Part 9 (1/2)

Of other matters at Steinstraumstead, there is this to say, that Asta and Margret had made of the place a simple but comfortable steading, and by living with great austerity, they managed to stay there from the time when the ice broke up in Eriks Fjord almost until Yule every year. Margret had gotten for herself ten ewes, and from their milk she made an excellent quant.i.ty of cheese, for the pasturage above the tiny steading was rich and little used. All the steadings up that side of Eriks Fjord were abandoned and she could pasture them for a great distance along the fjord and also as far back into the mountains as the glacier. At Yule they went with her across the fjord to Brattahlid and were bred to Osmund's ram. Also in the summer she spun a great deal of wool and in the winter she wove this into wadmal for the use of folk at Brattahlid, as well as for clothing for herself, Asta, and Sigurd. She was quick at the loom, and was pleased to show the Brattahlid servants what she remembered of the patterns Kristin the wife of Thord of Siglufjord had taught her long ago. Her hair was completely white and her body as thin and hard as a whale bone. She was some forty winters old, and still suffered little if at all from the joint ill. She no longer complained of her dreams. She no longer had recourse to Sira Isleif, and had not taken communion or made a confession in three summers. Sira Isleif was afraid to approach her concerning this matter, for he was a timid man, especially since the death of Marta Thordardottir some two winters before.

Some things were changed at Steinstraumstead, and one of these happened as follows: one day when Sigurd was sitting at his meat, he knocked over his cup of ewe's milk and spilled it into the moss that lay upon the floor of the steading. At once he began to cry, because he was very fond of this drink, and sorry to lose his. Now it happened that Asta, without speaking or considering, took up the other cup of ewe's milk at the table and placed it in front of Sigurd, and he drank it down. This cup of milk belonged to Margret, and at once Asta realized this, and was stricken with mortification, and she and Margret gazed upon each other's faces without speaking for some moments. Then Margret smiled, for she was amused, and she said, ”Although you are my servant, Asta, it seems to me that you grow to fill every nook of this place, and all things here flow to Sigurd. We spend our days consulting his pleasure as servants do a peevish master. You grow and flourish as richly as a patch of angelica by the side of a clear stream, but it seems to me that I shrink and harden and shrink and harden, and when I die I will be as a small pebble, and this is not frightening to me, but pleasant.”

And Asta, because she had her child beside her, leaning into her so that she could feel the warmth of his body against hers, was somewhat offended by this remark and offered no reply. When Sigurd jumped up and wandered out of the steading, she, too, got up, and went to the vat of ewe's milk from that morning and dipped up another cupful for Margret. This Margret drank, and all of the rest of the evening, Asta dogged Margret's steps and helped her with tasks she was accustomed to doing herself and quieted Sigurd or sent him out of the way when he seemed to be annoying Margret, but by awakening time the next morning these things were forgotten, and Asta went back to thinking first of Sigurd in all things. Margret took some cheese and followed the sheep for the entire day, eating bilberries as she went about the hillsides, and this was a great pleasure to her.

At the farmstead, Asta had begun to look for Koll's visit, for it was at this time of the summer and in such weather, brisk and bright, that he often came to her. This waiting was little agreeable to her, for fear was mixed with eagerness so that she alternately dreaded and yearned for the first sudden meeting. On the one hand, she had grown familiar with and almost fond of Koll's face, so that it seemed as commonplace to her as any Norse face she knew. On the other hand, she had not gotten accustomed to the smell that arose from his clothing and his hands and his hair, and this came over her like a miasma, freshly each time. Fortunately, however, it seemed to go away after he had been near her for a while. Koll also seemed to share her fondness for Sigurd, whom he called by a name in the skraeling tongue. He always brought the boy exquisite gifts, finer even than those he had brought Asta to win her. The boy slept between two snowy white bearskins and as a baby had been swaddled in a length pieced from the fur of blue and white foxes. There were also carvings of ivory and two lamps of the skraeling style as well as various weapons and tools that Asta thought little of but kept for the boy.

