Part 6 (2/2)

Now Gunnar's hair fell evenly to the middle of his neck, and Birgitta once again went to put away her scissors, but he stopped her and asked her to cut it shorter. Then he went on. ”Soon,” he said, ”another child will be brought to me, a boy, as you have told me from your dreams, and this child will be as different from the others as can be, and as appealing. And yet, I find lately that I do not look for this with pleasure, but only with fear, for the evilest days are yet to come, and not far off.”

Now Birgitta had cut the hair very short, so that it looked like a priest's fringe, and she put away the scissors. Gunnar ran his hands over the bristles. She said, ”These things may come to pa.s.s as you say, for only you know your intentions.”

”Sira Pall Hallvardsson is right in this, that there is such pleasure in enmity that after a while it cannot be left off even if one would will it. Another thing is also true, that when a quarrel is new, one's friends hold one back, and give cool advice, but when it is long-standing, folk put off its end and goad the rivals.”

”If by this you mean that there is talk of what goes on about the district, and everyone must add a bit and let nothing go unremarked upon, that is indeed true.”

Gunnar turned and looked at her, but her eye was always partly on the two little girls, who were now plodding slowly up the hill. ”It may come to pa.s.s that Lavrans will regret giving you to me, as folk said he would at the time.”

”It may, but if so, then he should come to me and find out what I think, as he did at the time. This is my thought, that for every soul, something must come to pa.s.s, and for everything that does come to pa.s.s, every soul can imagine many things that might have come to pa.s.s, all of them less evil than what actually fell out. Folk must have something to think on, or they would be unable to hope for Heaven or remember Paradise.”

And to this Gunnar made no reply, but carried the stool and the cloth inside. Soon after this, Birgitta and Gunnhild and Helga went to the bedcloset and made ready for sleep. Birgitta did not ask, as she always did, when Gunnar would be coming to bed. A while later, as dusk was falling, he went out.

Beside the cowbyre Gunnar encountered seven men, and besides Olaf and Finn Thormodsson, these were Axel Njalsson and his two sons Bessi and Arni and in addition to them Thorkel Gellison and his son Skeggi. Each of these men carried no weapons, but each carried a spade and Finn carried a bundle of something tied together and wrapped in a reindeer hide. Now they went to Asgeir's second field, as it was still called around Gunnars Stead, and began to dig a long, deep ditch across the edge of the field, like a reindeer pit, but wider. The men were strong and the work went quickly. After it was deep enough, Finn went along the length of the ditch, and distributed the contents of his bundle, which turned out to be the antlers of reindeer and also the ribs, sharpened at one end to a keen point. After he had finished, the men laid willow brush thinly across the opening, and, on top of that, mats of gra.s.s woven by Finn to look like turf.

Now it was not long before sunrise, and the men went to Ketils Stead, where they loosed all of the cows, and one of these Gunnar killed, and slit open its belly, and inside he placed a little figure of a man carved of soapstone. Now the band of men stood off a little ways while Gunnar and Olaf went to the doors of the farmhouse, for it was a large building with two doors, and they pounded on them, shouting, ”Rise, sleepers, rise! The cows have gotten into the homefield!” The first one out was Kollbein Erlendsson, in his nights.h.i.+rt and to him Gunnar sang out the following verse: In the farmyard lies a pregnant beast Within, there sits the son of a wh.o.r.e.

How black is the cooking pot?

How leaky is the kettle?

Now Hallvard Erlendsson came forth, followed by two servingmen, and Gunnar and Olaf backed away, for they could see that the servingmen were armed with axes. Soon enough Ketil Ragnarsson himself came out, and he too carried an ax, and he was the first to see the effigy of himself in the cow's belly. Now everyone was up and attempting to herd the cows out of the homefield, but the Ketils Stead herd was large and the cows lively and independent. The band of folk from Gunnars Stead were barely within sight by the time that Erlend's sons and Ketil had armed themselves and their men and begun to chase them.

Gunnar's men moved slowly, staying well within sight, and calling out to the others from time to time, so that Ketil was soon beside himself with rage. Now Gunnar and the others came to the second field and began to walk across it. Gunnar looked about himself and remarked to Olaf that it was still a beautiful piece of ground, and Olaf nodded. After this, Gunnar began to run, and Ketil's folk to run after him, and the pursuers appeared to be gaining. The Gunnars Stead folk ran between the ditches, on the narrow paths they had left, but in the blue light of early sunrise, these were not so visible to the others, and, much like reindeer, they fell through the brush and into the pits, Ketil, Kollbein, and Hallvard first, for they were in the lead, and one of their servants after, for he was just behind Ketil, and fell upon him, but the others had been a step slower, and were able to stop themselves.

