Vinland the Good

by Henry Treece

  So Leif gave in; a man would need to have the Treasure of Miklagard in his coffers to stand against that woman’s argument.

  And when this noisy company had sailed down the fjord and had gone round the wooded headland to be hidden from view; and when the horn-blowing, and singing, and bleating of sheep, and lowing of cattle, and bellowing of bulls, and clucking of hens had faded over the glassy water, Leif turned to Thorgils and said, ‘Well, son, that is the beginning of Vinland - and the end of Greenland.’

  Thorgils said, ‘You are only half right, Leif.’

  Leif searched him hard with his eyes and asked, ‘Which half is right, then?’

  But Thorgils only said, ‘Why are you not content to let life flow about you, like water from a stream? Why must you always be turning rivers out of their courses? Why must you want to know on which day you will die? Does such knowledge make a man happier? Was it not better for old Eirik’s father to die by surprise, alone in the dark byre?’

  Now Leif had never mentioned his grandfather Thorvald before, and when Thorgils said this he felt a strange lifting of the hair on his neck as though a chilly blast had swept over him; and he said in a small voice, ‘I think I am afraid of you, my son. I think you know more than a man should.’

  Thorgils picked up a flat stone and tried to skim it across the waters of the fjord; but it fell short and did not reach the water, He turned to Leif and shrugged his shoulders, smiling. ‘See,’ he said, ‘but you could get a stone to skim half-way across that little stream.’

  So Leif went up to the steading with him, less afraid now. And by and by they got about the work of hay-harvesting; then corn-harvesting; then ale-brewing; then beast-salting; then seal-hunting; then gathering driftwood against the winter snows.

  And while they were at all this, the expedition went on and on. As Karlsefni saw it, guided through gentle weather by so many seafarers of experience, it was hardly more than sailing round the lip of a huge bowl of grey rock. He wondered now why the men in Norway made such a terrifying mystery of this journey. To Gudrid he said, ‘Why, wife, it is only patience that is needed. Patience, and more patience, and still more. A man does not need even courage - only patience and the right winds.’

  They had just passed the reef where she had been wrecked. She nodded and said, ‘Yes, husband. Just patience. What else is there in life?’

  18. The Quarrels Begin

  Two days from starting they sighted Slabland with its glaciers and great flat rocks lapped by the sea, and white foxes scurrying here and there after grouse and hares. Thorhall said, ‘If I were among that lot I’d bring back a feast-robe before you could count a hundred.’

  In two more days, with a fierce wind behind them, they sighted the green woods of the next place, which was Mark-land. Once more they went southwards and in two days saw the headland at Keelness, where Thorvald’s keel stood against the sky, bleak and lonely. Freydis said, ‘My brother picked a decent enough place to be buried in. It’s a pity Leif doesn’t come out and join him in the ground.’ Her voice was like sour wine.

  Then they went tacking along the white coast and soon ran past many bays and little fjords, into one of which Karlsefni drew the ships. And here the settlers camped for a while until Karlsefni was certain of their position. Thorhall told him to go on south a while to find Vinland, but Karlsefni stared at him coldly and said, ‘You may have been there before, man, but your memory may have failed. I want to be certain of all things before I put my people’s lives in danger. I am a trader, not a hero.’

  So he sent the two Scots, Haki and Hekja, that King Olaf had given Leif, and that Leif had given Karlsefni when he sailed, to run southwards overland and bring back news of what they found. At the end of three days these swift runners came back smiling and carrying grapes and wheat in their shoulder-bags. Thorhall said, ‘Did I not tell you so, Icelander?’

  Karlsefni nodded. ‘You did,’ he said, ‘but as I told you, I am a merchant by trade and in many dealings I have learned not to trust everything I hear.’

  Thorhall flared at this and shouted, ‘Do you call me a liar? Eirik never called me a liar.’

  Karlsefni turned away from him and said, ‘I cannot waste my time on every madman who wishes to quarrel with me. Let us set off again, towards the south, where Vinland lies.’

