The Greenlanders

by Jane Smiley

  During the summer, Jon Andres himself came to Lavrans Stead from time to time, bringing game, and it cannot be said that he brought very much, for these Vatna Hverfi men were not especially skilled with bow or spear or snare, nor did they know where the good hunting grounds were. In the middle of the summer, Jon Andres brought some ewes with lambs. These ewes were fat and big compared to Hvalsey Fjord sheep, but even so, when Jon Andres herded them among the rest of Birgitta’s flock, he was full of praise for her sheep. The Lavrans Stead sheep, he said, were lovely sheep, perfectly formed, with thick, long, oily wool, and so forth. His own sheep were so obviously superior that his praise disconcerted Gunnar and made him suspicious. After that, Gunnar told Olaf to watch for the coming of the Vatna Hverfi man, as he himself didn’t want to meet him again.

  In this summer, no sign foretold the end of the famine. The sheep scattered far and wide into the mountains, looking for forage, but there was little to be found. The grass in the homefields greened late and grew slowly, for there was little sun. Folk began talking about how to catch hares and foxes and the little fish that swarmed in the fjords around the feast of St. Petur and St. Pall. Birgitta made her milk into cheese, and gave the family water to drink, but other wives made the other choice, to bring their families through the summer on milk and let the winter take care of itself. Men marveled at how ten cows could no longer get by on the land that had once supported nearly a hundred.

  Now one day shortly after Jon Andres had brought the sheep to Hvalsey Fjord, Birgitta was sitting over her weaving and looking out the door of the steading at the water in the fjord, and she saw this sign: a boat rowed up to the jetty and two seals flopped out of it and began to climb the hillside, and as they neared the steading, they turned into men. Just then, Gunnar came from the direction of the dairy, and greeted them and talked to them. Soon they returned to their boat and rowed off to another steading, and Gunnar came with a smile into the steading. It was not the custom of Birgitta and Gunnar to speak much to one another, for they had been estranged many years, but now he told her that a whale had stranded at Herjolfsnes, a huge whale like a mountain of flesh, and that he and Kollgrim and Olaf would go off that day and get some meat. Recalling the sign she had seen, Birgitta cast her eyes down, and said, “It seems to me that this is not the boon that it appears to be.” But Gunnar scowled at having his news greeted in such an ill-tempered manner and said nothing. Sometime later the men went off.

  Toward evening, the rain stopped and the clouds rolled out to sea. The next day was the first bright clear day of the summer, and by noon the grass on the hillside was so dry that Birgitta and Helga brought the bedclothes out of the steading and spread them out, for they were damp and musty from the wet weather. After that they began emptying the clothing chests, and Helga went about her work happily, chatting of this and that, but Birgitta stepped heavily, and her spirits were not lifted, for it seemed to her that this heat boded no good. Nevertheless, all of the goods were dry and sweet-smelling by dusk, and Helga and Birgitta began to remake the beds. When she was just finishing, spreading the white bearskin over Gunnar’s bedcloset, Birgitta was suddenly seized by a fit of weeping so that she could not stand, but fell on the floor beside the bedcloset. Helga, coming into the steading with an armload of clothes and unstitched wadmal, put down her bundle at the door and ran and lifted up her mother’s head. Now Birgitta wept for a long while, and when she had subsided, she said to Helga, “It seemed to me when I put my hands into Gunnar’s bearskin that I saw myself as a child in this very bedcloset, and my mother had not died yet, nor did I expect her to, but only expected that my infant pleasures should go on and on, and I remembered this one that I have not thought of in thirty-five or forty years, the feel of plaiting her hair, of lifting the heavy strands and twisting them into each other, not as I do now, without a thought, but as I did then, painstaking and diligent, because I wanted greatly to learn the patterns. And the weave of her dress and the brownish color of the wadmal, and also the slope of her shoulder and the look of her neck seemed to press upon me, and I seemed to hear the sound of her voice, for it was the case that she spoke in a round, low tone that is not as I speak, or as you speak, and so is lost. And it seemed to me that I was a dupe and a ninny as all children are, as I still am, going from day to day with schemes and prospects. It seems to me that we have come to the ending of the world, for in Greenland the world must end as it goes on, that is with hunger and storms and freezing, though elsewhere it may end in other ways.” Now she looked into Helga’s face, and she saw there fondness, but not understanding.