And it happened that the three brothers were impaled upon the stakes in the pits, and Gunnar and his men ran back to the pits, and prevented the Ketils Stead servants from aiding the dying men. There was great groaning until the men died. When this had happened, Gunnar and his men went to a nearby farm, where the folk were just rising for the day, and they announced the killings of Ketil Ragnarsson, Kollbein Erlendsson, and Hallvard Erlendsson.

At Gunnars Stead, the servingfolk came out of their sleeping places and Birgitta saw that Olaf and Finn were not among them, and she bade the women to begin putting all of the housewares into chests, and the children's clothing and toys. And after they had done this, she went to Svava Vigmundsdottir and bade her to return to Kristin in Siglufjord, and then she went around to each of the other maids, and sent them on their ways to other farmsteads. Then she bade the men to begin carrying the chests to the new Gunnars Stead boat where it sat in Austfjord. And by the time Gunnar returned with the news of the deaths, the farmstead was empty of furnis.h.i.+ngs.

Gunnar gave his four horses to the men who had helped him-two to Axel and his sons, and two to Thorolf and Skeggi. Olaf called his five sheep dogs to him, and he killed the three old ones, including Nalli. After this Gunnar, Olaf, Birgitta, Finn, Gunnhild, and Helga went to the boat and embarked, and they rowed to Hvalsey Fjord and announced the killings. And after this they lived at Lavrans Stead in Hvalsey Fjord, and Gunnars Stead was the following year confiscated by the Thing and awarded to Erlend. This farm Erlend gave to Vigdis, so that it would, he said, remind her of the consequences of her schemes. Erlend had asked in his case for greater outlawry and death for Gunnar, but certain powerful men, led by Thorkel Gellison, said of Gunnar that he had been greatly provoked by damages done to him through the agency of Ketil Ragnarsson, and so he was only sentenced to lesser outlawry, which meant the payment of compensation, for there was no going abroad.

Lavrans' farmstead at Hvalsey Fjord was smaller and poorer than Gunnars Stead had been, but the fact was that all of Birgitta's best livestock was there, now numbering some fifty or sixty beasts. These, with Lavrans' own flock, made a sizable holding. And Finn Thormodsson was with them. It was here that the boy she expected was born to Birgitta, and at the last minute before the baptism, she recalled Asgeir Gunnarsson, the child who had died, and the name seemed ill-omened to her. So she told the priest to name him after Lavrans' father, that was, Kollgrim. And Kollgrim Gunnarsson was a fat and bonny babe, and all went well with him.

THE DEVIL.

IT HAPPENED IN THE AUTUMN OF THIS YEAR 1378 1378 THAT RAGNVALD THAT RAGNVALD Einarsson, who lived with his folk at Solar Fell in Eriks Fjord, grew very suspicious and apprehensive, so that he often saw apparitions among the icebergs in the fjord, and he was never so happy during the whole summer as when the fjord was free of ice, and never so haunted as in the time after the seal hunt, when icebergs, small and large, began to calve and cl.u.s.ter between his farmstead and the two beaches where he had killed one skraeling and allowed the other to escape. Tidings that Ragnvald Einarsson was spirit-ridden were greeted with much interest all around Eriks Fjord and Gardar, for Ragnvald was a prosperous and powerful man. Einarsson, who lived with his folk at Solar Fell in Eriks Fjord, grew very suspicious and apprehensive, so that he often saw apparitions among the icebergs in the fjord, and he was never so happy during the whole summer as when the fjord was free of ice, and never so haunted as in the time after the seal hunt, when icebergs, small and large, began to calve and cl.u.s.ter between his farmstead and the two beaches where he had killed one skraeling and allowed the other to escape. Tidings that Ragnvald Einarsson was spirit-ridden were greeted with much interest all around Eriks Fjord and Gardar, for Ragnvald was a prosperous and powerful man.

