The Greenlanders

by Jane Smiley

  After this, the spring seal hunt went forward, and Asgeir’s piece of ill luck was the topic of much talk there, and men were perplexed at such a result, namely that they should not be able to act in their own behalf without punishment. Later, in the fall, Asgeir slaughtered many lambs and calves and one of his horses, for he said that he would not have the hay to bring them through the winter. Erlend Ketilsson harvested the hay on the second field with great trouble, for it was distant from his storehouse and from his other field. Nikolaus the Priest of Undir Hofdi church sent over three of his servingmen to help with the harvesting. The crop from the field was excellent, and much of it went to Erlend himself, because the bishop allowed him to take the Gardar third as well as his own fifth part in exchange for some of Vigdis’ tablet weaving and three soapstone basins. This extra hay made a huge pile outside Erlend’s storehouse, and folk said that it would be a long time before his horses ate seaweed again. These were not things Asgeir spoke of, except to say, once, with a laugh as he was putting on his shirt in the morning, “I find I grow thinner and much diminished,” but he had as much flesh upon his bones as always.

  Now in this winter, he spent much of his time with Olaf, and at Yule time he made Olaf his foster son, for Olaf’s mother had died. After Yule, there was a great thaw, followed by a hard freeze, so that the sheep went long distances looking for twigs and tufts of grass. Some even wandered out onto the frozen lake and had to be carefully herded back. Once, when doing this, Asgeir went through the ice. Others were nearby, but no one heard him call out. Some people said that he did not call out at all. When Olaf and one of the servingmen found him toward dusk, his corpus was frozen solid, with his arms wrapped around his chest and his eyes and mouth wide open. They had to build a fire in the bathhouse and lay him out there so that he could thaw. And that was the death of Asgeir Gunnarsson of Gunnars Stead. He was buried next to his brother, Hauk, close under the south side of Undir Hofdi church, and many said that the food provided at his funeral was the most delicious and most plentiful of any funeral in years, for Margret Asgeirsdottir had spent her summers with Kristin, the wife of Thord, who was well known to be one of the most skilled and liberal farmer’s wives in all the settlement. Thorkel Gellison spoke all over the district of what Asgeir had said to him at the end of the bishop’s sermon, that the case would be the death of him.

  Not long after the death of Asgeir Gunnarsson by drowning and freezing, Bishop Alf declared the souls of the Greenlanders to be in imminent peril of damnation, for, he said, not one man in five made the proper observances of fast days, especially during the forty days of Lent. It was said that Sira Jon had discovered servingmen of the bishop’s own table eating quantities of meat, and with great reveling, when they should have been fasting and meditating upon the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ. The bishop was especially interested in the skraelings, and preached not a few long sermons on demons and devils and heathens, and declared that sinful contact of Christian men with she-devils was as black as darkest night in the eyes of our Lord, and after this the Greenlanders began to look about themselves and see the skraelings with different eyes. A few men, indeed, left off going among the skraeling women, but others did not, although their visits were now not so open nor so frequent.

  In these years it had gotten so that the Greenlanders met the skraelings more and more often, especially hunting in the waste districts, and men and demons came to blows from time to time, but most folk said that the skraelings were happiest on the open ocean, in their skin boats. The best sign of their demon nature was that the fiercest storms could do them no harm. Men had seen skraelings in their boats disappear completely under the waves, and reappear again many ells away and be none the worse. Many said that the most frightening thing about the skraelings was their deceptive habit of smiling at everything, and that their very quietness was a sign of what plans they were hatching against the Christian Greenlanders. There was much talk of these things, but the end result was that those who wanted to trade with the skraelings did so, and those who were afraid to did not.

  After first declaring that there must be no contact, the bishop changed his mind and said that it was the duty of all Christians to strive to bring the heathen to Christ. Three men brought skraeling women home, had them baptized, and married them, and some men said that these women made good-humored and willing wives, less self-willed than Christian women. These women lived peacefully among the farms of the settlement. So it was that at Gardar the talk was all of the skraelings and their ways, and among themselves the Greenlanders got a deal of amusement from this.