  The next day shone clear and sunny, and the day after that and the day after that, and on the fifth day, Kollgrim, Olaf, and Gunnar returned from Herjolfsnes with the whalemeat in a net in the cold water beside the boat, and Birgitta hurried to dry it and to seethe it, for it is the case that whalemeat goes off more quickly than other kinds of meat, and then cannot be eaten without certainty of illness. Birgitta kept to herself; her spirits did not lift, and Gunnar blamed her greatly for this throughout the summer.

  One day Finn and Kollgrim returned from a hunting trip with a pair of beautiful big seals, although the time of the seal hunt was over, and Finn admitted that he had received them from some skraelings at the mouth of Isafjord, in exchange for a set of cunningly made arrows of Finn’s own design. Gunnar was pleased with the meat and hides, but indeed, the price was high, for a set of such arrows, made in pieces and fitted together so that they could break apart inside a bird and come out without tearing the flesh, took almost a whole winter to make. The skraelings, Finn said, had had many seals with them, and had been fat and well clothed besides, but of all Finn’s gear, these arrows were the only things the demons cared to trade for, so it was these or nothing.

  Now the autumn seal hunt came around, and after the men went off, Birgitta and Helga went to the storehouse to count up provisions for the winter so that Birgitta could estimate how many sheep would have to be slaughtered. The whalemeat had given them just enough relief, so that with the two seals traded from the skraelings, and a reasonable result from the autumn seal hunt, the folk at Lavrans Stead would come to Easter with cheese in their mouths and sheep in their byre, but Birgitta knew that this would not be the case with some of her neighbors. Now she went out and began to count the ewes and half-grown lambs, although in fact she counted these over and over as the year went by and always knew just how many she had and where they were. Even so, she went among them, and saw at once the larger Vatna Hverfi sheep, for these stood out among the others like large bits of meat in a stew. In addition to that, these sheep always nosed out the best swatches of grass and chased the others off. Now Birgitta called the shepherd to her and told him to cut out the larger sheep and take them to the farm of Hakon Haraldsson, which was not far off, and to present them to the young farmwife, whose name was Ragnhild, for she had two babies at home and expected a third before Yule, and would surely not get through the winter with her family and her flock together. Osvif went off, and Birgitta walked back and forth, watching the sheep and spinning. Helga came out to her and she said, “Now we have placed our trust in Heaven, and we must pray that the Lord will give back to us what we have freely given to others. It seems to me that sometimes in the past, Sira Pall Hallvardsson and Gunnar have spoken in the evenings of how Jehovah used to try the faith of the Jews through sundry hardships. Now we will try the mercy of the Lord.”

  “Sira Pall Hallvardsson would say that the Lord little likes to be tested.”

  “And I would say that the Greenlanders little like to be starved to death. What have we done to repent of, except give up all our goods, then all our lands, then all our children, then all our companionship?”

  “Even so,” said Helga, “Sira Pall Hallvardsson would say that we are steeped in sin, and can’t repent enough or give up enough to whiten our souls.”

  “Nay, Helga.” Birgitta smiled. “Sira Pall Hallvardsson would say no such thing, but Sira Jon would say it.
Nevertheless, my intention is fixed, and soon Ragnhild will be thanking the mercy of the Lord, who moved my heart to send her these sheep. And so praise will rise up to Him who is fond of praise, but gives little as a return for it.” At this Helga began to be uneasy, and Birgitta’s smile grew broader, and after a moment, Birgitta said, “So that you may not fall into hearing such things, I think you might take a basket and gather seaweed by the shore. I will stay beside the sheep until Osvif returns.” Helga went off, and Birgitta watched her, and it seemed to her that the girl’s fate was not to die in the hunger, as she had been afraid of in the past year, but to live a longer and more peculiar life, for even just walking down to the strand, she seemed to be rushing toward something unseen, and it also seemed to Birgitta that soon it would be revealed to her what this was.