Now one day toward the end of the summer half year, some days after St. Michael's ma.s.s, folk at Solar Fell were engaged in making preparations for the winter, and were busy slaughtering sheep. On this day, Ragnvald's spirits seemed to lift, and he no longer stared out into the fjord, but instead admired his fat sheep and handsome children, including especially his young grandson, Olaf Vebjarnarson, who had been born the previous fall. Late in the morning, one of Ragnvald's servingmen came to him and declared that he had seen a strange boat in the water, such a boat as appeared and then disappeared, neither a skin boat, as skraelings paddle, nor a wooden boat, as Nors.e.m.e.n row. Ragnvald said that this would be a peculiar sight indeed, and laughed heartily at the idea. However, his children and servingfolk grew uneasy, and began casting glances toward the fjord.

Sometime after this, when most of the sheep had been slaughtered, Ragnvald's folk built a fire and began singeing the hair off the heads of the slaughtered sheep. Ragnvald himself oversaw this operation, in the company of his wife, who was a st.u.r.dy, gray-haired woman named Svanhild Erlingsdottir, and had produced five sons and three daughters for Ragnvald. When this job had been done, and the sheeps' heads carried into the storehouse, the folk went inside for their evening meal, leaving one servingman, Gaut, tending the fire and boiling a large vat of water for was.h.i.+ng wadmal cloth. All of a sudden, Gaut ran to the door of the house and shouted that the skraelings were coming, and all of Ragnvald's folk streamed out of the house, but they saw nothing. Ragnvald himself rea.s.sured them, saying, ”It is only that the ice is so thick in the fjord.” They went back to their meal, and Gaut back to his work.

While Gaut was engaged in putting driftwood on the fire, a strange iceberg floated to sh.o.r.e, and figures silently slipped out of it and silently ran up the strand, and one of these figures, who were skraelings after all, dealt Gaut a blow on the head with a rock. Blood and gray matter spilled out onto the turf. Then the skraelings grabbed the burning f.a.ggots from the fire and carried these and some other brush they had brought with them to Ragnvald's farmhouse and set the turf afire. And the turf went up very quickly, for it was the end of summer: little rain had come yet, and no snow.

The skraelings were diabolical in this, that they filled the doorway with brush and whale oil-dipped f.a.ggots, so that those who attempted to escape by the door were burned to death. Among these was Svanhild. It happened, however, that Ragnvald himself escaped through a back pa.s.sage with his grandson Olaf in his arms, and he fled at first up the hills toward Isafjord, but the skraelings cut off that route, and so he turned and ran along the fjord toward Brattahlid with the child screaming in his arms. Many skraelings pursued him, both on foot and in skin boats, and he grew despairing, for he saw that they had many arrows in their quivers. Ragnvald was sure of death, both for himself and for his grandson, and much talk had gone around of what the skraelings were known to do with the children of men, such as roast them like sealmeat and drink their blood, and so, fearing such a fate for his beloved grandson, Ragnvald came to the fjord and threw the child into the water, while at the same time repeating the last prayers, as it is spelled out in the laws. The child drowned, but was a.s.sured of Heaven, and Ragnvald ran on. As it turned out, the skraelings were unable to catch him, and he came to the farms of Brattahlid district. The number of those killed, including Olaf Vebjarnarson, amounted to fifteen. A large band of skraelings settled at Ragnvald's steading, and took prisoner two of Ragnvald's shepherd boys.

Those Greenlanders who were in the habit of trading with the skraelings soon had news of this fight from the demons they traded with, and this was, that a certain warrior by the name of Kissabi was resolved to kill Ragnvald himself, for Ragnvald had killed his brother, cut off the brother's arm, and shamed Kissabi with it. Other than this, it was discovered that two of the skraelings had been killed in this fight. During this winter, Ragnvald moved to the southern fork of Hrafns Fjord and took over an abandoned farm there. As many of his children and folk as had survived the attack at Solar Fell came to live with him, and this included two daughters and one son and one daughter's husband and nine servingfolk. One of these daughters was named Gudny, and her husband had been the Solmund who was shot by the arrow of the second skraeling when he was innocently gathering sh.e.l.ls. She was now married to a man named Halldor Grimsson, and these two lived with their baby son Grim at Hrafns Fjord with Ragnvald.

