The Greenlanders (5 page)

Some time later, Asgeir took Gunnar by the hand and eased him down the side of the cliff. Below him, drawn up on the strand, were many other boats from many other farms in the eastern settlement. Folk were standing about on the sand, talking and eating. Emboldened by Asgeir’s praise, Gunnar said, “My father, can all of these folk be Greenlanders?”

“By Ivar Bardarson’s estimation, there are some hundred and ninety farms in the eastern settlement alone, and that was before the coming of folk from the west, too. Ivar Bardarson has talked of writing a great account of the Greenlanders, through which all the folk of the world will learn what is really the case with us.”

“Then Ivar Bardarson has learned to read, like Olaf?”

“And to write a fair hand and make pictures for decorating his words. It is a fine skill.”

Gunnar sat with his sealmeat and his pieces of cheese and pondered this.

Now someone came down the cliff, shouting that a party of men had cornered Thorleif and one of his sailors, who were also gathering eggs on the cliffs, and were threatening to kill the Norwegians. Asgeir set down his dish and said, “It is always the case with Ketil Erlendsson that he carries his discontents with him wherever he goes.” And he and Thorkel and Thord and some other men picked up what small weapons they had amongst them and went off.

It happened a few days later that Ivar Bardarson appeared at Gunnars Stead with Thorleif. The shipmaster had a large bruise on his face and walked with a limp. Asgeir and Ivar sat him down at his refreshments, and then sat down with him, one on either side. Thorleif was not laughing. Asgeir said, “Eat your meat, my Thorleif, and listen to this. The woman gets bigger, and Ketil says that she is worth more now. A vat of pitch and two wheel hubs, as well as six more healthy sheep.”

Thorleif shifted in his seat. “Ragnar has been paid no compensation.”

“And it seems to me,” said Asgeir, “that the trades I made last summer have been costly ones, when I add in these payments over the winter.”

“Even so, Ragnar received nothing for his first beating, and now he has been beaten again,” said Thorleif. “Perhaps the Greenlanders are in the habit of these beatings. Even so, I do not pay out my goods for the pleasure of limping about. And Ragnar is a valuable man to me.”

“This business has made ill dealings in the district. Ketil’s eyes are opened to every imagined slight.”

Thorleif shrugged. “We are off soon enough.”

Ivar said, “Others are annoyed as well as Ketil. Your sailors have eaten a great deal over the winter. Folk would like to see what they are getting for this.”

Thorleif made a gesture to push away his trencher, but Asgeir filled it again with a smile, and said, “Indeed, enjoy yourself, shipmaster.”

Early the next morning, when Thorleif was asleep, some men began to gather outside the farmstead. They carried various knives and clubs and other weapons, and spoke quietly among themselves. When Ingrid arose and saw them, she roused Gunnar and Margret, and hurried them to the bath house, but she could not stop Gunnar from watching. In fact, there turned out to be no fighting. When Thorleif came out of the steading to wash himself, he stood still before the array, then laughed loudly enough. Later, the Greenlanders dispersed. When Hauk Gunnarsson returned two days later from the wastelands, Asgeir told him that Thorleif and his sailors and a party of Greenlanders would be traveling to Markland for the purpose of bringing back timber, for Ketil had demanded this further compensation, and many Greenlanders were eager to take advantage of such a trip as had not been made in years.

Once the journey had been decided on, Thorleif regained his good humor, saying to Ivar Bardarson that a journey to Markland would last him even more years in the telling than a journey to Greenland. It was well known that the forests of Markland were rich in sable, black bear, marten, and other desirable furs, and Thorleif looked forward to making his fortune. The ship had been readied to return to Norway, and so the journey was quickly begun. Many boats accompanied it to Herjolfsnes, and many pairs of eyes watched the red and white sails disappear under the horizon. The Greenlanders who went along included Hauk Gunnarsson, Odd, the brother of Thord of Siglufjord, Osmund Thordarson, who had been to Markland once before, Ketil Erlendsson, and his son Erlend. But it may be fairly said that all the Greenlanders were tempted to go, for every Greenlander knows of the famous adventures of Leif Eriksson and his kin, and of the paradise to be found in the west.