  Some days later, the men returned from the seal hunt, and Birgitta saw that they had taken little. Gunnar declared that there were so few boats now, and so few experienced men, that the seals evaded them easily. In addition, some men who had gone to look over Hreiney had found nothing, no deer, little forage. That night, Finn fell to making another set of his bird arrows, for he was confident of encountering groups of skraelings later in the autumn. And so the days drew on and shortened, and at the end of the summer half year, most farmers slaughtered more than half of their sheep and some of their cows and goats, and folk from every farm went to Gardar and Solar Fell on pilgrimages and prayed for the souls of the Greenlanders, and for a big whale to strand at the mouth of every fjord.

  Also in this autumn, Eyvind and Finna his daughter abandoned their farm in Isafjord, as did two other Isafjord farmers. Eyvind went to Dyrnes, to the steading of his daughter Anna, and Finna with him. It must be said that Eyvind’s son-in-law was little pleased to see him, for his steading was a small one, and not much better off than Eyvind’s had been, for that matter. In addition to this, Eyvind still suffered spells of wild melancholy, with much weeping that he could not restrain. Even so, Eyvind went to live there, and Finna as well, but Margret and the two servingmen had to find themselves other places, and it was also the case that things had been so bad at Eyvind’s steading that all of the sheep had been eaten during the summer, and so Margret had only some pieces of weaving to offer to anyone who would take her in. In her years in Isafjord, she had never seen Sigurd Kolsson or Quimiak the father, although once she thought she saw one of his wives with another skraeling. For this reason, she did not mind going off to Dyrnes, for the skraelings were rather plentiful there, as well. Now that she was an old woman, the only longing that ever seized her was for the sight of this little boy. It seized her rarely but always with a breathless, smothering pinch, like the embrace of a polar bear, as she used to imagine it when she was a child and her uncle Hauk would tell her tales of the Northsetur. The loss of Sigurd was something she had not gotten over, and for this reason she had little hope for Eyvind, of whom she had grown so fond.

  In Dyrnes, only one farmstead had room for her, and this was a medium-sized steading where the wife had four small children to care for and no servingmaid, and this woman, whose name was Freya, made Margret agree to give up half of her portion of meat to the children if the hunger should demand it, and to leave any time she was asked to, with no meat and no guarantee of another place, but only the pieces of weaving she had brought, or pieces like them, should they be used for clothing in the interim. Since the winter was drawing on, and Margret no longer cared to travel in the cold, she agreed to these terms, and did not blame Freya for them, for she saw that Freya was senseless with dread at the approach of death. The children sat about their mother and watched her closely, for they had caught her fear, and when she closed her eyes, or looked up, or changed her expresssion in any way, the oldest child would cry out, “What is it, mama!” and the next oldest would shudder and tremble, and the youngest would begin to cry, and so Freya would try to sit ever more still, or to send the children to the bedcloset, but they refused to be away from her. They awaited the coming of their father with dread, not because he was an unkindly man, but because he too was of a gloomy temperament, and came into the steading every time, from working or from hunting, with predictions of disaster on his lips.

  In fact, Margret saw, they had done a good job of filling the storehouse over the summer, and had more stores than Eyvind had ever had, even in his better years. But Eyvind had been a sanguine fellow, and this was not the case with Freya and Gudleif, the husband. Each night they prayed fervently to be brought safely to morning, and each morning, they prayed fervently to be brought safely to evening. Margret found the steading oppressive. Gudleif’s herdsman, his boy, and the other two servingmen stayed, by choice, in the byre with the sheep. Margret sometimes went to meet Finna and Eyvind for a little talk, but as the winter drew on, these meetings ended, for Finna suffered greatly from the joint ill, and could not walk in the least depth of snow, and Eyvind wished to stay with her.