Folk in every district spoke about this attack until Yule, through Lent, and past Easter, for it was the greatest event to take place in Greenland for many years, and now folk looked upon the skraelings with renewed fear and contempt. Some men, Erlend Ketilsson among them, gained great respect from this attack, for Erlend had always refused to trade with the skraelings and to learn any of their language, for, he said, those who speak the tongue of the devil will soon be doing the devil's work. Vigdis, too, spoke of this, and she said that she looked for the great conflict between Goodness and Evil in her own lifetime, when the skraelings would come down from the north in myriads and overrun the farms of men, and they would cease to look like men, as they did now, but be revealed as giants and trolls. At this time there was a prayer that began to be repeated during services, and this prayer went: Lord, we see Thee in Thy might, Higher than the cliffs of white, Greater than the ocean gales, Thou who mad'st both bear and whale.

We call to Thee, Father and Son, Look down upon these lowly ones, Scattered thinly in these hills, Beset by demons and devils.

This prayer was the work of the Greenlander priest Sira Audun, and was highly thought of by every one of the Greenlanders.

Certain men thought differently than Erlend did, those who had grown rich trading with the skraelings, or were married to skraeling women and had their wives' mothers with them on their farmsteads. These men remarked on how exactly the skraelings' attack had matched Ragnvald's attack upon the skraelings after the killing of Solmund; but the killing of Solmund was itself a sore subject, as it had been unprovoked.

Another tale much repeated was the tale of the drowning of Olaf Vebjarnarson, and Ragnvald was greatly praised for his course of action, although much pitied for the extremity of desperation he had found himself in. There began to be talk of how little Olaf might be made a saint for this, and Sira Jon declared that there had to be evidence of miracles. Some declared that a holy glow emanated from the water where Olaf was drowned.

The case was that the Greenlanders could do nothing about the skraelings living at Solar Fell, as they did not have enough weapons to make a proper attack, not enough boats to come by sea nor enough skis to come over the hill from Isafjord, and so it was judged better to leave the skraelings be through the winter. By spring hot blood had cooled, and men thought more carefully of the bloodshed and death that would be involved in such an undertaking. Ragnvald, after all, lived far to the south, at Hrafns Fjord, and was not present to excite the anger of the other farmers.

Ragnvald was much downcast through the winter, and so spirit-ridden that he could neither sleep nor pay attention to his tasks, but woke up screaming every night and often entertained the ghosts of his sons and his wife, who had followed him southward.

The folk at Hvalsey Fjord were much concerned with these events, for there were fewer farms there, and the district was more subject than others to the comings and goings of groups of skraelings. For many years a band of skraelings had been in the habit of hunting whales at the mouth of Einars Fjord, where there are many islands. It was the practice of these demons to hide among a group of small islands in their skin boats, and one sign of their diabolical nature was that they could rest quietly in these boats even in rough seas for long periods of time if they knew that a family of leviathans was approaching. Greenlanders had once or twice gone with them, but it was impossible for men to sit so quietly as these skraelings. At the approach of the great sea beasts, the hunters would fix their harpoons, and then, quick as lightning, the barbed spear would hurtle into the flesh of any whale that surfaced. And then the other boats would descend upon the place like a flock of wheatears, and the demons would kill the beast with their harpoons and tie their boats together and float the beast to others standing on the sh.o.r.e. Some of the Greenlanders were much envious of this sort of hunting, for one whale could feed many folk for many days, but this sort of hunting is not in the nature of men, and whales come to Christians only by the grace of G.o.d.

This latter point had sometimes been the object of much debate among the folk of Hvalsey Fjord, for folk disagreed about whether whalemeat traded from the skraelings was wholesome to eat without being blessed, or even after being blessed. Sometimes folk grew sick from it and sometimes they did not. Sira Pall Hallvardsson had learned nothing of this at his school among the Flemish, and folk were greatly surprised at this, that such an important question was unconsidered by learned men. But the fact was that the farmers of Hvalsey Fjord always kept by some whalemeat traded from the skraelings, and this flesh spelled the difference between life and death at the end of the winter.

Much else about living in Hvalsey Fjord was different from the ways of Vatna Hverfi district. Folk used boats much more than they used horses, and in fact there was only one horse in the district, but every farm had two or more boats, and there was much discussion about the best ways of keeping these boats watertight and in good repair. Men vied about their boats just as men in Vatna Hverfi district vied about their horses. Another Hvalsey Fjord habit was to depend upon the fjord for a great number of fish, and there were times when the folk of the district ate nothing but fish day after day, for both morning meat and evening meat. Gunnhild Gunnarsdottir, for one, thought little of this custom, and was often discontented. For their part, natives of Hvalsey Fjord were much surprised at the quant.i.ty of ewe's milk Birgitta gave her children to drink and predicted that children nourished in such a fas.h.i.+on would soon suffer an excess of blood.

