that. Everything in my pack was just drenched. A lot of my food was ruined. But just through sheer stupid luck my sleeping bag was dry. It was the only thing that was dry. So I took off my clothes and just got into the sleeping bag. It got to the point where I was shaking, and I knew I was on the mend. I started shaking pretty uncontrollably, both out of the cold and the fear. The sun was still out, which really helped. There was kind of a breeze coming from the §ord. But I dried out, and after awhile I quit shaking. - It took a long time to get everything ready because I was kind of weak and really bewildered, and pretty vulnerable, but the first thing I did was set up my tent. Then I just went through my pack and laid everything out. It dried pretty fast in the sun, 'cause it was on the rocks, which were pretty warm at that point from the sun, too. And a nice wind helped them dry out fast. Then I just camped out and started thinking about what had happened and my whole attitude. - It seems like there's nothing like a close brush to bring you down to earth, and make your priorities in your mind very clear (for a good while, anyway). I started considering what the fuck I was doing here and realized that while I think it was a step in the right direction, doing that kind of thing, my priorities were all fucked up, that I just had to quit doing things so much for show, just start doing things just 'cause I wanted to. Real honest things that I wanted to do. I was so ashamed of myself After that I had kind of a miserable night. Thought entirely too much. And in the morning I packed up and headed out."
"Was it in that same river that you saw that drowned girl?"
"Yeah."
The Voyage ofSeth Piisk the Thin ConciuM
"I came back down that way. I was kind of weak, 'cause I'd poorly planned my diet, poorly planned it with a lot of food I didn't like. So I didn't eat enough to catch up to the amount of work I was doing. So I wasn't having a good time. And I didn't know much about where I was. I couldn't get very far between the two big walls of mountain. It was tough going, and I just couldn't do it. So I gave up. I was at Overlord, the first path-camp. The park actually had a few picnic tables and emergency shelters. I spent the night there, and early that morning I heard these frantic footsteps by my tent and somebody yelling for me. Just kind of loud sounds. I couldn't make out any words. And there was a very panicky Swedish guy outside the tent, and he wanted me to help. So I told him I would, and I got up.
Turns out this fellow was part of a team of Swedish climbers. They were trying to climb a certain face of Mount Thor, one of the mountains that had never been climbed before. They'd tried it the year before, but they lost a man trying, and they eventually had to give up. They couldn't make it. We'd heard that they'd successfully climbed it this time. After a strange mixture of sign language, drawing, a litde French, and Swedish, I finally ascertained that one of the members of their group had been swept away trying to cross that same stream.
"Apparently they'd been really giddy and high about having successfiilly completed the climb. And on their way up to Canada, in New York, they'd met another Swedish woman, who befiiended them, and they took her along, and she didn't participate in the climb, just tended to the base camp, and for whatever reasons - we thought that maybe she'd felt a litde left out, had something left to prove since she didn't go on the climb - they'd tried to cross the stream before it braided out at all, and it was really just a torrent, and it was utterly impossible for a human being to get in and make it across. It was just crazy. They didn't rope up, and they didn't use sticks. Even I, who had stupidly crossed those heavy braids, find it inconceivable that you would even set foot in such a place, but she did. She walked right in, and was immediately swept away. She probably died in the first half-minute. It was probably painless. She probably went totally numb as soon as she got in the water, 'cause it was pretty cold. - So I spent that day with this fellow, going at just a breakneck pace, through this tundra and ice and stuflf, trying to get back to this spot. It was amazing, 'cause this guy didn't have any gear. He must have been in such a panic, and been so fiightened at seeing this woman die, that he had run all the way to where I was with nothing but tennis shoes. That's just a hell of a distance, and a hell of a terrain to run over with tennis shoes. He was just so pumped up. I had him calmed down a httle, got some warm food into him. We weren't thinking too much. We just wanted to get to that spot as soon as possible, just on the outside chance she might still be alive. Every time we took a break, we just got going, 'cause we thought that the minute we took for a break might be the minute she was still alive. So we got there and we looked around. There were some Eskimos there from the village. And the helicopter did come. But nobody'd found her. And it tumed out when we got near the river that the fellow who'd run all the way up to get us had a severely sprained ankle, and didn't know it, 'cause he was so pumped up. So for about the last half-mile we had to carry him.