As a balance to this antic.i.p.ation, Asta had a great fear of Koll's other fondnesses when he saw her, for he came for the purpose of having intercourse, that was plain to see, and this activity seemed odd and not a little shocking. She had learned at his first reappearance, about a year after the marriage proposal, that to run or scream merely inflamed him and gave him greater strength. And yet the penetration itself, the pinning of her arms and the writhing of his flesh against her made her gasp and choke. This was a thing he wished to do many times during each visit. Each time he did it, Asta thought of Sira Isleif and regretted her sin, for this was sin indeed, but after each time was over, it seemed a small thing in retrospect, and little to pay for such boons as Sigurd and the gifts and, even, the fondness of Koll himself, who slapped her flanks and laughed at her flesh, and chattered about it in the skraeling tongue as if it were a thing of great beauty and pride to him.

Now she sat Sigurd in front of the steading with a basin of water and some other vessels, both whole and broken, and Sigurd set about pouring the water back and forth among the vessels. Then Asta went into the steading and carried out all of the skins of the two beds, and laid them on the hillside in the sun. Then she gathered some birch branches and lashed them together with a willow whip and began to beat the skins so that the fleas and lice rose out of them as well as dirt and dust. After that, she took a comb and set about combing the remaining vermin out of Sigurd's bearskins, and this was something she did four or five times in a summer, more often than most folk, because she was very particular about such things.

As she was engaged in this, Sigurd got up from his play and came over to the furs and began to lie down upon them and roll around on them, laughing merrily, for they were soft and clean and sweet to the skin, and though he was undoing her work, Asta was incapable of wrath at her son, and she merely laughed with him and knelt down and ruffled his hair and put her face close to his and looked at him. His mother's admiration moved the boy to jump up and begin running back and forth on the flat place in front of the steading, as fast as he could. Then he began to gather small stones and toss them down the hill toward the water, for it was his fixed desire to stand just in front of the steading and throw a stone so that it went into the water, although the strip of hillside was some fifty paces in width. He threw these stones with great intensity of thought, one after the other. Asta went back to her work, and finished combing the skins and began to carry them indoors.

In the shade of the steading was a vat of ewe's milk from the morning, and beside it a smaller one from the evening before. Asta went over to these and looked at the milk, then gathered some small pieces of driftwood and a clump of sheep's dung and built a small fire. On this she set a soapstone pot, and into that she poured the night's milk, letting it heat until she could just barely endure to touch it with her finger. Then she poured it out into the morning's milk. Now she went into the steading and got a small basin of b.u.t.termilk from the b.u.t.ter making of the day before, and poured it into the milk. After this she took Sigurd farther down the slope so that there would be no chance of his coming against the vat of milk or disturbing it in any way. She sat with him on the lower slope, looking across to Brattahlid, and she played with him a game that involved their four hands, where she put one of her hands down upon her leg, and he covered it with one of his, and she covered his, and he put his on top. Then she removed her bottom hand and put it on top, and he did the same, and they did this, taking turns, faster and faster. This was the one game Asta could remember playing as a child, and Sigurd enjoyed it very much and could go very fast without becoming confused. Then Asta got up and returned up the hill and gazed upon the vat of milk, and she put her finger into the mixture so that a hole was made that filled up with whey, and from this she knew that the curds were ready to be cut. She went into the steading and returned with a long blade made from the shoulder bone of a reindeer and sharpened, and she cut the curd four times, not hesitating to remove such pieces as Sigurd had a desire for, for fresh curd was a favorite treat with him. And so she went on with the cheesemaking, until the end of the day, when she set the cheese to drip over the vat, wrapped in a piece of clean wadmal and hanging from the eaves of the steading by a hook made from a reindeer antler. And on this day, Koll made no appearance.

