White Shirts and Block Hands 1387
The Bloks were eerie at one in the morning, with the luminous orange sky, and the light-globes glowing purposelessly at every doorway, and teenagers promenading in small groups, whisding in two-toned cries almost like birds. Sometimes laughter came from the distance, but its source could never be found. Three teenagers in black leather jackets strolled down the sidewalk kicking a soccer ball. An orange signal-light blinked. A car drove by slowly. - Then a door slammed, and a man came out yelling and twisted a passing girl's breast. The girl spoke quickly, placatingly, and escaped. Tears of pain rolled down her face. - A police van went down the street, and boys and girls clapped their hands. Later they made a circle and danced in the street.
Sometimes it was possible to forget that the ice was there just over the mountains, pressing down on six-sevenths of Greenland, its cold weight several kilometers thick; for the grey cloud-streaks and pink storm-streaks shrank on certain mornings when the summer sky burned through like leads
in pack-ice, and drying clothes blew listlessly behind the flat barracks-like houses overlooking the harbor. A boy walked by, hands in parka-pocket. Two Danish girls tripped along laughing. A car pulled in across the street. - How could there be ice here? - By the stairs that led down the clifF to the harbor was a sign in Danish about something being strictly forbidden. An Inuit girl was coming up the steps. She was wearing sunglasses and a fashionable black wool coat. She stopped and looked out at the sign. Then she spat very thoughtfully. The white spittle tumbled in the air.*
Amortortak and Emide
Emilie was a receptionist at the museum. When I asked her where the Inuit Institute was she looked it up for me in her directory but couldn't find it, so she said she'd help me search for it. We walked down to the ocean, Emilie wheeling her bicycle slowly, and we went up a street and down a street and could not find any Institute, so Emilie put down the kickstand of her bicycle and we sat on the beach and she took her shoes oflT and stood in the sea, but the water was too cold for her, so I gave her her shoes and we walked out of Nuuk and through the new tunnel that the Greenlanders had lately dynamited under the mountain, and after awhile we came to the satellite town of Nussuaq, where Emilie lived. Sometimes Emilie swoing her brown leg over the bicycle seat and coasted far ahead of me, down the sea-hill, down the tunnel, down the sunny harbor-road, until she was almost out of sight, and I thought that maybe she did not like me after all or was tired of me; but then I'd presently see her, slowly walking her bike again at the next bend in the road, and when I caught up to her we'd walk together awhile until she suddenly rode ahead again. - "I live in a big flat," she said to me, "and I'm all alone; I'm so alone!" - What could that mean, I wondered? - She said that she had no friends, no friends at all. I was sorry for her. It seemed very strange that such a pretty chatty girl would know no one. Where was the brother to care for her? Sometimes when she'd ride ahead of me and I plodded down the road until she came in sight again, I'd see her talking to people for ten minutes, twenty minutes, with the sun shining fi-om within her face, and later I'd ask her what they'd said. - "Oh, he was a taxi driver," said Emilie glumly. "He
* "... children like the little girl with the wedge-shaped ulu or woman's knife (opposite), soon will feast happily on fish eyes - like candy to an Arctic child." - NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC Society, The World of the American Indian (Washington, D.C., 1974), p. 86.
thought I left a red purse in his taxi." - "Oh, she was somebody who used to live across the hall at the technical institute. I don't remember her name." - "Oh, he is just somebody to say hello to. There are so many people who say hello and you do not know them."
When we got to her flat, Emilie took her sweater ofl^* and bent over the table to clean it, and her breasts were bare and hrovm like speckled eggs. On the wall were Emilie's drawings. They were all of naked women, partly black and pardy white, with their hands on their hips. In an envelope she had dozens more.
She was very resdess, continually changing her clothes or getting up to do dishes or looking for things under her bed or rubbing lotion on her dark legs or going out to the store. Men kept coming by and asking for her. They did not ever seem surprised to see me. - "Are you her boyfriend?" said a blond Dane. - "Possibly," I said. - "Where is she?" he said. - "Out walking in the mountains vdth a friend." - "A boy or a girl?" - "A boy." - "This is very unexpected," said the Dane. "I am one of her colleagues at work. She invited three of us to dinner for this hour." - Emilie was evidently a mysterious woman.