Nor were there so many good herbs growing about the farms, for the slopes above the farmsteads were steep and rocky and the strip of ground beside the water narrow. Often the peaks were clad in morning mists and the winds that blew these mists away, if they came off the ocean to the west, were brisk and chill. For this reason, farm buildings had smaller rooms and were themselves smaller, for folk had to go off in their boats to cut turves, and the turves had to be set thickly about the stone walls, for the wind, especially in the late winter, when folk are hungry, could seek out the smallest c.h.i.n.ks and bring frost into the house.

The folk of Hvalsey Fjord were ready builders, Gunnar found, and when they were not tinkering with their boats, they were climbing about on their houses and outbuildings, repairing this or rebuilding that. It was for this reason that Hvalsey Fjord had such a great church, the newest and most beautiful in Greenland. The builders had done an unusual thing. They had ground up the sh.e.l.ls of mussels and mixed these with water and put this into the s.p.a.ces between the stones of the walls, so that these walls, on the inside, were very smooth, and did not need to be covered with wallhangings. They had also built an arched window in the east wall of the church, which not even Gardar Cathedral had, and from the feast of St. Eskil forward until the feast of St. Thomas, the morning sun rose in this window and lit the church with a dazzling light. Birgitta was much pleased with this church, and with Sira Pall Hallvardsson, who had lived there for many years now, and as Lavrans Stead was situated just across the water from the church, she spent not a little time there, and soon came to the position of overseeing the disposition of church furnis.h.i.+ngs and also of Sira Pall Hallvardsson's household.

Lavrans' house was a steading of fourteen rooms, if the two partly open sheep byres and the three storage rooms were counted. All of these rooms were connected, and could be reached without going out of doors. In addition to this, all of the servants slept in bedclosets in the house, so that there were twelve people sleeping in the house, and such close quarters were unusual for the Vatna Hverfi folk, even Birgitta, who was now accustomed to a more s.p.a.cious life. Added to this were the perennial crying of the sheep after they were brought in for the winter and the smells of the stored provisions, the privy, which was also within the walls, and of the sheep themselves. Lavrans' steading had no bath house, and folk from all over the district were accustomed to using the bath house at the church.

One day when a storm was raging outside, Olaf came in from his work, and he was in a black temper, and he said, ”These farmers of Hvalsey Fjord are beggarly folk, for though they have good land and plenty of beasts, they go out in all weathers, and care not if they are sleeping outside or in. Just now I saw Orm Guttormsson out upon the fjord in his larger boat, and it seemed to me that he would kill himself.”

”I am very fond of Orm,” said Birgitta, ”and it is a great pleasure to me to have him as a neighbor again.” And she put her hand over Lavrans' hand, where it was resting on the planks of the table.

”Even so,” said Olaf, ”in these Hvalsey Fjord steadings the folk are always stumbling over each other and there is hardly the elbow room to lift your spoon.”

”It seems to me,” said Birgitta, ”that you are always overflowing with complaints,” and her eyes flashed at him, so that Lavrans saw that they would soon fall to bickering, and he settled himself on his stool and told a tale.

There was a man, said Lavrans, whose name was Thorbjorn, and he lived with his folk in the oldest house in the district, a house that had been built by a relative of his many years before, when folk first came to Hvalsey Fjord. This was a long house, such as they build in Norway and Iceland, and it had many st.u.r.dy buildings around it, and Thorbjorn's ancestor had retrieved many beams from the sh.o.r.es of Markland, for men in those days were great seafarers, and thought little of going to Markland for a load or two of wood. These beams were hewn into staves and porches and attached to the buildings, and carved with fantastic designs, and folk admired them a great deal, and came from other districts to look over these carvings. The carver, in fact, was a Norwegian called Bjarni the Easterner, and he went back to his home district after coming to Greenland, and made a name for himself there as a carver. The result was that in every respect, this Hvalsey Fjord steading came to look exactly like those of the great lords of Norway, with an outer court and an inner court and separate buildings for every activity, except that the buildings were built of Greenland stone, and only faced on the outside with staves. This ancestor would have no turf.