  Hut Thorhall ran at him and swung him round by the arm. He said, ‘Now you have called me a liar and a madman. All the folk have heard you belittle me. This is your first mistake and I shall not forgive you until I have my revenge.’

  The girls giggled at this, but the men glared at them until they were silent, for it was a serious matter when leaders insulted one another and vowed vengeance. Helgi said in a whisper to Finnbogi, ‘If we were wise, we would turn back now, the two of us, before winter comes on and the seas are impassable. I feel that no good will come of this voyage.’ Freydis came up behind them and said, ‘What are you two whispering about?’

  Helgi turned on her coldly and said, ‘Something that does not concern you, woman. You may be able to rule your little husband, but we are a different sort of beast - you cannot rule

  us.’. ‘

  Freydis glared at him and bit her lip. ‘We shall see about that,’ she said. ‘I shall remind you of this moment at a later time, never fear.’ Then she strode away to her own ship.

  Finnbogi said, ‘We cannot turn back now, brother, or she will boast that she has frightened us, and our name as stout men will be lost. We must go on with the others, and hope to be given the chance of putting this wicked woman in her place before long.’

  Unrest spread among the voyagers, but when they saw the place they were to live in, they forgot the quarrels and could not wait to land. They passed the little island at the mouth of the fjord and saw that it was so crowded with eider-duck that a man could not set his foot down anywhere without breaking eggs. And all along the fjord the green grass grew so lush that the cattle in the tow-boats smelled it and cried out to be set ashore to graze.

  Karlsefni laughed at them and said, ‘Wait, wait, little brothers, soon you shall feast until you are as fat as butter. I have never seen such good grazing in my life.’

  Before long they came to the blue lake and saw Leif’s houses standing by the shore, looking as inviting as when they were first built. Soon Freydis went to Karlsefni and claimed half of the huts for her people to live in. He answered, ‘You have fewer folk than I have to look after. So you need fewer houses.’

  Freydis took hold of his belt and would not let it go. ‘Leif is my brother,’ she said. ‘But you have no blood-tie with him. That gives me greater rights than you, Icelander.’

  He could see that she was set on having her own way and he did not wish to quarrel again, in case it came to blows. He saw that Thorhall had sided with Freydis already - though Helgi and Finnbogi stood away from her, frowning. Karlsefni said to Freydis, ‘My wife Gudrid hopes to have her baby at the turn of the year. I want that child to be born into a peaceful world, so I shall not quarrel with you.’

  Then Freydis said fiercely, ‘And I also hope to have a baby in the spring, and I do not care whether it is bom into a peaceful world or not. My child will fight its way through life, Karlsefni, and will not grow up idle, to live off the labour of other people. I shall have the houses, not because you give them but because I take them.’

  Then she let go his belt and he shrugged his shoulders. So that quarrel passed and Karlsefni set men on to chop down trees and lay the timber on the rocks to season in the sunshine. It was no great hardship to build other houses.

  Meanwhile, the sheep and cattle and pigs fed to their hearts’ content. As for the settlers, they found grapes and game in profusion and hardly had to walk a hundred paces to knock down a plump deer with an arrow.

  Thorhall glowered at Bjarni and said, ‘This sort of life ruins a hunter. Everything comes too easily.’

  Bjarni said smiling, ‘It suits me, brother. I live only for today. Tomorrow can take care of itself.’
>
  Most of the settlers felt the same. They thought that summer would last for ever and so they made little effort to gather Mocks of food.

  Now one day Karlsefni was walking along the fjord with Gudrid when suddenly she shuddered and said, ‘The wind has changed, husband. It blows from the north not the east and there are ice-arrows in it.’

  He smiled and said, ‘Wrap your cloak round you. You are

  dreaming.’

  As he spoke the broad blue sky vanished as though a great grey hand had snatched it away, and without any warning swift scurries of snowflakes howled about them.

  By the time they had struggled back to their house, the settlement lay under a white blanket and the snow kept coming. Men shivered by small fires, since they had not thought to get wood chopped; and the cattle stood knee deep in drifts, bewildered that the green pasture had been taken away from them so suddenly.

  This was only the beginning. By the end of a month of such blizzards, the settlers cursed the day they ever set eyes on Vin-land. Now Thorhall went boldly to Karlsefni and said, ‘Merchant, listen to a hunter. If you want to keep these people alive

  through this winter, divide the men into two companies. While

  one company is out hunting by daylight for food let the others chop down as many saplings as they can, and set up a firm stockade round this village. Soon the wolves will come, and then we shall be the hunted, not the hunters.’

  Karlsefni did this, though with a bad grace, and when the stockade was up, had all the cattle driven into it. After that, the wolves came every night and scratched and howled outside, trying to get in. Now the days grew very short and there was little enough time to hunt in. The wheat and vines had all shrivelled. Often the folk had to satisfy their hunger by chewing at pieces of old hide. Some of them ate bark from the stockade-posts. The ground was so hard that the old ones who died could not be buried, but were propped by the stockade under a covering of snow.

  When things were at their worst, Thorhall went off one day and did not return. On the next day Bjarni went to Karlsefni and told him. So the two went out into the icy wind and searched for him, and at the end of the day they found him on the top of a cliff, his shirt wide open, his eyes turned back in his head, his face a mottled red. He was praying in a strange language. They had to carry him back to the settlement, he was so stiff-legged and frozen. Then Karlsefni said to him, ‘What were you doing there? Why did you put us into such danger, searching for you?’

  Thorhall said, ‘What I was doing, you will soon find out. As for danger, I was getting you out of it, not into it. See that the young men search the coast by the mouth of the fjord early tomorrow.’ Then he would say no more, but fell into a deep sleep.

  The next morning, the young men came rushing back to say that they had found a whale stranded on the shore. All the settlers ran down with axes and knives, and staggered home late in the day loaded with meat for the cooks to boil in their iron cauldrons. And that evening there was great feasting inside the stockade.

  But the following day all the folk save Thorhall were sick and it was not long before Karlsefni went to the baresark and said, ‘I do not like this. There was something wrong with that while meat. The folk cannot keep it down. Now they are in a worse state than ever.’

  Thorhall laughed up at him and said, ‘They will keep it down well enough, as I have done, if they will only give thanks to Thor, who sent it to them.’

  At this Karlsefni almost ran from Thorhall’s hut and, gathering the folk, told them that they had been tricked into eating heathen food. Then they followed him painfully up to the cliff-top where Thorhall had been found, and they flung what was left of the meat into the sea.

  After that, all the folk of the settlement knelt and prayed to Christ for help. The whale meat seemed to boil for a while in the sea, then vanished as though a great hand had dragged it down from below. And when they went back to the settlement they found a herd of caribou grubbing for moss in the snow near by, so intent on what they were doing that they did not hear hunters string their bows and let drive their arrows.

  That day the weather broke for a time, and the men were able to bring fish in from the fjord.

  Thorhall lay on his bed and bit the coverlet in fury.

  19. One Quarrel Ends

  Before that winter passed a terrible thing happened in the settlement. A sort of madness came over Freydis and she did everything she could to annoy Helgi and Finnbogi. First she turned them out of their huts and forced them to build others, though the cold was bitter; then she began to threaten them, saying that she wanted their ship and would have them flung out of the village into the snow unless they gave it up to her.

  The two brothers were ashamed to tell Karlsefni what was going on, and they did not deign to tell Thorvard her husband, a man they despised. Then, after this had been going on for weeks, one morning before dawn Freydis appeared in their hut dressed only in her night-shift, and said, ‘Let us be friends at last. Look, I need a bigger ship than the one I have. Will you exchange yours for mine, Finnbogi? I ask no more.’

  He was so weary with all this bickering, he sat up in bed and said, ‘Yes, lady, I will agree to that. I cannot stand this quarrelling one moment longer. It is no way for settlers to live.’