The flat was silent. In this little Danish world I could see hardly any evidence of day-to-day life.* There was only a mattress cover on the bed. In another bedroom were Emilie's dirty clothes, crammed into a suitcase in the exact center of the hardwood floor. There was no toilet paper in the bathroom; there were no paper towels in the kitchen. But by the bathroom sink were four used toothbrushes. At six-thirty she had said that she would be back within an hour. At ten-thirty the sunlight came through the window from the rim of the other apartment buildings, and I was desperately hungry, but there was nothing in the refrigerator but milk, cartons and cartons of it, all unopened. I opened one and drank it. It tasted like coconut. Then in the back of the refrigerator I found a little jar of pickled mushrooms. I unscrewed the lid; there was a pop of escaping gas, a smell of putrefaction.
In the cabinet beneath the television were dozens of intricately scissored paper snow^akes, some in the familiar shape of a naked woman with her hands on her hips, and Emilie had colored each of those hands with black magic marker. There was also a sheaf of xeroxes of Emilie's hands, fingers
* How barren it was can be suggested by pointing out that even the Islendingabok - which rarely concerned itself with the lives of those excluded the privilege of membership in die Tunersuit - mentioned "both east and west in die country traces of habitation, fragments of dioles and stone implements, so diat it may be perceived from these that that manner of people had been here who inhabited Vinland and whom die Greenlanders call Skraelings."
spread and groping against empty blackness ... At midnight a drunk rang, looking for Emilie.
The next morning she came in for fifteen minutes to change her mud-stained skirt. She took her blouse off and ironed it, standing in the kitchen leaning over the ironing board with her magnificent and indifferent breasts. Once again she put on her office clothes, and became a different person. But then she let her hair down, and for a moment I thought she looked like a Skraeling, for that long, lush, blue-black hair fell around her oval orange face, accentuating the high cheekbones, the glossy black eyes. - Oh, she had sex appeal; she had arnap angutinap! - She was from Sisimiut, she said, where the black coast sloped steeply down to the icy sea, and long white cloud-fingers broke every cliff into a series of black ridges shimmering in mid-air, on and on into the Unknown until they came to that great blue horizon where the Ice reared, that Ice so summer-blue, so storm-grey, cloud-white like the milk in Emilie's refrigerator because it had no color but the color that the sky gave it ... And Emilie, what was she? - Was she black or white? What did her black hands mean?
Uinland,
on
The cuttC^ish inifie current
Dressmakers' Patterns
30j000 BC - An 1007
She makes herself coverings;
her clothing is fine linen and purple ... She makes linen garments and sells them;
she delivers girdles to the merchant.
Proverbs 31.22, 24
T
Xhe
he question of who w^as going to put on w^hich shirt had not been decided; indeed, it remained to answer the more elementary question of which shirts, once put on, could come off; and, more elementary still, of which shirts there were to make. So the dressmakers were busy drawing and cutting. Many were measured for bear-shirts; a few, like Freydis Eiriksdaughter, chose the Ice-Shirt and became coldly great. In Norway, Gunhild's successor King Olaf made many black shirts with crosses on them. As fo
r the SkraeUngs, they continued to wear the shirts of beasts, fishes and stars.
Wearing the Ice-Sfiirt 986 - 995
As to the ice that is found in Iceland, I am inclined to believe that it is a penalty which the land suffers for lying so close to Greenland ...
Speculum Regale, XIII. 126
Now that we know as much about the Skraelings as the ancients did, I want here to tell the tale of how the dew was drunk up and how the fi-ost came. - Venerate Bjami, son of Herjolf Bardarsson, for he was not curious about VINLAND. He found the country by accident one autumn, being wind-blown
south from Iceland in his merchant ship. It was a wooded land, with many low hills. His crew asked him whether he wanted to land and he said he did not, so they sailed north for nine days, and discovered Markland* and Slab-Landf before at last they saw Herjolfsness Promontory looming in the Greenland dusk, with Herjolf's boat hauled up on the rocks; and Bjami stayed with his father after that and became a farmer. If he had been left to his innocuous labors and ale-stupors, all would have been well. But at the court of the Earl of Norway he was criticized for being so incurious, and the whirlpool-lives sucked and sucked. Someone was bound to come to Vinland wearing the Ice-Shirt.
^^To be Great is to be MisiinderstoocC"
ca. 1800-ca. 1960
Only our stomachs and our pockets urged us to those high latitudes, where under the eternally revolving sun we looked for animals frozen to death by Polar storms ...
