The Ice-Shirt

by William T. Vollmann

  The Seduction ofKdiskap

  The Skraelings came often to trade after that, to the pleasure of both sides, for Karlsefiii's cows produced plenty of milk, and his storehouses had plenty of room for skins. In time the Greenlanders and the Skraelings could understand a few of each others' words. It was Freydis, too clever in many things, who talked to the Skraelings, and found out that their god was called Glooskap. - In fact He was not a god at all, but a shape-changing Person with Power, Freydis, however, not having knownti any such, assumed that He must be a god, that He must take worshippers, that He must be in league with Amortortak. Just as, seeing in the face of a stranger features similar to those of someone you've always known you let yourself be lulled into trusting the external resemblance, so Freydis, knowing that both were gods, trusted that both were cruel. She called upon GLOOSKAP, and asked Him to make her richer, and promised that soon she would bring the frost from Greenland. She was so fertile in her dreaming; in her lust for a master she was so sunnily adulterous ...

  TfieSktdtintfieSea

  Just over a rise from the setdement was deep grass, and then the ocean, as if the Greenlanders' houses had never been. Young hard spruce-buds kissed dandelion-caps and lovely purple irises in this bee-meadow whose buzzing ascended pleasingly to the sun. In the tidal lagoon beneath was a grassy bluff scattered vsdth bleached driftwood logs, and then a wide tongue of pebbly beach on which Freydis stood by herself, irresolute. It was the month of Egg-Tide. A cold wind was blowing in from the ocean. Freydis walked north to a low and lonely point, where the white surf crashed against the fractured rocks, upon which were only breeze-stirred salt-puddles. East and north of her she could see nothing but ocean. She knelt with her face in the north and prayed to AMORTORTAK, her noble and most excellent Chieftain: "I wish to thank You for giving me Your peace and forbearance for so long

  FREYDIS EIRIKSDOTTIR

  237

  when I have not yet fulfilled my promise to You. Do not be impatient with me. I will do my part. I am like a gold ring which You have sent out among your people; I know You desire my safe return, so that You may add me once again to Your hoard." - So she spoke at length, praising herself to Him so that

  HVMN SXVLL

  He would be reminded of her value, and swearing anew to do His will. Then, walking south across the point, she came to a beach where boulders formed themselves into double arches, like the eye-sockets of a skull, through which the milk-grey sea gazed mildly, while the forehead was flat and green-grown,

  and though the skull had no mouth the teeth were scattered thickly about: -smooth pebbles, black, orange, red and white. Because this was a prodigy, Freydis considered that Blue-Shirt had heard her prayer. She bowed again, and a cloud-shadow came to the edge of the ocean. (In those days, as I have said, the shape-changers were dying out, but it was still possible to do quite a bit with prayer.) - The place is still there today; it is called "The Arches."

  The Luck ofSkofte Carrion-Crow

  Meanwhile Freydis's men had not been idle. In small bands, they ranged among the low green islands that decorated the lakes, slaughtering whatever they found. There was one among them called Skofte Carrion-Crow, because he was known to follow in the footsteps of others, and to swoop away with whatever booty of theirs he could. For this habit he was considered less than a man, but Freydis found him all the more useful the more despised he was, because she could make him do unpleasant chores for her, in order to retain her protection. He acted as a pimp for her in many things. - The deer were so plentiful in Vinland that Freydis's men killed them whenever they saw them, taking only whatever portion was convenient to carry; so Skofte, following behind, was never hungry. - "Ha, ha!" the men would laugh. "Leave the guts for Skofte Carrion-Crow!" Of course they left him far more than that, as it was less trouble in Vinland for them to be compassionate.

  It was Skofte who first discovered an encouragement to Freydis's designs, for as he was grubbing in the belly of a fawn that the others had left he came across a mass of browse in which a great leaf lay undigested. It was gold and red and green; it glowed like radium, and it was from an ash tree. - Skofte capered with joy. He clutched the leaf tightly in his bloody hands. This was the first lucky thing that had ever happened to him. (Those who are genuinely ill-favored by luck, I have found, are often thrown a crumb of undeniable richness, so that they can no longer pretend that richness does not exist anywhere, and then, when their usual run resumes, they will be tormented all the more.) Skofte set out for Gudrid's country at a run. He was in the northeast, not far from Cross-Ness. He swam from island to island, with the leaf in his mouth. He ran through the trees and swamps until the sea-smell came into his nostrils, and he swung north to avoid Helgi and Finnbogi's uncanny house, and thence poled his skiff down the coast to Freydis.

  "Well, well," said she dryly, seeing him. "What now?"

  In answer, the little man held out the leaf to her, which blazed and shone with a wonderful fire, so that for a moment Freydis was timid and perplexed, but seeing diat it had not harmed Skofte, she took it boldly into her hand.

  Freydisj Gudridandthe Great IVee

  After this, Freydis went looking everywhere for Yggdrasil, but she could never find it because her purpose was selfish and so she was blinded by the goldness of her own self-light; great spikes of gold light pierced her eyes like spears so that she wandered seeing sunny meadows and sunny trees; and everything sent up a shout of golden rejoicing to her god JEHOVAH, whose Son on eardi we call die WHITE CHRIST (although to Red Eirik He was BALDUR, die son of ODIN die High One); but Freydis cried in diis joyous light because she could not find what she wanted to find; yes, the tears rushed fi-om her eyes in round drops that caught the sunlight and seemed gold to her (for, as all men know, the kenning for gold is "FREYJA's tears"); but her selfishness maddened her with pleasure at the same time that its consequences hurt her; so the gold light she saw in everything was the light of herself, the gold-perfect self that she had been bom with and lost to Blue-Shirt, so she rushed through the trees calling her own name and wanting to make love to herself; she laughed when she glimpsed her face in the pools of slow wide rivers, and tried to drink herself up; she kissed her own lips in the water, she drank and drank the sweet water but she could not become any more herself than she already was; she made love to tree-trunks that might have her shape; so she staggered through the forest, forgetting her scattered clothes, ignorant of the blood that streamed fi*om the cuts in her feet; but of course it was because she loved herself so much that she had given herself away. She had never been able to give herself to anyone who wanted to have her except Blue-Shirt, and in Him she had made such a terrible bargain that she did not want to think about it. So she blundered through golden spiderwebs, and golden beedes tumbled fi-om the trees and crawled in her hair ... At last it was night, and the sun-madness left her, so that, sour, naked and footsore, she could stride the long ells home to Gudrid's houses.

  At last it became clear to her that she could not discover Yggdrasil by herself, so she prayed to Blue-Shirt and asked His advice, and in a dream He told her to send Gudrid to seek it, for while Gudrid was by no means a superior person (said Blue-Shirt with a sneer), she was nonetheless unblinded, since.

  though she had prostituted herself before, she had at last married someone for whom she could feel love. Freydis did not care to understand this. It was very bitter for her to be forced to ask Gudrid's help in anything. Nor, of course, did she care to tell Gudrid that what she searched for was Yggdrasil - for all the Greenlanders remembered how in Herjolfsness Gudrid had refused to sing the Warlock-Songs for the Prophetess even though the need pressed, and her mind was changed only by force of the farmer Thorkel's rebuke. - So Freydis must hatch a plot to deceive Gudrid. (Happily, Freydis could hatch plots as well as ever a hen hatched eggs.) At length, therefore, she called Skofte Carrion-Crow to her and gave him back the leaf he had given her, directing him to present it secretly to Gudrid, and to make her swear to reveal its secret
to no one else - for that way Freydis would be called on only to watch Gudrid, and no other. As for her own men, they were gold-greedy enough to be silent about the matter. ~ "But I tell you, Carrion-Crow," cried Freydis, "if you're slipshod in this, oh, how I'll beat you and beat you!" - "Fear not," said Skofte. "I love to deceive highborn ladies." - Freydis laughed.

  . . . "That is a pretty leaf," said Gudrid, turning it over and over in her hand.

  "Yes," replied Skofte. "As you see, mistress, it is gold, and it comes from a great Tree that I have been searching for."

  "It is not like Freydis to give you leisure for such errands as wooing trees," Gudrid said a little sharply.

  Now Skofte had been warned that Gudrid would raise this point. So craftily he hung his head and said, "Mistress, I am not happy to be her thrall, though I would not have this wddely known. When I find this Tree, I will strip the wood-gold fi-om it and buy my fi-eedom. If you wdsh to help me, I wdll gladly share with you equally. But you must swear to tell no one about this, not even your husband, for since he is the leader of this expedition there are those who listen behind him, and I would not have someone deprive me of my gold-right."