"The next day we spent in the river, looking for the woman, whom we
unfortunately found. We weren't the first to find her, but some other people did, and we got a glimpse of her. It was really horrible. She was really beat up, and had an absolutely anguished expression on her face, and her hands were all clenched up like claws. It was pretty dreadfiil. Her eyes were open. - I wouldn't say diat we were depressed about it, but we were - well, Vm not sure. We were all very quiet. So that night we got set up, and diere was a lot of driftwood up fi*om the town, so we built a litde fire, and relaxed, or tried to, and one of the Eskimo guys came up, and he was a guy fi-om Ellesmere Island who was just telling us how much he loved die country and loved being there; and he had the most beautifid eyes that were wide open all the time, and just seemed at ease, very happy. He said that it was too bad, and he said that this woman had probably died at about six-thirty in the morning, about the same time as his wife gave birth to a litde girl. That was - very comforting. And that night we were sitting by that same river, and it was just moaning all night. A very eerie feeling, and a very nice feeling, too."
"Do you think the river has a spirit?" I said.
"I really do," Seth said. "But I don't think a river wants anything, except to be itself Just like anybody and anything. I don't think it claimed a soul. I don't think it's at all vindictive or vicious, just itself It just seemed very honest. If you hear a river moan, you know it has life."
The End of the Light AD 1007
As the Greenlanders sailed southward, the sea began to shine more vehemently. It glowed even through the fog, so that they could not shut it out even by closing their eyes. The fi*osts lessened, and finally ceased altogether. The hazy sky became pink and dim with orange clouds, and they went farther south and it got warmer. They stared at each other in that pale, exciting light -but it was not far enough south because it was still light at night. A round ringed cloud hung in the sky like Satum. Then the sea was warm and misty and lavender, and they thought they saw a tree-coast There were big silvery rivers in that greenness. Ahead, finally, was an orange bar of sunset, and then the promised darkness. Presendy the sea grew grey, but it was not storm-grey but dark-grey beneath a sky which was dark, and they passed an island which was light like a last white cloud, and then the sky was banded blue and black and the black got bigger and bigger and they sailed into that hot delicious darkness ...
How strange it was not to be able to see things! The moon pretended to help, and sometimes it did, but they sailed without a care through its long bright tendrils that rested so easily upon the water.
Markiand*
They sailed for two days before a good northerly wind, until they sighted a second land, which was flat and wooded, with white sandy beaches that sloped gently down to sea. They called that Forest-Land, as Leif and Bjami had done before them. From Woodland to Wineland it is not far, Leif had said. They could already smell the honey of their land, borne to them on the sea-breezes. Freydis smiled through her teeth and said that Wineland was certainly due by now. As for Helgi and Finnbogi, they merely ran their eyes over the waves, whose crests were as numerous, distracting and unfathomable in their a
rrangement as the black lines on birch bark. - Presently the weather changed, and they found that they were not quit of Markland after all. In
* "Forest-Land" or "Woodland" (probably Labrador).
the dark grey sea, a dark cape arose, against which die whitecaps crashed. A petrel flew in the rain. The forest was greenish-grey. Hugging the coast because of die storm, the Greenlanders sailed past dark grey rocks, grey lakes and rugged, tree-shagged hills. Atop the low, rocky chffs, wiry little trees grew out of die yellow grass. They sailed along die edge of a yellow plain, widi grey rocks beside them and grey mountains too high to be mountains ahead of diem. They rose up into the sky, diose mountains, and Freydis thought that they must be wrapped in cloud until her ship came closer to them and she saw that before they vanished into the real clouds they flaunted snow on their greenish teats. Those mountains, seen indistincdy through the rain, reminded her in a ghastly way of Blue-Shirt, and once again her heart sank, for here were the trees and grass which he had promised her, but how horrible it all was! Still she wondered if he had tricked her, and she had become his for nothing. (Freydis never really understood how lofty Blue-Shirt was.)
- No one else shared her feelings. She heard Helgi and Finnbogi talking about how rich in timber the country was. They would be quite content to stop here. - "If you stop here," said Freydis dryly, "it will be without us."