  Such games and pastimes as Margret was accustomed to in the winter, as she thought all Greenlanders were accustomed to, were wholly lacking at this gloomy steading. Gudleif carved no tops nor game counters for the children, nor did he tell tales to entertain them. No one gossiped about the neighbors or speculated about the ways of southern folk or folk in Jerusalem or life in Heaven, as Eyvind and his daughters had done. Freya sighed over her weaving and her spinning and her cooking equally, and both she and Gudleif measured out the children’s portions of food with dour exactitude, telling them to be grateful for what they had, as if it were thin and ill-tasting, even when it was hearty and delicious, so that the children took no pleasure in their meals, but were careful to eat it all up. Sometimes visitors came, most often Gudleif’s father and mother, who were both living, and not very old, and at these times, they, too, stared at the children’s trenchers and spoke grimly of the coming winter, and Margret saw that such habits as these folk had fallen into had preceded the hungry times, and had been theirs always. Gudleif’s father, whose name was Finnleif, spoke as if all of his direst predictions had now come to pass. In addition to this, he knew exactly what year it was, for he had always kept an accurate and detailed calendar. It would be 1399 at the new year. Did Margret think that this hunger came by chance in 1399? Nothing was by chance. Not many would make it to the new century, said Finnleif.

  Dyrnes church was in a pleasant wide valley that went a good ways back into the mountains, and most of the farms were on an island across the sound from the church. The best land was around the church, and the Dyrnes priest had always been a rich man in the past, but now there was only Sira Audun who came four or five times a year, and so the Dyrnes farmers pastured their sheep on the church lands in the valley, and went back and forth to them across the sound, which was sometimes not without danger. Even so, the district had not the icy aspect of Isafjord, and the folk were somewhat more prosperous. They were all good oarsmen and boatbuilders, and cared little for horses. Margret saw that they talked often among themselves of Bjorn Bollason the lawspeaker and his foster father Hoskuld, who were Dyrnes folk, and how important they had made themselves, in spite of the Brattahlid folk, and the Gardar folk, and the Vatna Hverfi folk; the conclusion of these discussions was often that Dyrnes folk might not be so prosperous as folk from certain other districts, but that the relative hardships of their lives made them more clever and observant. Concerning Margret, they were rather curious, unlike the Isafjorders, who often gave their opinions of things, but never asked questions. Gudleif’s mother, whose name was Bryndis, was especially inquisitive, and wanted to know why Margret had been with Eyvind, and whether she had lived with him as a wife, and why she had not gone with him to his daughter’s steading, was the daughter jealous? Here she looked briefly at Freya. And why had she offered herself to Freya with so few belongings? And where had she lived before she went to Isafjord, and where before that? And why had she never married and why did she not speak as a servingmaid, and how old was she, and if she was not so old in years, why was her hair so wh
ite and her skin so wrinkled, and most important, who were her family and where did they live? Asgeir had died many years before, Margret replied, seeking sheep in a January blizzard after losing part of his farm in a dispute with a neighbor, and then she got up and went to find the children. After the first or second visit, Margret made sure to be away in the dairy or the storehouse or at some intricate work when Bryndis came to visit.

  Freya’s mother and brother also came to visit, but they were very meek, and when the two sides of the family came at the same time, which happened often enough, Freya’s mother and brother fell into the habit of handing around the refreshments as if they were servants, and also of receiving the opinions of Finnleif and Bryndis in silent agreement. Freya’s mother never spoke to Margret at all, and didn’t seem to know her name. Margret felt herself pleased enough with her position most of the time, though sometimes she envied the servingmen who slept among the sheep but at least had a little good fellowship. Now Yule came on, and Margret noticed that Freya would go to the storehouse every day with a little groan.

  One day Margret was sitting and sewing sheepskins into sleeping sacks for the two younger children, for it was the case that these two, who slept with her, were restless and often kicked off their coverlets. Freya was at the loom, weaving wadmal, and Margret saw that her shuttle was going more and more slowly with each throw. The oldest child had stopped her spinning, and was looking on in speechless fear, but the others, who were under one of the coverlets in the bedcloset, had not noticed this. Now Freya dropped the shuttle and put her hand to her head, and at the sudden small noise, three heads poked out of the bedcloset, and in short order, every child was crying. Now Margret got up and found a bit of wadmal and she dipped it in a vat of rendered seal blubber. Then she helped Freya to her bedcloset, and spread the cloth over her forehead. There was a great clamor. Now Margret opened the door and looked out for Gudleif, but he was nowhere to be seen. After that she sat down with her sewing and told the following tale: