The Greenlanders (65 page)

Margret’s principal task at Solar Fell was to weave fine wadmal for Sigrid’s dowry, as the girl was now some sixteen winters old and expected to be married within the next four or five winters. This weaving was a pleasure to Margret, for the Solar Fell steading was one of the finest sheep-raising places in Greenland, with wide, moist, south-sloping pastures for growing hay, rising to tarn-filled highlands for the summer grazing. The wool of the sheep was long and soft, with much distinction between the silky outer coat and the woolly undercoat. If she spun her thread from only the outer wool, the cloth she wove was thin and liquid, and nicely showed off her patterns. If she spun the two together, the wadmal was thick but light and springy to the touch. Signy was full of praise for her work, and greedy for it, so that she left off drawing her away from it. Throwing the shuttle and devising the weaves reminded her of Kristin and Marta and Ingrid and the others who had taught her to weave and were all now dead, of old age or sickness, and they in turn reminded her of Asta and Hauk Gunnarsson and Asgeir and Skuli and Jonas and Olaf and Gunnar as a child, and she sat at her loom, deep in thought, day after day. This lengthy reflection was another thing that made her feel that Solar Fell was to be her last home, and that this year, or the next year, or the year after that was to be her last.

Now it happened that the dreaded turn of the century came around and passed, and another three years as well, and although Finnleif Thorolfsson’s prophecy about the fewness of those that would be there to greet the new age was borne out, folk considered that there were not so few as to be a sign of anything. Hunger and disease had come and gone before, and now that the great hunger was over, men saw that such things happen in the natural round of events, for the world is by nature fallen from Paradise, and the Lord has made no promises about repairing it for the pleasure of men, but asks men to use the world as a tool for repairing their own souls.

There were many abandoned steadings, and the greatest of these was Gunnars Stead, but there were other good steadings, as well, in Brattahlid and the southern part of Vatna Hverfi district. Any man in Isafjord could have himself a new steading, but there were no men left in Isafjord, and the place was abandoned to the skraelings.

Now it seemed to folk that they had learned something new. It seemed to some that they had learned of the importance of the appearances of things, that, for instance, a few articles of clothing nicely made and painstakingly decorated gave more pleasure than many plain robes, or a small quantity of food eaten slowly, using the spoon even for the bits a man might have picked up with his fingers before, lasted as long and filled one up almost as well as a large quantity. It seemed to others that they had learned how appearances were unimportant, for death came to all men, whatever they were wearing and wherever they slept, whether in the steading or in the byre, and a strong sturdy boy infant was a marvel whether the priest had had anything to do with his parents or not. Still others reflected on how quickly the food could be snatched from a man’s table, or the child from a woman’s breast, or the wife from a man’s bedcloset, that no strength of grasp could hold these goods in place. And others remarked to themselves how sweet these goods were, in spite of that, and saw that the pleasure lost in every moment is pleasure lost forever. Some folk learned the nature of God, that He was merciful, having spared a husband or some cattle, that He was strict, having meted out hard punishment for small sins, that He was attentive, having sent signs of the hunger beforehand, that He was just, having sent the hunger in the first place, or having sent the whales and the teeming reindeer in the end. Some folk learned that He was to be found in the world—in the richness of the grass and the pearly beauty of the Heavens, and others learned that He could not be found in the world, for the world is always wanting, and God is completion. Some declared that they had learned that a man’s luck and his might are his only god, as folk once thought in the ancient days. Was Erik the Red so unfortunate a fellow, or the men with him who never accepted the teachings of the church about the White Christ? Old tales did not say that they had done so poorly as the Greenlanders were doing now, although churches and shrines stood in their land, and folk paid for them and prayed in them. Some said, as did Birgitta of Lavrans Stead, that there was always a joke to be played upon the Greenlanders.

Gunnars Stead stood empty for these three years, and every year, Thorkel Gellison came to Gunnar and attempted to persuade him to return to the steading, but every year Gunnar shrugged and declared that he had not thought about it. In fact, however, he knew that Birgitta was much opposed to such a move, and though he longed for it himself, he hesitated to force it upon her. The case was that her strength and her spirits did not seem to recover from the hunger as those of the others did. She could barely tolerate the light and the play of breezes outside the steading, and so she stayed within her bedcloset most of the time, and her limbs never regained the plumpness they had had, nor the strength. Nevertheless, she made room in her bedcloset for Gunnar now, and greeted him pleasantly each night, with caresses and questions about his activities. As she had once held and gazed upon the hands of her babies, or their toes or their knees, now she was pleased by Gunnar’s strength and firmness of flesh, and especially at the warmth he radiated, which was the warmth that had kept Death off her when he came seeking her at the end of the hunger. It seemed to her that she had seen him himself, and he had not been a large man with a white face, dressed in black, as the tapestries in the cathedral showed him to be, but instead Death was a white, shaggy, bearlike fellow with huge hands like paws and nails like curved claws that raked away one’s garments, one’s skin, one’s life. In fact, it seemed to Birgitta that, like others, she too had learned something, and that was that the Greenland wastes was where Death had his home, and he was the more ready to come among the Greenlanders because of proximity. The image of his claws reaching around Gunnar, groping after her, was one that she could not escape, and it did not seem to her that such a beast would be gathering her into the pleasant home of her eternal life, as priests said. Besides, the new priest, Eindridi Andresson, who came to St. Birgitta’s at the prescribed times and was rumored to be a nephew of Sira Audun, said that Hell was seven times bigger than Heaven, because for every soul that God took to himself, the Devil took seven. He also said of himself that it was his intention to harry the Greenlanders into the knowledge of God, not to cajole them into it. God was not as a mother, who holds out a bit of chewed meat so that the baby will toddle away from the open fire, but as a father, who chastens the child with blows so that it will know that the fire is painful. Eindridi Andresson was not a comforting priest, but most folk said that they had been comforted too long, lulled into sin, perhaps, which was why they had been punished. Others did not agree with this view.

It was Helga who took up her mother’s interests in the sheep, for she was not unlike Birgitta in her ways, although she was much more like Gunnar in her looks. In addition to this, Johanna returned from Hestur Stead, and most of the inside work fell to her. It had been Gunnar’s hope that Johanna and Helga would be friends and companions to each other, but they diverged so in temperament and interests that it was almost as though they were unrelated to one another. They did not even know enough of each other to quarrel, but were entirely indifferent.

Indeed, Gunnar, who had gotten quite used to Helga’s ways about the steading, which were like Birgitta’s, hardly knew what to do with Johanna, who went about behind him, picking up his tools and arranging them, picking up his socks and folding them together, putting everything out of the way before it was even in the way. After his meals, she whisked away the trencher or the bowl before he had pushed it from him, and he often had the feeling that there might be something left in it, although if he asked for it back, there never was. These were Jona’s ways, for Jona had a great reputation as a neat and tidy wife.

Johanna was still of an observing turn of mind, and Gunnar often found her gazing at him. Nor did she look away confused when he met her gaze, but only smiled and went about her business as if she’d done with looking at him. She was impartial about this steady, inquisitive gaze, bestowing it upon everyone, Kollgrim, Helga, Gunnar, the shepherds, the sheep, visitors, neighbors, the water of the fjord, the sky, the grass, the drying racks with their burden of reindeer meat and whale meat. She gazed at Gunnar’s writing so fixedly that he thought she must have learned to read, although the folk at Hestur Stead were not the reading sort. He asked her if she understood what the writing said. She smiled and shook her head, and said only that the patterns of the strokes set her to thinking. Gunnar read aloud what he had written:

“In these years, the farmers of Herjolfsnes were cut off more and more from the rest of the Greenlanders, but Snaebjorn Bjarnarson and the other principal landowners of the district refused to abandon their steadings and take up available steadings farther to the north.”

“You are writing of the Greenlanders, then,” said Johanna. “It seemed to me that you would be putting down tales such as those you relate to us in the evenings.”

“I would not be sorry to do that, but indeed, the pen goes so slowly that as I make the words, first I lose the thread of the tale, and then I lose the pleasure of the telling. Those tales are meant for speaking, perhaps, while these duller things are meant for writing down.”

“This must be like making cheese. What is made in a day is eaten in a moment.”

Such observations Gunnar found congenial and even amusing, but only he knew how to listen for them. Most often, when Johanna said something of this sort, Helga and Kollgrim, when he was about, looked puzzled and said nothing. Kollgrim had taken Finn’s place as the household’s representative to the year’s hunts, and in addition to this, he often went off by himself, after birds or hares or foxes, and his skills were good enough. Folk praised them and said that Kollgrim had recovered well from both his dunking and his peculiar nature as a child. Even so, Gunnar saw that confusion still sometimes overtook him, from his dunking, and an imp still looked out of his eyes once in a while, as if calculating the possibilities for mischief. Whatever Kollgrim had learned, though, and however they depended upon him for game and whalemeat, it was obvious to Gunnar that he was not yet the hunter that Hauk Gunnarsson had been, or Finn Thormodsson. No Greenlander was, anymore, just as no Greenlander had the wit to write down the tales folk knew, as they had once written down the tale of Atli, in verse, or the tale of Einar Sokkason and Bishop Arnald. When he suggested these things, Helga and Kollgrim smiled as if he were only an old man taking all virtue for the folk of his youth, but Birgitta knew that he was not mistaken, and said further that it was well for the Greenlanders that they knew not fully how things had declined for them since the days of their great-grandfathers, when men had had time enough and pleasure enough to build such a church as St. Birgitta’s, for example, with its arched window and fine glass brought from Bergen.

It was difficult not to be fond of Helga and not to enjoy her company, for she was affectionate and merry, and stubborn on only one subject, and that was the subject of marriage. Each year Gunnar took her to the Thing, and each year it was as if she had become a different person. She kept her eyes cast down, and spoke soberly and obediently to him in every particular. He went out among the other booths and sought for likely husbands, and when he saw a man who was well enough looking and found out about him that he had a good farm and some cows left and a boat, he would bring the fellow and his kinsmen back to his booth. There he would find Helga going solemnly about her business, and he would introduce the fellow, and Helga would raise her eyes to his face, and look at him squarely for a long moment—and then she would lower her eyes and say for the tenth or the hundredth time that she would do as he wished. And then he would look at the fellow again, and the fellow himself would be as if transformed. Gunnar would notice that he was slope-shouldered, or had a squint in one eye, or that even if he was prepossessing enough, his nearest kinsmen looked low and cruel, or simpleminded. And so he would make excuses for her and she would go unmarried for another year. She was twenty-seven winters old, seven or eight winters older than most newly married women, older than Margret when she married Olaf. A dangerous age, Birgitta dared to say. These days Birgitta dared to say many things, and Gunnar cared little, for he was much pleased to have saved her, and it seemed to him that nothing could ever again rob him of that pleasure. They were old folk now, and ready to die, he told her. None too soon, was what she replied. But she did not mean what she said, and wanted with all her heart to hide from the furry claws of Death for as long as possible. At any rate, while all about them, folk of every age were rushing to replace their lost mates or lost children, whether the priest was called in or not, Helga turned a cool eye on all such proceedings.

Now it happened one day that Kollgrim intended to snare ptarmigan in the hills above Vatna Hverfi, and he came to Helga and asked if she wished to go along with him, for he had something to show her. Occasionally she did go with him, for she had delicate fingers and was good at tying snares, and the two of them, not so far apart in age, were good friends. She agreed to go, and they set out early the next morning, hiking through the valley that opened upon Einars Fjord across from Hestur Stead, then getting into the boat that Kollgrim kept moored there, and rowing to the sand flats around Undir Hofdi church. Here they got out and pulled the boat onto the strand. Helga could not remember anything of Vatna Hverfi district, and she was much delighted by its pleasant aspect, for the land there is greener than elsewhere in Greenland, and the meadows and fields wider and more fertile. They went into the mountains above the church and snared many birds, and after a while the dusk came on, and Kollgrim led Helga down past the church and around the hillside to Gunnars Stead.