Shirt

  TiPOycWA pfiAK, 8ArFir» ^^p

  confidence get the better of me. I knew that if I would just wait an hour, the tide in the §ord would go down, and Fd be able to make a perfecdy safe crossing, but I just figured that nothing could possibly happen to me, that I was just being cautious, as I had accused you of being the summer befof e. S& I dutifiilly (although I thought it was silly, but out of some weird feeUng of obligation I did it) undid the belt of my pack and put all the hundred plus pounds over one shoulder and stepped right in. The water went well above my knees. Maybe halfway between my knees and my waist. It was cold as hell. My legs just immediately went numb. So naturally, halfway through I just got swept away."

  The Voyaqe ofScth Piisk the Thin Contimed

  "I don't know how I got to the other side. I was lying among the rocks, with my legs in the water, and my pack had slipped from my grasp. I was pretty beat up. I didn't care whether I lived or died. After awhile I got more conscious and thought, well, maybe I should do something and let myself live. So I kind of crawled over to where my pack was. It took all my energy. I could hardly even stand up and drag it to some high ground, so I just did