One day toward the middle of summer, when the ship had been gone for a little time, a servingwoman came from Ketils Stead to Gunnars Stead, seeking Ingrid, with word that Sigrun Ketilsdottir had come to her confinement, and that the women of the farm were unable to bring on the birth. She went off with them in spite of the ill feeling between the two farmsteads, and Margret went with her.

Ketils Stead was a large farm with a number of advantages. Austfjord lapped at the foot of the homefield and there was excellent fishing right outside the farmhouse. The homefield, though, had a northerly slope, and was late, every year, to turn green. Ketil’s horses were seaweed eaters, which, Asgeir said, made them hard to handle. Ketils Stead was within sight of another farm, which belonged to the church at Undir Hofdi. For this reason, Ketil tended to look to Gunnars Stead when he coveted more land, or so Asgeir often said.

Sigrun Ketilsdottir was white, and except for her large belly, as bony as a cow at the end of winter. She lay with her eyes closed between the pains, and each pain seemed to wring her out. The women sat about her. Ingrid went up and took her hand and said, “My Sigrun, it seems to me that the child will be a big one, for it has been eating you up from the inside. But it will sleep well and thrive, once it is born.” Sigrun nodded and was taken with another pain. Behind her, Margret heard one of the farm women mutter, “She has been seized by ghosts, no matter what folk say about sleeping and thriving.” And another woman said, “This child here has more flesh on her bones.”

It seemed to Margret that Sigrun’s belly lay over her like a whale, smothering her, for no matter how the women pulled her up, or propped her, Sigrun sank down without strength beneath the weight. The first pains had come at evening meat, two nights before, and the waters shortly after that. Margret gleaned from the farm women’s whispered conversation that they had little hope for either mother or child.

But Ingrid had a good reputation in the district for delivering at difficult births, and she went about her business in the usual fashion. She smoothed the coverlet and untangled Sigrun’s gown, made sure there were no knots in her clothes. The door and the window to the steading were open, and the women walked in and out with their spinning. Sometimes Ingrid offered the laboring girl a warm drink of ground dulse mixed with some other herbs. She slipped a small knife under the straw of the bedcloset, to cut the pains. The afternoon went on, and toward suppertime, Ingrid reached into Sigrun and felt the baby’s head with the tips of three of her fingers. The servingwomen ran to get a clean sheepskin for catching the baby, and Ingrid sent for Nikolaus the Priest from Undir Hofdi. Sigrun had ceased screaming, although anyone could see the contractions under her gown. But they seemed not to be a part of the woman in the bedcloset, whose eyes were almost closed, and who let the warm hearty seaweed mixture dribble out of the corners of her mouth nearly as fast as the servingwoman could pour it in. All the women were full of sighs now. Night fell, and Nikolaus the old priest came after his evening meat and stood beside the bedcloset and prayed in a way that told everyone the outcome.

The women held Sigrun up by the shoulders and the back to ease the passage of the baby, and she was utterly without strength. The baby was born, caught on the sheepskin, and wrapped quickly in a length of fine wadmal. It was not large at all, and it frightened Margret to look at it, with its slanting eyes and black hair growing all down its back. After it was born, Sigrun began to pour forth bright red blood, drenching her shift and the straw of the bedcloset, and then she was dead.

The child was taken to Vigdis, one of the farm women who had given birth to a child in the late winter, and put to the breast, but Vigdis said that it didn’t know how to suck, and finally the women had to drip ewe’s milk into its little mouth through the shaft of an eagle’s quill. Nikolaus the Priest christened the baby Ketil and agreed that it would die.

But the child did not die, as it happened, and Vigdis succeeded in feeding it full of rich ewe’s milk. Not only that, it passed two large black stools, and in all ways began to look more like any other child. Vigdis and her own baby, Thordis, who was fat and cheerful, moved into the steading with the new one. Now it was reported that for three nights running, the ghost of Sigrun walked about the farmstead and came inside to seize the baby. And so Vigdis placed her own Thordis in the cradle, and when Sigrun laid hands upon her, Thordis screamed lustily, and Vigdis leapt from her bed and wrestled the ghost to the ground, saying, “Sigrun, your child has been baptized in the name of Christ, and must live.” After this, Sigrun’s ghost departed from Ketils Stead, and Vigdis was widely praised for her resourcefulness.