  Freydis smiled and said, ‘Now you will not have to stand it any longer. You shall soon see what sort of friend I can be.’

  So she went away and the brothers lay back to sleep again, thankful that at last they could live in peace. On her way home Freydis made sure that her gown was wet through in the snow and that her bare feet were as cold as ice. Once inside her house she woke Thorvard up and began to scream out, ‘See what they have done to me, those brothers. They dragged me outside while you snored, and have thrashed me like a slave. I do not think I shall live after such treatment.’ Her hair was wild and shaggy on her shoulders.

  Thorvard yawned and said, ‘What do you wish me to do? Why must you always be making me do things, when I want only a quiet life?’

  She rushed at him and struck him. Then she screamed out, ‘You are not fit to be my husband. You are a coward and I shall divorce you before all the folk. I own everything and when you are no longer my husband, you will become a slave in this settlement. I will see to it that you suffer, layabed, oh yes, you shall suffer! Even the thralls will mock you.’

  Thorvard no longer wanted to sleep. He rose and said, ‘Very well, I cannot stand against you. Though I wish to God I had never married you. What am I to do?’

  She smiled thinly and said, ‘Bring your most trusted men and follow me. There is no need for you to think. Just do as I say.’

  And when they got to the brothers’ huts, she said, ‘Now inside with you and catch them while they lie in bed. Lay the axe on them hard. I will see that no harm comes to any of you.’

  The men had no stomach for the job they had to do, but they did it. Now there were five women in the other huts round about, and they heard the commotion and looked through their windows and saw what had happened in the dawn light.

  Freydis said to her husband, ‘Now you can make a clean sweep of the witnesses, then we will go back and eat our breakfast. The cold has made me quite hungry.’

  But at this even Thorvard shrank back. He flung his axe on to the ground. ‘I will go so far but no farther,’ he said. ‘I have never hurt a woman in my life.’

  Freydis picked up the axe and said, ‘The more fool you, then; they might have had more respect for you if you had. Now watch all the doors, I do not want any of them to get away before I have been to visit them.’

  And when she came back at last her gown was sodden with something more than snow. She flung Thorvard’s axe to him and said, ‘That is not a bad blade, but I prefer a thinner shaft that I can get my fingers round. I have quite small hands, you know, husband.’

  He looked at them and shuddered.

  Then she led the men back to her huts. They were terrified at what they had done, but she stopped once and said
to them, ‘You will be well paid, my friends. But do not breathe a word of this to anyone, or I shall come visiting you too, when you do not expect it. I am not the daughter of Eirik Red-hand for nothing.’

  In her kitchen she burned the blood-stained gown, put on a white woollen one and got back into bed. To Thorvard she said, ‘Stop shaking, you fool. There are no witnesses. No one knows who did it.’

  Thorvald leaned against the wall shuddering. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘and that is enough for me. I shall never be able to forget it. I shall always know. Do not touch me with those hands.’

  And when the crime was discovered, Karlsefni knew too, but he could not bring Freydis to justice because, by the law of Greenland, there must be witnesses to come forward and say that they saw a thing happen, and Freydis had made sure that there were none. Or, at least, none who dared speak of what they had seen, and had helped to do.

  After this a shadow fell over the settlement by the lakeside and now all folk barred their doors at night and slept with an axe or sword beside the bed.

  20. The Skin Boats

  But when spring came, and the sun shone, and the snows vanished as though they had never fallen, the shadow lifted a little and the folk began to smile again. Gudrid had a little boy and they named him Snorri. He was the first child to be born in Vinland and was such a fine boy that all the settlers crowded round him and wished him a happy and long life.

  Freydis wanted to hold him, but Gudrid held him close to her and would not let the woman lay a finger on him. Freydis smiled down at her starkly and whispered, ‘Please yourself, my dear. Perhaps when my own baby is born it will be a boy. And perhaps in time to come my son will lay more than a finger on this little Snorri of yours. I say no more.’