- That kept them quiet. - The mountains were vast grey trapezoids in the mist, inset with ovals and diamonds of snow. Low spruce forests rolled south under the storm clouds, run through with wide grey streams that cherished little sand-islands at every bend. Hills of green and yellow trees folded in on themselves in the rain. Sometimes the ridge-tops were high and flat, forming horizons that ended abruptly with the land. The land opened out before them, but the trees were packed so tightly together that in places it would be diflficult for a man's body to force a passage between them. At the edge of the coast, their roots twisted and stampeded around each other to burrow into the solid earth; the weaker trees leaned slowly into the ocean, their roots exposed by the wind. Freydis, who had never seen so many trees before, was almost revolted by their lushness. The struggle of the roots reminded her of worms in a corpse.
The plains of Markland went on, interrupted by dark cliffs with snow on them. The hills were greenish-black in the fog. The ships sailed slowly past dark bays whose cliff-walls were patched with snow, then along a plain of windblown fog through which little could be seen but orange-brown grass and silver ponds that were mirrors of the sky and scraggly, wind-twisted trees ("tuckamores," the Newfoundlanders call them now); and the sea merged so closely with the fog that they might have been sailing through the sky, were it not for the black rocks to starboard, with their whitecap shallows, which were thick with gulls at low tide.
After a time the blue sky burst from the suddenly mild clouds and enriched the colors of the trees. Ahead was a long narrow rectangle of blue between a flat tree-ridge and a flat cloudbank. Here they stopped for water, and Gudrid found many fossil shells. Thin white weed-stalks ascended from the grass like smoke. - They returned to their ships, and sailed past many low blue ridges dairy-dappled with snow, white clouds and blue sky. Though low, these cliflfs were sheer, and their faces were lined with ancient strata. A single bird hung in the sky.
The ocean was very black and clear. In the shallows, where it met the white sand, it was green as the land was green with scrubby spruces all the way to the horizon ...
"Let's find the big trees!" cried Freydis. And they sailed south for two days and two nights.
Windandifie Good
When [the sun] first comes to visit the east with warmth and bright beams, the day begins to lift up silvery brows and a pleasant face to die east wind. Soon the east wind is crowned vndi golden glory and robed m all his raiments of joy. He eases griefs and regretful sighs and turns a bright countenance toward his neighbors on either side, bidding them rejoice with him in his delight and cast away their winterlike sorrows.
Speculum Regale, V.87-8
T
JLh(
he sun arose upon the sea and made it gold. A little later, when the water was pale blue and translucent, the sky was still gold, flaming like another world beyond the highest pitch of the Greenlanders' yearning. Still they sailed south, upon the wrinkled blue plain of the sea, so that their vessels scarcely trembled. Their long wake-road vanished into the sun's golden spangles, while a low white cloud lined the horizon. ^X^en the sun was fully up, the sea was a dark, dark blue, foaming and hissing beneath their keels. The white foam lay upon the water like ice.
At midmoming the sea became as smooth and insidious as smoked glass, and they saw a low land lined with trees. It was a peninsula, from which other peninsulas extended, none of them more than the height of two men above the waves. Low skerries barely broke the ocean-skin. The land's skin was grass of a rich brown-green color. Rocks reflected in the water their cleavages, subdivided by the ripples. Beyond, the ocean went on again. In the bays, the sea was shadowed brownish-green from grass.
The land curled around the ships. Dark green trees grew on its fingers. They entered a low lagoon, whose ripples were like a thousand smiles. Warm and blue, the sunny water streamed peacefully. Across the firth was a meadow of golden green, rolUng over a rounded hill to where the evergreens started. The
warblings of the alder-birds made the only music. Black hawks flip-flapped slowly in the air, and the sunlight was like liquid about them so that they seemed like clots of blood-jelly in water. The grass blew in the wind, and all around was the smell of the sea. Wide-leaved litde ferns had risen through the dead grass, and they danced in the sun, Wineland being Sunland, Summerland where there had never been Bear-Kings; and the Greenlanders rushed ashore to drink the sweet dew out of flower-cups and they thought that they had never tasted anything so sweet, and they were happy. - "The trees that stood with dripping branches and frozen roots," says the Speculum Regale, "put forth green leaves, thus showing their joy that the sorrow and distress of winter are past." - Oh, they came before the fi-ost ever did! - When Freydis came ashore her husband tried to help her across the sea-mud, but he slipped when she leaned her weight upon him, and she stood upbraiding him in her muddy shoes. "Now I know what a poor husband you are," she cried, "since you cannot even help me across a muddy spot." - Everyone laughed at Thorvard, and he stood smiling and blinking and leaning on his fancy spear. - As for Gudrid, she felt gay, and went running among the rolling hollows of low evergreen trees, and all around her were little lakes full of forested islands. On the beach she found a black mussel shell as blue and white inside as china. The sand was unbroken save by the three-toed imprints of birds. The pale blue waves came gently to the beach, which sloped slowly up, a smooth white shelf, to the unruly grasses, where fast black birds skittered low in the air. Where the sand was wet, Gudrid's feet sank in as if she were walking on butter. A gull-feather lay upon the sand. There were dandelions around the littie lagoons. Ahead, there was a blue-green city on the horizon, but all the towers were trees.