  One woman who was not married was Margret Asgeirsdottir of Gunnars Stead. A certain Arnkel, from a farmstead in Siglufjord, had declared his intention to marry her, but then nothing was heard of this, and Arnkel returned to his steading. Folk in Vatna Hverfi district said how handsome Margret was and how large her marriage portion would have been had Asgeir managed to hold on to all of his farm, but now any man taking on Margret could well be taking on a family of dependents who would drain his own wealth. It was true that Gunnar and Margret were rich in fine things, for the men of their lineage had been abroad and the women had been skilled craftswomen, but there were more fine things inside the farmhouse than there were sheep in the fields or cows in the byre. Folk also remembered how proud and determined to have her own way Helga Ingvadottir had been, and sometimes these habits, it was said, did not appear until a woman had her own house and dairy. Arnkel told people in Siglufjord that he had had some conversations with the woman, but in fact she made him uneasy, with her way of waiting to speak a long moment after he had spoken, and keeping her eyes on his face the whole time, so that he was tempted to say more and more, and ended up feeling that he was a simpleton.

  Another thing Margret did that was not usual for a woman was to go off into the mountains above Gunnars Stead in all seasons and come home with not only herbs and medicinal plants, but also birds she had snared and eggs she had gathered. Like her uncle Hauk, she was outside more than inside, and always in pursuit of some quarry. Five willow cages hung from the beams in the Gunnars Stead farmhouse, and in them were Margret’s little birds, wheatears and larks, who chattered and clamored all winter in a way that most of the neighbors considered unlucky and unpleasant.

  The farm folk at Gunnars Stead were considerably diminished in the spring after Asgeir’s death, so that only Margret, Gunnar, Olaf, and Ingrid were left, along with one shepherd, Hrafn, and two women servants, Hrafn’s wife Maria, and Gudrun, a young girl. There were also two menservants to help Olaf with the farming. Hrafn and Maria had two children, boys, who went with their father into the sheep meadows early in the summer. Ingrid now spent her days and nights in her bedcloset, for she could no longer stand, or even sit up. No torches or lamps were brought to her, because she didn’t know night from day, and she would sometimes call out to Gunnar to bring her some sourmilk and dried sealmeat mashed with butter for her breakfast or her dinner when breakfast or dinner was long past. Gunnar always did so, and Ingrid would tell him fragments of old stories that he remembered from his childhood. At other times Nikolaus the Undir Hofdi priest and his “wife” would sit with her and pray with her, for she hadn’t been to the church in a number of years.

  The farmstead belonged to Gunnar, but he did as little work in the fields as ever, and cared as little for the sheep, although he sometimes rode one of the old horses, leaving the two younger ones to Olaf. The amount of yarn he spun in his idle time was more than Gudrun and Maria had time to weave into cloth, and so he learned to dye and weave, and laughed, too, when people laughed at this. Folk in the district said that Gunnars Stead was an upside down household, and considered this unlucky, but indeed, the winters after the coming of the bishop were so cold and stormy, and the summers so short that every household in the settlement did things in ways that had never been done before. Only the folk at Gardar and at a few other farmsteads had enough hay and other provisions to last through these cold springs, a
nd many Greenlanders were so weakened by hunger and the bleeding disease that they succumbed to vomiting and coughing ills as if they were plagues.

  It seemed that nothing could induce Gunnar to work. If it was cold, he would lie silently under his polar bear coverlet until it warmed up, rather than look for driftwood. If he was hungry, he would wait until Ingrid called out for food, and then eat whatever she left. Whenever anything was lost, no matter how valuable, he would declare that it would turn up sometime. He wore whatever shirts and stockings no one else seemed to want, although he knew well how to stitch these things himself. He said that Yule would soon come around, or Easter, or the first day of winter, or some other occasion for the giving of gifts, and then he would get a new shirt from someone, and he could easily wait until then. The result was that the servants began to emulate him, and little work got done on the farm. Fences fell down, turves fell from their places, buildings began to crumble. The storehouses emptied and were not filled again, the bath house fell into disuse, the cows and horses were sent out to look for food when the fields were covered with ice. Neither Gunnar nor Olaf went on the spring seal hunt or the autumn seal hunt. All of Olaf’s efforts could not lift the curse of Gunnar’s laziness, although he himself had become a skilled farmer and was like Asgeir had been in his energy. Things went like this for more than a year after the death of Asgeir, and the neighbors declared that soon Gunnar and Margret would have to go out as servants, for they could hardly keep themselves in this way for another summer, much less another winter.