Margret returned with the sheep and folded them, and Sigurd went to her and was pleased to see her and carried to her some stones of peculiar shapes and made a gift of them to her. In return she presented him with an ancient ram's horn she had found near the old steading farther up the fjord, and when she came into the steading she could see that Koll had not yet come, and of this she was somewhat glad, for it seemed to her when he did come that it fell upon her as mistress to put a stop to these visits, and yet she could not bring herself to do it, and made many excuses and so he came like this every half year, drawing mistress and servant deeper and deeper into sin.

And after Sigurd went to the bedcloset, the two women sat spinning just outside the door of the steading, by the light of the late sun, and though they did this almost every night of the year, even at Brattahlid, these recent nights they did something else, also, and that was wait. And this new thing that they did made the customary spinning seem especially tedious and difficult. Margret saw that this is how it is that folk are made to desire what they know they should not have, they are made to wait for it, so that when it comes, no matter how dark and full of sin and repellent it is, they are glad enough to welcome it.

It happened that Bjorn Einarsson Jorsalfari stayed among the Greenlanders year after year, and he performed his office as the king's revenue officer just as they wished he might, for he took little revenue from them, and none that he did not pay for with some goods as the Greenlanders wished to have. He traded from time to time with the skraelings and got from them good wares. In addition to this, he saw to the punishment of two men who killed a third man, in the southern part of Vatna Hverfi district, and also of a man who killed his wife out of anger, a man who lived behind Brattahlid where the river came down to Isafjord. There were some boys who smashed up the boat of a neighbor, who were required by Bjorn to put the boat in good order, and there was other business that he did in the southern region, at Herjolfsnes, having to do with a dispute over a stranded whale (for Herjolfsnes sits at the outer reaches of Herjolfs Fjord, and the folk there often have such disputes) and at Arosvik he settled a dispute between the farmers and the church concerning services owed to the church, although the church building itself was in great disrepair and Sira Audun had refused to preach there, insisting instead that the Arosvik folk, of which there were about forty, journey to Petursvik for services. Bjorn Einarsson reprimanded both the folk of Arosvik and Sira Audun and made peace between them, and he decided other cases as well, in as judicious a manner as could be wished for. When he didn't sail away by the end of the second summer, folk ceased speculating when he would leave Greenland. He was much liked by all.

It happened that during Lent of Bjorn's third winter in Greenland there was a hunger similar to the hunger of twelve winters before, only it struck differently, so that the folk in Vatna Hverfi and to the south were greatly affected but the folk at Brattahlid and at Gardar and at Hvalsey Fjord, where the summer weather had been drier and brighter, were not so affected. And the first person to die in this famine was Erlend Ketilsson. This is how it came about. It was still the case that Erlend and Vigdis were living apart, the one at Ketils Stead and the other at Gunnars Stead, and some of the servants were living with one and some were living with the other, except that Erlend's servants had a habit of leaving him and going off to Gunnars Stead, for matters were better ordered there, and Vigdis, for all her n.i.g.g.ardly ways, treated all fairly. There was much intercourse between the servants of both places, and when the servants who had stayed with Erlend gossiped with those who had gone with Vigdis, they were often persuaded to change places. Vigdis was much pleased by this, and rewarded any who came to her with extra food and pleasant tasks. In the meantime, she spoke evil of the servingmaid Ulfhild, who had recently had a daughter by Erlend.

Now this Ulfhild was only some eighteen winters in age, and the daughter of a servingwoman herself, and it was easy to see that she was not a little defeated by the variety of business at Ketils Stead. She did not see how it happened that the storehouses that had once been full had become empty and the servants who had once sat happily at the benches with their trenchers were now departed. As for Erlend, folk said that he fell upon the girl without resting or ceasing, even in the sinful time when she was with child. His antics raised a good deal of laughter about the district, and folk recalled how quickly Vigdis herself had produced a daughter and four sons, although only one of these was still alive.