  Gudrid was suspicious, and did not like this proposal. Nor did she approve of this thrall's stealing away from Freydis his labor, which - however much Gudrid disliked her - certainly belonged to her by right. But, as Skofte well knew, Gudrid was also an ambitious woman. He made her see how thrilling it would be if she could enrich herself and her husband with this fabulous tree-gold. So at last she agreed to go looking for it when she could. And, in her pride, and her hope of surprising her husband, she swore not to tell Karlsefni.

  "Very good, mistress," said Skofte when he saw that she was resolved. "Now surely since I have helped you, you should give me some gift."

  Gudrid flushed with anger. "Here," she said, throwing him a bolt of cloth. "Take it wdth my curses, thrall."

  "A curse does not decrease the value of cloth as fme as this," laughed Skofte as he went his way. And when he told Freydis of it, she thought it a very fme saying.

  Freydis cmdTfiorvard

  "What do you think everybody's talking about in the longhouse at night, when you're snoring and burping?" This friendly question was addressed to Thorvard by his slender longhaired wife. (What if women became more and not less lovely as time passed? Seeing true beauty one can only despair. - At least she was getting uglier, Thorvard consoled himself; at least she was losing her power over him.)

  "How should I know?" said Thorvard. "Timber and women, I guess."

  "Mainly they're talking about what a laughingstock you are," Freydis said. "They know you don't defend me. Last night I heard Gudrid say you probably couldn't even satisfy me as a husband."

  "And what did you say to that?" said Thorvard wearily. He was all too used to this.

  "I said nothing," said Freydis calmly. "It's your place, not mine, to reply to such accusations."

  Thorvard said nothing. His marriage had long been a chimera, like King Halfdan's Yule-feast.

  "Everyone can see you don't defend me," repeated Freydis. "Everyone wonders how bold Gudrid's men can be before you'll doing anything. Yesterday they waylaid me in the woods and abused me."

  "If they touched you," said Thorvard, "I imagine their fingers got frostbitten."

  Freydis and Gudrid

  Gudrid loved to bathe herself and little Snorri in a pool screened round with oak trees; there she knelt on one knee on a soft ring of moss that ran round the pond, and dangled her white ankle in the water; she undid her hair and let the baby play with it; she gave him suck; she sat in the water and sang to

  him, while Freydis watched her white body from behind a tree: - oh, how beautiful Gudrid was! - Freydis wanted to chop her guts out.

  Weannq the Goid-Sfiirt

  Never did Gudrid suspect that the beautiful leaf which she fingered day and night was BOLVERKR's.* Oh, just as the Bear-Shirt made men see red-leaf forests through a hot rainy haze of blood; just as the Blue-Shirt made the wearer's world glitter cold and grand and beautiful in a thousand twinkling mirrors, so the Gold-Shirt glared and shone like the sun's eye, so hot and bright that only an unseeing rose like Gudrid could open herself to it trustingly and lovingly and feed upon it and grow fi-om it; she was warm and happy; she was thrilled wdth the gold she longed to feed on: - how her husband would value her then! Though she knew she gave of herself simply by being herself, because she was so beautiful and gentle, Gudrid longed to present Karlsefiii with gold. She did not crave it for its ow^ sake, as did Thorvard; she did not want it for what it could buy, as did Karlsefiii; she wanted only to give him material proof of her love, for she had now entered that time of her life when she longed to give something back - not exactly to appease the giving spirits of her father and Thorir and Thorstein Eiriksson and Thorstein the Black, but more to reestablish an equality wdth the world which had given her so much; then, too, when her son Snorri had reached the age of reason, it would be deeply satisfying to her to give him gold to help him start out in life; what a fortunate woman she would be who did this! - So she drew on the Gold-Shirt; she smiled and kissed her baby; she lashed him to her back and set out in the forest whenever she could evade her husband's loving vigilance (and she did not know that Skofte Carrion-Crow always followed her); and her hair was golden, so she hooded herself in gold ...

  Tfiorvardandthe Skrcetings

  As for Thorvard, although Gudrid pitied and despised him and he for his part rarely thought of her, he wore the same shirt that she did. Every night he counted the pelts in his long low sea-chest, rubbing those ermine-beards and beaver-beards luxuriously against his own, wishing he could keep them all for himself because they were valuable, but knowing that he would sell

  * Name for Odin meaning "the Evil-Doer."

  them all for precisely that reason when he got back to Greenland. Every dawn, every noon he went dovm to the river to look for skin-boats. When he saw Skraelings he rushed to cut his red cloth narrower and narrower. If he saw them wearing the cloth that he had sold them, an ache went through his heart because it was valuable: if he could have it back again he would be able to sell it to them for more skins! - If only he had thought to bring other red things from Gardar! If only he could put on one of his many skin-shirts forever: - then he would love himself; then he would be valuable . ..