  Now the time came around for the Thing, and Gunnar declared that he was nineteen years old and ready to journey to Gardar and find out what it was necessary for men to do. He stitched himself a new shirt and new stockings, and took one of the servingmen with him, and, to tell briefly what happened, he returned home seven days later with the news that he had agreed to take a wife, Birgitta Lavransdottir, of Hvalsey Fjord, who was fourteen years old, and who brought as her marriage portion two sheep and a roll of red silk.

  Folk said that it was obvious that Lavrans Kollgrimsson hadn’t been to Gunnars Stead in many a year, or else he did not care much for his daughter. Others declared, though, that Lavrans himself was a poor man, although he farmed good Hvalsey land, and getting old, so that any marriage would be a good one for a child as headstrong as Birgitta Lavransdottir.

  Birgitta Lavransdottir was considered quite fair among the Greenlanders, red-cheeked and well fed, blond like Gunnar, but of low stature, so that she came up only to the middle of his breast, and only as high as Margret’s shoulder. The marriage was held at the new church in Hvalsey Fjord and the marriage feast at Lavrans Stead, which sat above the water of the inner arm of Hvalsey Fjord, directly across from the church, which was called after St. Birgitta, and had been built by the Hvalsey Fjord folk in the reign of King Sverri. Gunnar presented Birgitta with many fine gifts, including a silver comb his grandfather Gunnar had gotten in Ireland and the boat with its sailors carved from birchwood that Skuli Gudmundsson had given him when he was a boy. Birgitta seemed especially pleased with this toy, and with the thick gray cloak Margret sewed for her. They came to Vatna Hverfi with their sheep and their bolt of silk in Lavrans’ boat, rowing slowly up Einars Fjord on a day in late summer when the fjord was as still and bright, people said, as water in a goblet. The bellowing of the two sheep carried across the water into every farmstead, and even the dip of Gunnar’s oars could be heard in an eerie way, so that many families spoke of the passing of this little boat as they sat down that evening to their meat.

  Now it was the case that the Gunnars Stead folk had a pleasant feast in honor of the coming of Birgitta Lavransdottir, and when all were sitting contented at their trenchers after eating their fill, Gunnar said to Margret, “Where is it that Birgitta Lavransdottir will be sleeping now that she is living here?” At this Olaf and Maria, the wife of Hrafn, burst out laughing. Birgitta looked up, her eyes full of curiosity, and Margret looked at her. Now she sent Olaf and Maria from the steading, and gazed upon her brother and the child who was his wife. Birgitta’s headdress, the prerogative of a married woman, sat heavily on her small head, and slightly askew. Margret turned to Gunnar. “My own bedcloset,” she said, “is the largest. I will make a place for her there.” And she got up and showed Birgitta the bedcloset, with its carvings of angelica leaves and its little shelf that ran all around the head, for putting down a seal oil lamp or such other things as the sleeper might care to have near him during the night.

  On this shelf Birgitta set about arranging her wedding gifts in a row, the silver comb, a necklace of glass beads, an ivory spindle weight carved to look like a seal with its head up and the thread coming out of its mouth, a small knife with a beaten iron handle, and two or three woven colored bands to be worn with her headdress, as well as the little ship. Next to these she stacked her folded undergarments and stockings, and beside these she set her new shoes, then, after saying her prayers, she lay down and pulled her new gray cloak up to her chin, turned her face toward her new things and fell asleep.

  Of all those living in the house, Olaf was the most like Asgeir had been. He got up early each morning and took his meal of dried reindeer meat and sourmilk into the fields and began to work at whatever there was to be done. In the spring, it was he and Hrafn who carried the cows into the homefield. It was he who hitched up the horses to the cart and carried manure out. It was Olaf who dragged the birch sapling over the manure to break it up and mix it with the soil, then Olaf who repaired the fences to keep the cows from eating the new shoots of grass. At sheep shearing time, he found Hrafn in the hills with the sheep, helped him with the shearing, then dragged home the bundles of wool for Maria and Gudrun to wash and comb. He also helped with the milking and the making of cheeses and butter. At the end of summer, he scythed the grass and Maria and Gudrun raked it, then he bundled the hay and piled it in front of the cowbyre.