At Gunnars Stead, though the summer was a cool and damp one, Vigdis' folk were out early and busily, manuring the fields where they could and making expeditions to the fjord for seaweed and to the hillside for angelica and bilberries. At Ketils Stead there was none of this, and what work the remaining servants did was done late and with little will, for the servants saw the idleness of the master and mimicked it.

The short tale of this is that Ketils Stead sheep were lost, cheeses went unmade, cows died in calving because no one was there to help them. Birds in the mountains went unsnared, herbs and berries went ungathered, and Ulfhild gave out things from the storehouses in the middle of summer. Still, everyone in the district was much taken with surprise when Erlend failed to send out messengers with invitations to the usual Ketils Stead feast, and were surprised again when only a few of the Ketils Stead folk appeared at Undir Hofdi church for the Yule services of Sira Audun. But it was also true that Erlend now drove people off sometimes when they came toward Ketils Stead, and so no one cared to go there. It was said that any number of new young women would have no effect on Erlend's temper, which used to be sour, was sour now, and would always be sour. In this fas.h.i.+on the days went by before and after Yule, until at last Vigdis yielded and sent one of her servingmen to Ketils Stead with a message, and this man went on skis and found the door to the steading drifted shut with snow, and when he got it open, he discovered only the dogs alive, and that because they had been gnawing the bones of the folk, which numbered five-Erlend, Ulfhild, two elderly servingmen, and the babe. And this was a tale told avidly in Vatna Hverfi district for a few weeks, until it became clear during Lent that this tale might not be the last such of the winter.

This mischance was followed by another one, this one in Hrafns Fjord and Siglufjord, where the nuns' cloister and the monastery lay. Here it happened that the January thaw was followed by a driving storm of rain that drenched the sheep that had been let out to forage, and filled their eyes and noses so that they were maddened and panicked, and many of them fell over cliffs into the fjords or stumbled into clefts and broke their necks and died, and by the time the rain was over and folk had found their lost sheep, the carcases were rotten from the warm weather, and so Thord Magnusson of Siglufjord and four other farmers and their men went north to Vatna Hverfi district on horseback, although the mud was very deep, and they went seeking food from the Vatna Hverfi folk, who had little to spare. After this Thord and his friends and two men from Vatna Hverfi district went on skates to Gardar, though after the thaw it was considered by many that the ice in Einars Fjord would be treacherous and thin. But Thord would not be dissuaded, and the men arrived at Gardar safely, and at Gardar all was much as usual, and folk were getting up from their meat sated before the meat was gone. Now Sira Jon sent a messenger to Bjorn Einarsson at Thjodhilds Stead and some three days later twelve Eriks Fjord farmers and twenty servants besides appeared dragging sledges over the ice, and these sledges were laden with dried meat and cheese and sour b.u.t.ter, and to this Sira Jon added what he could, which was not a little, and thus the folk of the south were saved, and only those at Ketils Stead and three more who lived at outlying farms, including one outlaw, died in this hunger.

Now the spring came on, and the ice broke up under the winds off the inland ice, and was swept out of the fjords. The farms of the south were much diminished of their sheep and goats and especially cattle, and it happened that some farms were abandoned at Alptafjord and at the head of Ketils Fjord and the folk from these farms moved their belongings down the fjord to Herjolfsnes, where there dwelt a rich and powerful family, still after many generations the lineage of Herjolf and Bjarni Herjolfsson, who was the first man to sight Markland. These Herjolfsnes folk, because their steading had been built near the ocean, had bad years that were stormier and good years that were more prosperous than most folk, and in addition to this, they were a family of sailors. Herjolfsnes was always the first landing place for s.h.i.+ps that came to Greenland and the last for s.h.i.+ps that were leaving. The folk of Herjolfsnes wore the most outlandish clothing, and prided themselves on attending to what was going on elsewhere in the world of men. The head of this family was named Snaebjorn and he had three sons named Ari, Sigtrygg, and Flosi. All of these men were experienced sealers and whalers, and the Herjolfsnes folk relished sealmeat and whalemeat even more than the Hvalsey Fjord folk. They also had some knowledge of the ways of the skraelings in their skin boats, but, of course, little of their skills, for these are reserved to demons and closed to the minds of men. Nevertheless, between the seals and the whales and the bird cliffs and the coming of s.h.i.+ps from afar, the Herjolfsnes folk lived a life that was somewhat peculiar, and it was said in other districts that the hunger back in Alptafjord must have been severe to drive those folk to Herjolfsnes.

