The Ice-Shirt

by William T. Vollmann

  * Doomed.

  corpse began to haunt them. At first she helped rather than hindered their doings, for they were obeying her will by bearing her to Skalholt for burial. -Sometimes the stones formed a pavement at the base of the green, green hills, but Thorolf knew that in a certain other direction they formed black lava-bridges over which only the bravest fool might walk, crossing high above the flat brovm plains strevm with stones, wandering among the mountains until at length one must cross great rivers bursring down fi-om snow-ridges, rivers so wide that no one could see across them, rivers roaring down lava-steps, and then at length the country became grey and orange with volcanoes, and sulphur springs trickled through the yellow grass, and far oflT might be seen the steam-clouds rising up fi-om Kraela, the Pool of the Damned - and to Thorolf's mind this was where Thorgunna ought to go. - But no sooner had he opened his mouth to say so when he heard a knocking and a bony rattling inside that corpse-chest! - "This is very strange," his men said, growing pale, and Thorolf said, "By Heimdall, I would that I had burned those bed-hangings!" - and the tears came to his eyes. - On the first night of the funeral journey, Thorolf and his people had crossed the North River, which ran narrow and silver between the mountains, and it was night, so they knocked on a bonder's door and asked him to give them something to eat out of hospitality, but he refused them. They lay themselves down cheerlessly in a shed. Late that night there came a clatter in the buttery. A tall naked woman, with dark red hair, was standing there, putting meat on platters. She brought it out to Thorolf's party, and served them. When the bonder saw this he feared greatly, and no longer withheld anything from them. - They buried Thorgunna at Skalholt, and returned home. But now the haunting assumed a more murderous character. A half-moon went backward and wdddershins around the farm, and many people about there began to die, so many that the events came to be known as the Frodis-Water Marvels, and the be-molded dead molested the living, as the saga says. Finally they even came to the Yule-feast. Then the people burned Thorgunna's bed-clothes, and held a special Thing at Frodis-Water to banish the dead back to their graves, at which the hauntings ceased. - Leif never knew any of this. Nor could he have believed it, for Thorgunna LOVED him.

  When he told her of his resolution, they were sitting togedier on a bluff", watching the birds fly above the sea-foamed rocks. Leif had just lifted his head from her lap, because he had gotten tired of the crawling clouds in the sky, and he judged that it would be better not to be touching her in any way when he told her.

  "I want to go with you," said Thorgunna. - Leif had expected this. (Her

  lower lip was very red and full, he remarked to himself, but her upper lip was as thin as a pink ribbon. She had ears as pale and pink as translucent shells. - What a beauty she was!)

  "You are such a nobly-born woman," said Leif, "that it would be cruel of me to make you endure the hardships of the voyage. I am afraid the wind might change again."

  "I am stronger than you think," said Thorgunna.

  "And will your kinsmen approve?" Leif wanted to know.

  "I don't care about that."

  "So they would probably not approve, I take it," said Leif very lightly, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He did not want to be outlawed as a woman-robber.

  "I'm perfectly confident of your ability to defend me," said Thorgunna, shrugging her white shoulders, and he did not at all like the way that she said it.

  "Well, now," said Leif "WeU."

  "You are willing to have me accompany you?" said Thorgunna.

  "Of course I want you with me," said Leif, "but I'm not certain it's wise to abduct such a well-bom woman as you, being in a foreign country as I am, and even when all my men are together there are so few of us. I'm glad you're confident of my abilities; I think you may be more confident than I am. But it's your beautiful confidence that I love and admire in you" (and later, when he was relating the tale to his younger brother Thorstein - who sat wide-eyed and open-mouthed, which Leif found gratifying - he explained to Thorstein that it always helped to say kind things to a woman during these scenes; it was a prudent thing to do, like greasing the axles of an ox-plough).

  "For the last time I ask to come with you," Thorgunna said. "I don't think you'll like the alternative."

  "I'll take that risk," said Leif, annoyed now.