  One day a man called Audun came from Gardar to Gunnars Stead with a message that the bishop wished to see Olaf, and wished him to return to Gardar at once with the messenger. Olaf sent the messenger into the farmstead for some refreshment, then lingered over his work until it was almost dark and too late to begin the journey.

  This Audun was a fellow from the south, and throughout the evening he complained jokingly about having to spend the night in such a poor place, sleeping on the floor with only a single reindeer hide to wrap himself up in, his head under the table and his feet nearly out the door. Gardar, he said, was quite magnificent now that the bishop was in residence. “Indeed,” he said, “many of the boys do no farm work at all anymore, but spend their days making parchment from the hides of calves and learning to copy manuscripts, and making bearberry ink. There are boys who spend their time singing, three boys, and it seems to me their voices sound angelically sweet. Sira Jon is the master of this, and when he sings a bit, to show these boys what they must do, all the copyists and parchment makers stop what they are doing, for the sake of hearing it. The bishop himself watches over the copyists, and Sira Pall Hallvardsson goes in and out, and Sira Petur, too, although these priests are most often away at Brattahlid, or Isafjord.” As Audun was rattling on, Olaf put his few things in a bundle, his ashwood spoon, his books, the cup Asgeir had given him, and his newest stockings, breeches, and shoes. When the time came in the morning for the two men to go around the hill to Undir Hofdi church, Olaf said to Gunnar, “It seems to me that I would rather have my feet out the door than have my head full of singing.” And he said to Margret, “I do not see how the sheep will come down from the hills or the cows will be walled into the cowbyre if I am not here to do it.”

  “And that,” said Margret, watching him go off, “is the end of Olaf.”

  Olaf had not been to Gardar now for fourteen years, and the bishop’s farm had indeed changed. Nothing that was not immediately needed was kept in the house, for all of these rooms that had once held vats and basins and hides and rolls of cloth now held priests and boys. Olaf was s
hown to one of them, where he found a pallet woven of reeds on the dirt floor covered with two reindeer hides, one to sleep on and one to sleep underneath. There were also two small shelves, one holding an oil lamp and another for books. On this one Olaf placed his cup, his spoon and his three small volumes, which he had not looked into in six years. He did not look into them now, for the bindings and pages were stiff as if stuck together. If the bishop asked for them, he would certainly see that they were ready to fall apart.

  Olaf had seen the bishop once, from a distance, at the judgment of Asgeir Gunnarsson. Otherwise he had kept away from Gardar and from all visitors to Gunnars Stead who might carry tales of him back to the bishop. Now that he was here, though, it was obvious that everyone was perfectly familiar with him, that all had expected him back sooner or later, that his hopes had been those of an infant, who covers his eyes and thinks he cannot be seen.

  Olaf came out of the residence into the sunlight in time to see the bishop’s cows being led in a double row from the byre, where they had been milked, to the field. There were fifty of them, and already in the field were numerous calves and heifers. They were good cows, fat and dark-colored, and the two servants carrying the vats of milk around to the dairy had plenty to do, but they were all servants—the boys with the cows, the boys carrying the milk, the cowman and his assistant standing in the doorway of the byre. No priests among them, for all the priests were inside the residence, reading and writing by the light of smoky little lamps. But this was not true, either, for Pall Hallvardsson came up behind him. “So, now you have come, my Olaf,” he said. “Folk here have been looking for you for these fourteen winters.” He grinned.

  “Well,” said Olaf, and he brought out a cheese Margret had sent to the bishop as a gift. Pall Hallvardsson held the cheese aloft in the light, and declared, “These Gunnars Stead cheeses are too good for mere priests, are they not? As white and melting as a cheese could be.” And Olaf could not keep himself from sighing, for indeed he had a great love of eating and had eaten well at Gunnars Stead for fourteen years.