Another thing that happened after this hunger was that Bjorn Einarsson Jorsalfari declared his intention of remaining year round at Thjodhilds Stead, which was in Kambstead Fjord, at the back of Hvalsey Fjord, instead of spending part of the year at one farm and part of the year at the other, for he hadn't enough men to make something of both farmsteads, and he preferred the location of Thjodhilds Stead, for it gave his s.h.i.+ps easy access to the sea but also to Gardar and Brattahlid. For this reason it happened that Gunnhild Gunnarsdottir would be within a day's walk of her own home when she went to stay with Solveig for the summer. She was now fourteen winters in age, and it was necessary to take this course for her to learn the ways of her new family, who after all were not Greenlanders and would for this reason do things differently from the Greenland way.

Gunnhild was now half a head taller than her mother and fully grown, so that she seemed to be three or four winters older than she was. She held herself with pride and reserve, which also made her seem less girlish, and she knew well how to spin and weave and sew and make cheese and b.u.t.ter and look after small children, and so when she came to Birgitta one day, after Birgitta had nursed Johanna and took the baby into her arms, Birgitta smiled at her and declared that she carried the little one with as much ease as if it were her own.

”Perhaps, then,” said Gunnhild, ”I might stay home for another summer, because Johanna is happier with me than she is with Helga, and she cries after me when I leave her.”

Birgitta smiled now and said, ”Even so, Johanna is learning to walk, and everyone knows that the first thing a baby does when she learns to walk is she walks away from those who care for her. And that is a good time for parting.”

”Lavrans says you were not sent off before you were married.”

”But, indeed, I was wed at your age, and, in addition, Gunnars Stead daughters always went off, and then it is not so burdensome to them when they leave for good. It is the way with you that you are always reluctant to begin with, but happy when the beginning is over. I have more faith in you than I do in Helga, who rushes into things and is afterward filled with regret.”

”Helga can't persuade Kollgrim or Astrid to do their tasks.”

”When you are away, she will learn how.”

Now Johanna, who had been sitting on Gunnhild's hip, leaned forward and cried to be put down, and so Gunnhild set her on her feet and she took a few steps to the bedcloset and began to walk around it, holding on and looking to Birgitta and Gunnhild for praise. Gunnhild was distracted by this from her thoughts and began to laugh, and Birgitta jumped up and made her escape, for indeed, the plans that they had made for Gunnhild made her somewhat uneasy, and she found it not a little difficult to talk to the child. Since the betrothal and Bjorn's move to Thjodhilds Stead there had been some visiting back and forth, with feasting and tale-telling and the usual amus.e.m.e.nts. The case was that Birgitta and her family did their best to show themselves happy and welcoming to the Thjodhilds Stead folk, and Bjorn and Solveig did the same, and yet, when Birgitta and Gunnar went to the other farmstead, they were annoyed by the stiffness of things, and Solveig's affected manner, and when Bjorn and Solveig visited, Birgitta could see that they, and especially Solveig, were attempting to overlook this and that, out of conscious generosity. Always Solveig's eyes went around the room with veiled dismay, and then fell upon Gunnhild, and Birgitta could see that the other woman was thinking that at least the girl was lovely to look at. Solveig herself was not, and Birgitta found this increasingly disturbing, for each time she saw the other woman she seemed to see only her jiggling chin or the peculiar way she sniffed and blinked when she was talking. During and after these times, she prayed mightily for the grace to look past Solveig's earthly appearance to her soul within, for the woman was as kind as she could be, but the next time Birgitta always failed again.