Pinpointing their Landrail
From the astronomical observations that they took, we know that they must have landed near New Jersey. But other scholars, some of even greater repute than I, say that the Greenlanders stayed at Cape Cod, in Maine, in Newfoundland, in North Carolina.
Treydxs Tak^s Possession
Every woman is the freyja of her property, and she who has a household is a hus-freya.
Yngling Saga, XIII
It was Freydis who found Leif's houses, in a fine meadow beside a lake. The tail grass had grown up around them. Inside the peat-shagged longhouse it was dark and moist. The roof was made of peeled beams, between which smaller sticks were fitted transversely to hold up the peat. Freydis went to get her men, and when she came back there were fires burning on the floor and warm green water was dripping fi-om the peat-block walls, which were like stacked soil strata, green and brown, going back to the Age of King On on the floor, w
ith the Age of Queen Sigrid the Haughty very near the ceiling; and in fact, Helgi and Finnbogi were talking of old things as they sat on the long-benches, for their ship had arrived first; and Freydis's men walked down the timbered corridor to see if anyone else was in the longhouse, and no one was for the brothers' men had gone to find Freydis and show her the path; and Helgi and Finnbogi stopped talking, seeing that Freydis had broken her promise to bring no more than thirty warriors, and Freydis's men looked to her to see if they should kill Helgi and Finnbogi in that windowless longhouse, from which the fire-smoke rose through the ceiling trap so that not even the cool blue sky could see anything, and it occurred to Freydis as she leaned against one of the dark beams that she did not need Helgi and Finnbogi anymore since their ship was harbored with hers in Wineland, and she went outside and there was no one there, and she went back in and the smoke made her eyes red and she blundered against the cold wet soil-bricks and her men were standing with their thumbs on their axes; and Freydis suddenly yawned and went outside and the grass on the peat-shagged roof was blowing like the hair of dead women, and then she came in smiling with her mind made up.
"Why have you put your things in here?" Freydis said.
"Because we assumed that our agreement would be honored," said the two brothers. They looked at her thirty-five men without expression.
"But," said Freydis smiling still, "Leif lent his houses to me, not to you."
The brothers said nothing for a moment. Then Helgi said, "We brothers could never be a match for you in evil." They took their belongings out of the houses and went deep into the woods, until they came to the border of
a lake. Here they built themselves a house; here they labored to glut the hold of their cargo ship with timber, making axe-music among the white blossoms of the cherry trees, the white daisies on the grass-sea like wave-stars reflecting die blossoms above. The brodiers shared whatever diey had with each odier and did not hoard it, for diey knew die saying: "Oftentimes, what was meant for a friend is saved for a foe."* Their diralls also worked seriously and well: they were all Icelanders. Helgi and Finnbogi instructed diem to hold themselves apart until it became clear where the Greenlanders stood - "for," said Helgi, "dieir Queen Bitch has already once played us false." - "Oh, she is not die Queen, diough she diinks she is," said Finnbogi complacendy. "It is that Gudrid who will put her in her place." - "Gudrid?" cried Helgi. "But she does not carry herself like diat!" - "Wait and see," said his brodier. -As for Freydis, she too commenced immediately to set her people at felling timber for a cargo to Greenland. She was severe and cruel with them, but very clever, and so she soon had filled her ship with maple-wood.
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