  "Then let me inform you," said Thorgunna, looking at him steadily from beneath her narrow red eyebrows, "that I'm carrying your bastard in my belly. I think it will be a son. I'm going to send him to Greenland as soon as he's old enough to travel, and I don't think he'll bring you any joy. And I'm going to come to Greenland myself in the end." She folded her strong fair arms across her chest; she looked him full in the face, and Leif saw that she was weeping silently, weeping for grief and wrath. Her hands gripped each other. The rings on her fingers dug into her flesh.

  So Leif had to give her a gold ring, a mande of cloth from Greenland, and

  a belt of walrus ivory. All in all, however, he considered himself well out of it. His son Thorgils did indeed come to Greenland, and Leif acknowledged him, though he was pale and high-shouldered, and men always said of diis Thorgils that there was something uncanny about him.

  Fathers and Crows

  Leif sailed back to Norway in the fall. King Olaf heaped him with honors and made him feel accomplished. The feast-hall was richly adorned; the tables groaned under the weight of all the meat and drink.

  "Are you intending to go back to Greenland in the summer?" said the King.

  "If you approve," said Leif winningly.

  "I think it would be an excellent idea," said King Olaf "I'm sure you're anxious to see your father again." (At this they both smiled.) - "Now," said the King, smiling at Leif, with his face very close to Leif's, so that Leif could see nothing in the whole world but the King's face, and the King's eyes were looking into Leif's eyes with such intensity that Leif slowly lost sight of the King's other features, and although he felt the King's breath on his face it seemed to him that in the universe was nothing but the two blue worlds of the King's eyes, "now," said the King, "you're going to go to Greenland on a mission from me. You're going to preach the True Faith in Greenland."

  "That's for you to conmiand," said Leif in a panic, "but I think it will be difficult."

  "Of course it will be difficult," said the King. "But I have great confidence in you. That's why I bestowed so many honors on you. And I know that I'm not the only one who has confidence in you. People who know you feel the same, all the way to the Hebrides." And the King slapped Leif on the shoulder, and with his own hands he poured Leif another cup of ale.

  Thus it was Leif who began in Greenland the age of crabbed and ascetic bishops, whose black eyes and black robes would later sweep across Vinland like the wings of crows. True, they had white beards, white hands. But their narrow faces expressed only equivocal love (with bishops everything is equivocal). His mother Thjodhild was converted at once, and so was Thorstein, but his father refused to have anything to do with the new faith. After Thjodhild became a Christian, she refused to live with Eirik anymore. She could do as she wished, for by law one-third of the household wealth was in her power. Then Eirik hated her, and he hated Leif Thjodhild built a church just over a litde rise

  from the main farmstead at Brattahlid, so that Eirik would not have to look at it. She laid a polar bear skin in front of the altar, for the health of the perpetually kneeling priest.

  Gndrid and Tfiorstcin Eiriksson

  In Thjodhild's church they sang and were silent and prayed and were silent. The women sat with folded arms (partly because it was cold). Bleak white light came in through the windows. Gudrid sat very still with bowed head. Thorstein trembled every time she shifted in her seat. He so much wanted to kiss her white throat. Her hair was the color of sunny wheatstraw. From behind, Thorstein watched her blonde hair fall down her shoulders like a waterfall, its ringlets making love to each other in complicated ways like the wooden ringlets of his father's bench-boards. But
even then Gudrid had the round white cheeks, the smooth forehead of a prospective nun. - So they sat there in church for hours, while the grey light failed.

  On the Lord's Day, Gudrid walked around on the hillside eating Arctic violets. She threw herself down on the sweet tundra. Sometimes the rocks were grown with white lichen-spots like clumps of daisies. There were many grassy spaces to lie on, and walls of rock, black and white, in the crevices of which grew egg-shaped cushions of moss. Later she and Thorstein sat together on one of those private seats. A tiny stream trickled down the rock beside them. Spiders span just above the moist places, and mosquitoes came to see if the water might be blood.

  "And your father prefers you to Leif ?" said Gudrid, smiling lazily. "You're sure?"

  "Yes," said Thorstein, flushing.

  So they were married. Gudrid slept with her cheek on her knuckles.