Einar, too, had an unattractive feature which Birgitta saw that others did not see as she did, and this was a habitual squint from reading and writing. Even Gunnhild had not really seen this thing, but a girl does not see with the clarity of a wife, Birgitta well knew. When she herself had been betrothed and then married to Gunnar, she had been aware mostly of Gunnar's clothes, and the gifts he gave her, and the gifts her father gave her, and her own clothes, and the weight of the sheep against her in the boat as they rowed to Vatna Hverfi, and then again the odd sense of sleeping in a different bedcloset from the one she was used to and the figure next to her that was Margret and not the Lavrans Stead dairy maid, whom she had slept with for some years before moving to Gunnars Stead.

And for a while she had been filled with hatred for all these folk and their ways, and had longed only for visits from her father, but when the first of these came, Lavrans had told her in hard terms, it seemed to her, that it was necessary and proper for a woman to sleep in bed with her husband, and he had chastised her and then himself, and had been very ashamed of the arrangements that had been made at Gunnars Stead. And Birgitta had learned that this thing that they had done after the marriage, fumbling and painful, was not something folk did once, but often, except that it got less painful and somewhat less fumbling. At the beginning she had been pleased with the relief that being with child gave her, and then she had been indifferent, and then between Maria and Johanna, it had seemed a pleasant thing, though rare enough with Astrid and Maria sleeping in the bedcloset between herself and Gunnar.

But it was well known that the years it took to settle into a new family and to learn to tolerate the husband and his ways and his say over everything could not be few, and so it was also well known that a girl should begin early, before her own habits were formed. It was not a secret to Birgitta that there had been much gossip in Vatna Hverfi district about Margret Asgeirsdottir, and folk had said more than once that by the time of her late marriage she was much accustomed to having her own way, and so when Skuli Gudmundsson presented himself, she had her own way in that, and after his death, she ordered things so that she continued to have her own way, in spite of her sin. Though Birgitta had not taken part in this gossip, she largely agreed with it, and deplored the way Margret had behaved. In addition to this, it was clear that Olaf would now be a different sort, less cross-grained with everyone, had Margret not fallen into such unrestrained habits. These things, however, were not such as Birgitta could speak of to Gunnhild, for they were beyond the understanding of a child.

As for Gunnhild, when Birgitta left the steading, she continued to watch over Johanna, and tried to entice her away from the bedcloset and across the room, which was not very big, with smiles and encouragement. Some time later it happened that Kollgrim came into the steading, and whereas Johanna had carefully ignored Gunnhild's entreaties, she turned as soon as she saw the boy and toddled straight to him, a matter of some four steps. And when he picked the child up and gave her into the arms of Gunnhild, then left the steading again, Johanna began to cry after him, and this led Gunnhild herself to weep.

Some days later, Gunnar accompanied Gunnhild to Thjodhilds Stead. They rowed across Hvalsey Fjord to the farm of Orm Guttormsson, who lived in a valley on a neck of land between Hvalsey Fjord and Kambstead Fjord. After refres.h.i.+ng themselves and hearing Orm's news, they walked through the valley to Kambstead Fjord, then along the side of the fjord, and through another valley to Thjodhilds Stead, where Einar, Bjorn, Solveig, the new baby, and some men and servants were awaiting them. This was a journey of about half a day. Solveig offered them further refreshment, including excellent goat cheese, such as Asgeir had been fond of, and sourmilk with honey and berries. After this, Gunnar was put in a good humor, and he began to speak with Einar about his ma.n.u.scripts and writings. Solveig took Gunnhild away and showed her her sleeping closet and her chest and acquainted her with the other folk about the farmstead. The fields had a northerly slope, and there was much ice to be seen in the fjord.