  New Ciothes

  To the boy Snorri, who was now two years old, the world smelled of pine-logs and peat; and he laughed without understanding at the red eyes of the long-fire winking so merrily at him; his mother, who adored him, often smothered him in her arms, for she was not nearly so hard-pressed by her tasks here as in Greenland; the country was kinder and so was she. Once he was playing vsdth a twig just outside the doorway when he heard a marvelous noise that made him clap his hands; it was the sound of a sentry's horn, for the Skraelings were coming to trade. But his mother, instead of being overjoyed by the noise as he was, snatched him quickly into the house and bolted the door. For the first time, something sad and heavy stirred inside the boy's bowels like a snake. But he soon forgot it, because the fire flickered at him so brightly. Now he heard the strange Skraeling voices (for the People of KluSKAP, as they always did, pointed at the chests of these Jenuaq crying: ''Muskunamu'kwesikr - in truth the white people's hearts were so icy-blue!), and he listened because his mother was listening; he watched her draw back her lips in disgust saying, "Skraelings!" and the boy jumped up and down in delight at the odd word and said: "Skraelings! Skraelings!"

  How the Skrczdngs Whitened Themselves

  Oh, how astonished were the People* at these white giants! They called them Jenuaq to each other; in discussing them they used the word Wobdluse - to

  * "The name Micmac comes from their word nikmaq, which means 'my kin-friends'," as a Canadian schoolbook explains (1983). "The Micmac used this word as a greeting, when speaking to the newcomers from Europe. Later the French adopted the term and began addressing these Indian friends and allies as
nikmaqs. Over the years, the word came to be written as 'Micmac' The Micmac ... referred to themselves as 'The People' ..." - In this, of course, they were not unique.

  whiten oneself; for they could not conceive that the strangers had been bom with such white skins; they must have rubbed them with the white earth of their country; or perhaps with this strange white liquid of theirs that they sold to the People for pelts; for it tasted so rich and sweet that it must be very potent in its properties. Some of the People wanted to be white, too. They loved to paint themselves, and white was one of their four Power-Colors. (Every woman painted her robe; every man's skin-shirt was painted by the woman who lived beside him.) - But now the white-wishers were warned, for from among the Plant People and Animal People came the Person called KlusKAP; He appeared to them in a dream they all shared and told them to be cautious, reminding them that Jenuaq were demons. They knew the tales of the Jenuaq who had come in grandfather-days from the north to eat them, KLUSKAP said; they could kill the People with strange loud sounds. - Or perhaps they were not demons; perhaps they were only men who had gone crazy because they had not had enough moose-fat to drink, for Vinland, too, had its share of haphazard shape-changers; in any event their inimical character was known, as they longed to crunch mangled man-bones in their jaws: yes, they were demons; yes! - Once, it is true, a Jenu came hungry and roaring through the trees and a woman of the People saved herself and her family by calling him Dear Grandfather and smiling upon him and serving him all the food he wanted until slowly, slowly, he ceased to glare at her; slowly he began to return the family's greetings; slowly he chose to smile at them, to help them, until at last when his brothers came south he defended the People against them. - There were some in the tribe who cited this story and said, "Let us be friends to these demons, and not kill them. Their cloth is very red and holy, and it may be that they wdll protect us against others." So they brought Thorvard many skins, and although the red cloth strips he gave them in return were thinner than ever they said nothing; like the woman who had saved herself they were determined to bear the Jenuaq optimistically. - There were others still who said, "Brothers, let us put on this new white shirt! We will be cloud-white; we wdll gain new powers; we will defeat the Jenuaq with their hearts of ice!" For they had never heard tell of the brother and sister in Greenland who had drowned themselves. So, each for his own reasons, the People came often to the camp of the white, white Jenuaq; smiling or impassive, they fingered the smff of their clothing; they clutched the wonderful red cloth to themselves - "It is more brilliant than blood!" they laughed - they listened well to their language, which was to the People as the cawang of ravens, the creaking of wood, the falling of stone on stone. Most of all they admired the weapons of the Jenuaq: the