Now it happened that the folk at this steading strove to live in every way as they live in Norway, with hangings on the walls and lots of chairs and the livestock scattered all over the countryside, and they lived so for two generations, in much greater magnificence than anyone else in Hvalsey Fjord. Each generation was full of seafarers, and these men brought a wealth of goods with them at the end of every journey. They fought in many wars, especially those between the kings and the n.o.bles of Norway, and they received rich rewards, and their women rocked the children back and forth in cradles mounted with gold and silver and swaddled them in brightly colored silk. They went often enough to Markland that they had much to trade in the way of marten furs and black bear skins and, of course, great beams of wood were always piled in the outer courtyard of the farmstead, so much wood that these folk thought nothing of burning it on their winter fires to drive away the cold.

Soon enough other houses were being built in Hvalsey Fjord, for the other districts were getting full, especially Vatna Hverfi district. These new farmers, however, were not so wealthy as Thorbjorn's lineage, and they built more humbly, with stone surrounded by turf and all the buildings linked together, for sheep on the north and cows on the south are like the low glow of a whale oil lamp-you only notice when they are gone that the house is darker than dark and colder than cold.

It happened that these folk who were Thorbjorn's kin became steeped in pride, for they were thought considerable men even in Norway, and were the first Greenlanders to be so honored. One of these kings (here Lavrans shook his head, for he could not remember the name of this king) made one of these men a lord at the Norwegian court. Earl Skeggi he was to be called, but it happened that this king was killed in battle, and Skeggi remained Skeggi the Greenlander. In this year, when Skeggi almost became an earl, Thorbjorn was some fifteen winters old, and of all his kin he was the most proud, although he was a sickly fellow and left the warrior's life to his uncles and brothers. Thorbjorn stayed in Greenland and oversaw the farmstead, and he was considered clever at it.

One autumn, two s.h.i.+ps containing all of the brothers and uncles set out from Norway, hoping to come to Greenland by the beginning of winter, and the short tale of this is that both s.h.i.+ps were lost, one at Cap Farvel and one only the Lord Himself knows where, because it vanished. Thus it was that of all the men in his family, which numbered eight strong fellows and Thorbjorn, only Thorbjorn was left.

The family were greatly grieved of course, but Thorbjorn saw that the many cattle were taken care of and the women kept up the household economy, and so they considered themselves happy enough, and the farm was so rich, with such an abundance of goods, that it seemed to everyone that life on this steading could go on as it had forever. But of course, it went on as it had for only two winters, and at the end of the second winter, servingmen began pulling down the carved staves and throwing them upon the fire, for folk hate to be cold when they are hungry, and almost all of the cows and sheep had been slaughtered except those Thorbjorn wanted to use for breeding. These were folk who had never been hungry before, and they thought that if they had food, they had best eat it all and have a full stomach, as if a full stomach would last longer before it longed to be full again, and so, although they were plump and pink of cheek, Thorbjorn's folk were always complaining of hunger pains and begging him to slaughter a sheep or a cow, for something was bound to happen that would replace the cow or sheep. Thorbjorn himself was sure of this, also, and still looked for the vanished s.h.i.+p that had carried his brothers and uncles to their doom. He spoke often of what would be on this s.h.i.+p, and how his folk would be saved when it came. But in that summer after the second winter it still did not come, and in the autumn, all of the servants had to be sent away, and Thorbjorn himself undertook to care for the beasts.

At the beginning of this third winter all of the carved staves of all of the outbuildings had been used up, and so Thorbjorn began pulling down the staves around the main house, and these lasted for a few weeks, although the fires got smaller and smaller. After that, he pulled down the decorations inside the steading and burned them, and these lasted about a week. Then he threw on the carved chairs, with their arms in the shape of lions' heads and hounds' heads and their feet in the shape of claws. At one chair per day, these chairs lasted twenty days. At Yule, Thorbjorn began breaking up the bedclosets and throwing that wood on the fire, and there were so many of these that Thorbjorn was sure they would last until spring and the return of the second s.h.i.+p. The gold-embossed cradles went on the fire, and benches and barrels-Thorbjorn's folk drove him on as if under a spell of frenzy, for they were never warm, and talked always of how warm they had been a few years before. The wallhangings went on the fire, the trenchers, and, at last, all of the bedclosets, and still it wasn't spring, and there was no warmth in the air, and the fresh breezes of Hvalsey Fjord blew into every crevice and c.h.i.n.k, and the folk were nearly mad with the cold.

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