Einar and Gunnar sat at a bench in one of the rooms of the steading and Einar took down some of the writings he had most recently completed. They were about the districts of Greenland. Gunnar read slowly aloud as follows: ”Of these many Greenland districts, one of the largest and most populous is Vatna Hverfi district, which contains some twenty farms in the north part of the district and some fifteen farms in the south part of the district, and these farms are set rather close together, by the standards of Iceland, but the land of this district is so rich and the lakes so numerous that all the farms make a good enough living. This district has but one church, called Undir Hofdi, and this is not one of the larger churches of Greenland, for it was built many years ago and has not been rebuilt or expanded as others have. The folk of this district keep many cows and horses, as well as sheep. Some of the wealthier farmers of this district are Thorkel Gellison, Erlend Ketilsson, and Magnus Arnason.”

Now Gunnar stopped reading and asked Einar if he had written in this way about every district, and Einar said that he had. ”But,” said Gunnar, ”Erlend has died in the past winter, and you have said nothing of it.” But Einar smiled and said that he was little interested in such tales, about men no one knew. When he came back to Iceland, this is what folk would wish to know, about the size of the farms and the life folk made on them. Now Gunnar sat silently for a while. Then he said, ”Formerly, when the bishop was alive, boys at Gardar made parchment and learned to write upon it, but now I fear that only Sira Audun has this skill.”

”It may be so. Gardar does not seem to me to be a thriving place under the direction of the priest Jon. But it may be that the new bishop will appear soon.”

”It may be, indeed.” And Gunnar fingered a bit of the parchment. ”I have heard that the making of parchment is a difficult thing, asking much skill.”

”Most men have such skills. They are a farmer's skills.” He lifted up a roll and put it down. ”Forming the letters, this is the skill of a priest. Forming the ideas is a rarer thing.”

”For now, some would be content to make the parchment.”

”It is easily taught.”

And in this way Gunnar was kept from his evening meat, for he pa.s.sed so much time at Thjodhilds Stead watching Einar stretch a sheepskin by laces onto a frame he had carried with him from Iceland, and then shave it with a handsome rounded knife that he did not return to Lavrans Stead until all the people there had gone to their bedclosets. After this, he got into the habit of going off to Thjodhilds Stead whenever he could borrow time from the summer's tasks. Gunnhild seemed to him well enough employed. Whenever he saw her, she was going from the dairy to the steading or the storehouse to the dairy, or she was sitting with the baby and the two skraeling children who nursed him, or she was spinning and talking with Solveig about this or that. She knew better than to make much of his visits or to ask to accompany him back to Lavrans Stead, even for a few nights. And so the summer pa.s.sed quietly, and there were no killings or other disturbances in the district and Bjorn Einarsson stayed home for the most part after the end of the Thing.

And the winter, too, pa.s.sed quietly, except that Gunnar was engaged in stretching his own sheepskins over a frame he had made of whale bone, and shaving them with a curved knife sharpened from the shoulder blade of a reindeer, and Gunnhild, who returned at the end of the summer nights, helped him with this work. These tools worked surprisingly well, so that his parchments were smooth and pale and took the merest stroke of bearberry ink, and after Yule he began to write upon them in a large and awkward hand, and the first thing he wrote was as follows: ”A man named Erlend Ketilsson lived at Ketils Stead in Vatna Hverfi district, in much conflict with his neighbors. All considered him an ill-tempered and quarrelsome fellow. He was a very prosperous farmer, with a large steading and many outbuildings. Through his entire life he fornicated with a servant woman named Vigdis, and when she grew old, he chose another to fornicate with. As a result of his sin, he and his servant and the child of his servant and two others starved to death at a certain Yule season and were partly eaten by their dogs.”

Gunnar was much dissatisfied with this writing and sc.r.a.ped it off the parchment. As for Gunnhild, she was much dissatisfied with everything about Lavrans Stead, and complained without ceasing of how cramped the rooms were, and how humble all the household arrangements. Tales of Solveig and the baby and Bjorn were always on her lips, so that Helga and Kollgrim tormented her with mockery of the way Solveig blinked and talked and took turns breaking into each other's conversation with corrections and other remarks, as was Einar's habit. Even Johanna was unpleasing to Gunnhild, for she greeted her oldest sister as a stranger after so much time, and clung to Astrid, who was a very playful nurse, and fond of games and silliness.