Welzl
In conventional representations (lying engravings and pandering painterly panoramas), we see them wdth shields and bymies and helmets like laboratory fume hoods, raising their spears at the sight of grapes, while Freydis leans against her brother's shoulder, smooths her long dress, and slits her cat-eyes. But I have never yet seen any pictures of Greenlanders in their ice-shirts; so it is now my place to provide one. Of Eirik the Red it is written, as I have said, that he had three sons by Thjodhild: Leif, Thorstein and Thorvald. Freydis was his bastard daughter. She was married to a rich man at Gardar. Of all these it is necessary to write, and of Thorstein's wife, Gudrid Thorbjomsdaughter.
* Possibly Newfoundland or Nova Scotia, but, more plausibly, Labrador, t Baffin Island.
freydis eiriksdottin
on
How ihc frost came to Viniand ificQood
GtuCruCtfie Fair
But at midnight the north wind goes forth to meet the coursing sun and leads him through rocky deserts toward the sparse-built shores.
Speculum Regale, V.89
Q
f Gudrid it is to be told that she was a beauty; and men compared her to Gudrun of Lunde, who was called the Lunde-Sun for her fairness of feature; but her father Thorbjom Vifilsson was the son of a freed slave. In Eirik's Saga we read that it was Aud the Deep-Minded, the daughter of Ketil Flat-Nose, who brought Vifil to Iceland from the British Isles. She gave him land when he asked it of her; and men did not speak ill of him, for he had learned not to claim his descent from other than thralUsh race. At last he brought a wife home to Vifilsdale and got two sons on her, their names being Thorbjom and Thorgeir. They went courting to Einar of Laugarbrekka's together, and each paid fifteen orers of silver for one of his daughters, Thorbjom taking Hallveig, and Thorgeir, Amora. In other respects the brothers were not such mirror-likenesses, for Thorgeir was not cursed with ambition, and thereby escaped mention in the strife-pages of the Flateyjarbok; as for Thorbjom, to be Vifil's son galled him. He meddled much in affairs of honor. When Eirik the Red was outlawed from Haukadale, Thorbjom gave him good welcome, and helped him on his way to the bird-islands with good gear and provisions. When Eirik rode against Thorgest the Yeller to regain his bench-boards, Thorbjom rode with him. He accompanied Eirik out past Snaefellsness and wished him luck in Greenland; he brought Thjodhild and her sons back to her foster-father's house. - Thorbjom of Haukadale stood in the doorway. "Well, namesake," said he, "think me not ungrateful for your help and care. But now be on your way, for you are poor company for Thjodhild, being but a freed slave's son. Take this silver for your trouble." - "Never," shouted Thorbjom Vifilsson. "Never!" He spumed the coins, and left them lying in the grass.
Thorbjom Proves Himse^to be a Person of Quaiity ca, 988
For a time Gudrid lived as foster-daughter of Thorbjom's friend Orm and Orm's wife Halldis. Gudrid wore her long yellow hair wrapped around her belt. Next to her body she wore a chemise of silk, so that her breasts were partly uncovered. There were many gold rings on her hands. - I have often noticed that when cut roses in a vase begin to droop there remains one to stand awhile; looking away from those bowing crimson bells that once companioned it, it drinks the light as long as it can, although its narrow-tongued underleaves have already lost their strength. Why that one flower survives the others I cannot say. It did not bloom any later. It had not seemed any healthier. But now it stands alone, and becomes the more beautiful for that. Fair Gudrid rose alone long after those who loved her had fallen into the mass of decay. - At this point in time, when we first look upon her, she was surrounded and protectively nourished by other roses, for although Thorbjom Vifilsson was descended from a slave, he had done very well on his farmstead at Hellisvellir, and so possessed cows and sheep and rings of gold. However, he had accomplished his success more through a combination of anxiety and luck than through shrewd management. For one thing, the land in the Laugarbrekka district was slightly superior to that in Vifilsdale, and had it not been for his marriage he would not have had access to it. For another, Gudrid was a beautiful child from the moment of her birth, and men often rendered Thorbjom little assistances of one sort or another solely to be in sight of her. Fearing at last that something harmful might come of this, Thorbjom asked his friend Orm to foster her. - Gudrid soon made herself well-liked, not only for her beauty, but also because she saw her duty and was industrious. Her foster-mother Halldis taught her the spells called Warlock Songs, for in those days Iceland was not yet a Christian country, and so neither Gudrid nor Halldis thought this ill knowledge. - By now, though he did not see it immediately, Thorbjom's luck was beginning to turn. In the summer after King Harald Greyskin's fall, he obtained a chieftainship at last, but this prize, though it brought him honor, made him liable to many expenses. So he slept poorly, his honor and his life-fear watching over each other as in the old days of Herlaug and Rollaug. He dreamed that a thrall-collar was being fastened upon him, albeit one of gold; this collar was choking him, and he screamed very dreadfully in his sleep. - "Is it so dire, then," said his father, "that I was once a slae? For you know that I came of high race in Ireland; and I was a