In Markland, meanwhile, the travelers were commending themselves on how well their journey had gone—fair winds, excellent hunting, and much timber to be found in those dark, dense forests, and the only signs of skraelings were at least a year old. Each night, the sailors sat about the fire they had made, and the Greenlanders sat about the fire they had made, but these fires were not so far apart that the two parties could not speak in a friendly way to one another, nor reply to observations the other party might make. Men’s trenchers were so full of roast meat that they could not eat it all, and all were content.

One night, Thorleif asked what manner of beings these skraelings were, and Osmund Thordarson, the only man who had traveled to Markland before, replied that he had never seen skraelings in Markland, himself, but the tales of them were that they were large and fierce. Early expeditions to the Markland coast had seen much fighting. Surely Thorleif had heard of Karlsefni’s famous voyage, when men had hoped to settle in Markland and build farms there? Thorleif had not. The short of it was that Karlsefni found the land rich and mild—the cattle stayed out in the fields all winter, for one thing, as there was no snow—but in the spring skraelings came in fleets of canoes, waving staves that made a great whistling noise, and they came with many, many skins, anxious to trade, especially for red cloths, and as always with skraelings, the Norsemen could cut the cloth into smaller and smaller pieces, but the skraelings would trade as much for the small as for the large. And then Karlsefni’s bull came out of the woods and bellowed, and the skraelings ran off in terror.

The Norsemen laughed at the ignorance of these demons, but, Osmund said, they were not laughing so heartily when the skraelings returned three days later, and in greater numbers—numbers so great that the water was black with their boats, and this time they were waving their staves in the other direction, and they stormed upon the land and attacked, and they had so many and such strange weapons, and they knew so well how to use them, that the Norsemen took to their heels this time, and, Osmund reminded Thorleif, this was in early days, when iron wasn’t so scarce, and all men carried axes and swords and shields, as well.

There was with the party a woman named Freydis, who was the daughter of Erik the Red and the sister of Leif the Lucky, and she had been resting in her booth. When she heard the commotion, it was said, she came out of the booth and shouted her contempt after the fleeing Norsemen, but they did not turn to aid her, so she made her way after them, though she was with child and feeling poorly. The skraelings pursued her. But the fact was that she happened upon the corpus of one of the Norsemen, and she grabbed the sword from his hand and turned. The skraelings were nearly upon her, but she pulled the front of her gown back from her breasts, and beat the flat of the sword upon her chest, yelling all the while, and the skraelings were frightened by this display, and fled.

Thorleif found this tale very diverting.

“The case is,” said Osmund, “that Greenlanders have been back and forth to Markland time and again since then, and the skraelings in Markland have always been just as numerous and unpredictable as they were in the beginning, and the Greenlanders have been steadily less numerous and less well armed, so it is not a land that Greenlanders feel at home in, though it is a more welcoming land than their home.”

Now Hauk Gunnarsson spoke up, and said that the skraelings in the waste parts of Greenland were not so fierce nor so strange as these Markland skraelings, and by this time it was late, and so the party of travelers rolled up in their furs and slept.

The next night, Osmund Thordarson spoke up again, and said, “Indeed, Markland is rich enough, though dark withal. And we have found what we sought here.”

The men greeted this remark with silence.

Osmund went on. “But few folk have seen such a land as Vinland, which lies to the south.”

“Even so,” said Thorleif, “I can see far enough. Small islands, narrow straits, and upthrusting rocks make for bad sailing.”

The men continued silent, sleepy with their meat.

Now Erlend Ketilsson sat up and leaned forward in the firelight. “It seems to me that this Norwegian has come by a great deal of praise in this past year. What a fine man, what a fine ship, what a lot of goods he has brought us.” He fell silent, and some of the Greenlanders set their bowls beside them on the sand. “Mostly, though, folk chatter about what a fine sailor the fellow is, how he might sail through the eye of a Nuremburg needle if he wished. Now this Thorleif sits back and eats up this praise like sourmilk with berries in it.”

There was a long pause, when all of the men, Norwegians and Greenlanders alike, were silent, and the silence was filled with the dark sounds of the great Markland forest, and then Thorleif laughed in his usual way, but loudly, and so suddenly that men started in their places. But he made no reply to Erlend, and shortly men went to their rest.