It happened that a few days before Yule there was a great battle among the three older children, in which all ended up weeping, and it was clear to Birgitta that although Helga and especially Kollgrim were excessively teasing toward Gunnhild, she had brought this upon herself by condemning their ways and their clothes and everything about them for the previous two days, and doing her best to make them seem mean and unworthy in their own eyes. Now when they had all been sent to separate bedclosets, Gunnar came to Birgitta in great anger and complained of the uproar, and of Gunnhild especially. Birgitta took a deep breath, and glanced about the room, at her father sleeping by the fire, and the smoky lights cast by the lamps against the turfing of the walls, and at such cloths and tapestries as they had put up to help keep out the wind. A few stools were stacked in the corner and the floor was a heap of moss and much else that didn't bear looking into, and she saw these things, it seemed to her, with Solveig's eyes, and Gunnhild's, and she sighed. Then she turned to Gunnar and declared that as a child of but fifteen years, Gunnhild could not be asked to keep two things in her mind at once, namely the Thjodhilds Stead way and the Lavrans Stead way. And since one had to make way for the other, it was necessary that the old go out and the new come in. The result of this was that on the feast of St. Stephen, Gunnhild and Gunnar went on skis across the fjord and over the hills to Thjodhilds Stead, and Gunnhild stayed there, as a maiden, and came home no more. And this was also the case, that in the disorder of departure, she never once looked over her shoulder, nor did she see her brother and sisters and mother waving after her, but she only went forward, looking for her new home, and this came to Birgitta as an unaccountable grief, no matter how she prayed and told herself that this was the pain of bearing daughters, and folk must always accustom themselves to it. At midsummer, Bjorn Einarsson declared that he was becoming intolerably restless, and had made up his mind to return to Iceland and Norway. And, as his decision was so sudden, there was no time for Gunnhild's wedding feast, but Solveig promised that she should have a brilliant one in Iceland.

And one thing that happened after Bjorn Einarsson, Einar, Solveig, the baby, Gunnhild, and the others left in their four neat s.h.i.+ps was that the farmer Orm Guttormsson agreed to take some of Bjorn's ewes and lambs in trade for a number of sheepskins equal to the number of ewes, but it happened that his seal nets became fouled together, and he was unable to make the trip to Thjodhilds Stead until the day after Bjorn's departure. When he got there, he expected to find the sheep folded, and he did, but before taking them home, he made up his mind to look about the steading and see if anything else had been left behind that might be useful, for Bjorn and his family had a great quant.i.ty of belongings. And he did find something, a nicely carved lamp, of small size, good for lighting, though not for heat. And he also found something else, the corpuses of the two skraeling children who had nursed Solveig's baby. It seemed to Orm that they had climbed an outcropping overlooking Thjodhilds inlet, and pitched themselves into the fjord. The boy's corpus floated in the shallows, catching on the strand, and the girl's was caught by the headdress on some rocks. Orm did not quite know what to do with these corpuses, and so he fished them from the sea and put them in the cowbyre, then a day or so later, he came to Sira Pall Hallvardsson and told of his discovery. These children had been baptized with the names of Josef and Maria, and so Sira Pall Hallvardsson went with Orm and Gunnar and another man and found the corpuses. There was some talk about whether these two children should be buried at the church or not, for it was the law among the Greenlanders that this was prohibited if they had done away with themselves. And so the men spent the greater part of a day walking back and forth around the steading, and looking at the places Orm had found them, and hearing Orm tell his tale over and over.

”Perhaps,” Gunnar said, ”these children merely ran into the water, and were seized by the cold,” for Kambstead Fjord was close to freezing at all times of the year. But no, it was apparent that their bodies were broken from falling, as Orm had said.