slave for but three years. Surely the Icelanders have forgotten these things." - "You are old," said Thorbjom, "and rarely go out. If you did, you would see that they have never forgotten." - "Perhaps you are right," replied Vifil, stroking his grey beard. "I know little of what goes on around me. In my dreams I often find myself in Ireland." - It was important to Thorbjom that his farm be among the largest in Laugarbrekka, and this, too, bore its cost. With his wife dead, he was compelled to take on new thralls to do her duties. They cost more to feed than she had done; it was a by-word that thralls were gruel-greedy and careless, for after all the property did not belong to them. Presently it began to be common knowledge that Thorbjom's money was dwindling, but he refiised to alter his habits, and he instructed Orm that Gudrid not be informed. She, therefore, continued in her happiness, and being so, she was beautiful, so that other roses never bowed away from her (or so it seemed to her, at least, in her sundrenched blindness of growing and rising and standing and waiting for she knew not what). - "I am not quite sure," the young men said, "whether it is her mouth or blue eyes that I hke most." And many of their summers were spent debating this point. It must be reported, however, that out of all of them only one was prepared to make her an offer, and that was the odious Einar Thorgeirsson, a fellow with "a taste for the ornate," says the saga. - Oddly enough, his father, too, was a freed slave. He wore a purple cloak
, and on his head a bearskin cap. Gudrid thought him ridiculous. However, some thought him dashing, and his father's wealth encouraged fiiendship towards him. It was with precisely that argument that Einar persuaded Orm, whom he knew in connection with some sea-trading, to approach Thorbjom as his go-between, and to ask Gudrid's hand in marriage.
"As I am sure you can imagine," said Orm carefully, "my foster-daughter is particular about husbands. Her hand is not to be had for the asking." -"But surely it can be had for my asking!" cried young Einar, smoothing an imaginary crease in his purple sleeve with such great concentration that he seemed almost to have forgotten about Orm and Gudrid. "I mean, after a//," said Einar brightly, "I have money, and Gudrid's father will soon have none!" He had only once seen her, passing through a doorway, but her shape had intrigued him. Knowing her descent, she seemed to him a perfect match. How adorable it would be to take her trading with him in Norway, to present her before the court of King Olaf Trygvesson! - and if, as seemed likely, she was high-spirited, well, his gold could tell her beguiling tales, or, if need be, read her lectures to which she would be obliged to listen.
"I certainly consider myself your fiiend," said Orm, "but I would rather
not be the one to take your proposal to Thorbjom. He is a proud man -not that I wish to offend you, for you are fine in every way. I hope you understand me." - "Proud?" said Einar. He meditated. "What is pride? Pride is the quality of heart that comes when a man can give gold rings to all who are loyal to him. Can Thorbjom do this? Today he can, but tomorrow, I fear, he will not be proud anymore." - "I see that you too are proud," said Orm, "so there is nothing left for me to do but let you have your way." And he promised to raise the matter vsdth Thorbjom at one of those lavish feasts that the latter was always having, for he liked to be considered a man of generosity. (As for Orm, both he and his wife Halldis were like ghost ships, that blew mdderless across the sea in accordance with others' wills.) While the other guests were occupying themselves with ale and meat, Orm sat swallowing miserably, and Halldis said to him, "Shame, husband! You promised Einar, rightly or wrongly; now you must uphold your honor!" - "That is all true," said Orm, "but I wish that I had not promised." - Having said this, he got to his feet, and walked the length of the long-fire to the high-seat, where Thorbjom Vifilsson sat ordering his thralls about. - "May I speak to you alone?" said Orm. - "What!" cried Thorbjom. "Is the ale gone already?" And he laughed at his own words. But he arose, and ushered his fiiend outside. Now there was nothing for it; Orm had to take up Einar's proposal. No sooner had the words left his mouth than Thorbjom picked up an axe and threw it down, cleaving the turf between them. "I never expected such a thing fi-om you," he cried. "Imagine! My daughter married to the son of a slave!" And he refused to let Gudrid live at Orm's house any longer. When his money was gone, he set sail for Greenland to get land from Eirik the Red. Orm and Halldis accompanied him, and they both died of a plague, along with half the people on the ship. Gudrid and her father, however, survived very nicely. All the Vifilssons had that knack.
The Ice-Shirt Page 14