  Tftc Landofihc Counterfeiters

  By its delineation of Greenland, casting a solitary shaft of light through the darkness of five centuries, the map makes its strongest claim on our curiosity, and it is this feature, perhaps even more dian the delineation of Vinland, which most clearly seems to lift die map out of its period, and might even suggest - were the converging evidence to die contrary less strong - the work of a counterfeiter.

  R. A. Skelton, Thomas E. Marston and George D. Painter, The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation (1965)

  H

  .ere it must be inserted into the tale that as Leif w^as sailing from Norway to preach King Olaf Trygvesson's new faith, he once again encountered difficult winds; and his ship was swept far south - all the way to Wineland the Good, in fact. There were great fields of wild wheat; there were grape-vines and maple-trees. Although King Olaf's priest waxed dangerously anxious, like a mosquito, Leif persuaded him that they would best fulfill their mission to the King by first exploring the new land to see if heathens or Christians lived there. - The weather was very fine. They saw a pretty island, dressed in gold and green. Leif led his men ashore, and they all rushed to drink the sweet dew. Then they sailed around the headland, and up a river to a place where there was a lake, and here they anchored. Between the lake and the sea was a rise, and on the far side of the rise they built turf houses, because it seemed luxuriously easeful to winter there. Wineland was a place without frost. - "This seems to me a very kind country," Leif said. "Fd have to say it's superior to the land my father discovered." Then he ate more salmon and grapes.

  They filled the ship with timber and grapes on the vine. In the spring they set sail, with a favorable southern wind all the way. In three days they came to Markland; in two more they passed Slab-Land with its glaciers; they crossed the great abyss, Ginnunga Gap, in which fire and ice first mixed to create the nine Norse worlds; and then, just as the ice-peaks of Greenland came into their sight, Leif with his nervously keen eyes spied a shipwreck on a reef He rescued fifteen people from the wreck, laying claim to their cargo of timber, and so returned home enhanced in wealth and reputation. People called him Leif the Lucky.

  "But I say his luck and his ill-luck balance each other," Eirik said sourly. "He may have saved a wreck in the ocean, but he also brought that troll-carle of a priest here."

  "People always say that I've inherited your luck," said Leif when he heard this. "If I have inherited bad luck as well as good, that must be due to you. And it seems to me your prestige was better when you led the settlers from Iceland than it is now."

  "I see that you mock me now that I am old," Eirik said. "Ten years ago you would not have dared to say what you say now. You think yourself a bold enough whelp now. Time will tell whether or not you are humbled."

  A Monkish Error

  Here the Flateyjarbok says an odd thing: - namely, that the leader of the shipwrecked crew was named Thorir, and that he was married to Gudrid. But other sources insist that Gudrid was in Greenland during these years. In any event, the career of that much-married woman would not at all have been affected had she been espoused to Thorir, for the Flateyarbok now brings her home with Leif, whereupon Thorir conveniently dies during the winter and Gudrid marries Thorstein. - Certainly Gudrid and her marriages did not matter much to Eirik anymore, for he, old and defeated, died that same winter.* Greenland was now a Christian country, as was Iceland, where King Olaf had sent another mission while keeping some important Icelanders hostage. He did have a very zealous soul.f

  * The Hauksbok keeps Eirik alive until Gudrid's subsequent marriage, so we will do the same.

  t This almost-saindy Olaf is credited in some accounts for bringing six countries to the True Faith: Norway, Iceland, Greenland, the Orkneys, the Shedands and the Faroes. May Odin the High One have mercy on him.

  The Death ofThorvaldEiriksson ca, 1003

  Leif being sumamed the Lucky and Thorstein being married to Gudrid, the third son, Thorvald, decided to win his own fortune in Vinland. - Oh, he was rushing, rushing ... - In the following year he borrowed Leif's ship and manned it with a crew of thirty. The autumn winds sped him to Vinland, and he settled in Leif's houses for the winter. There was an abundance of fish, and diey never saw any fi-ost. In the spring they sailed west, in the summer east, exploring at their ease among the fair forests that came almost to the shore. One day they came to a thickly wooded headland between two ^ords, and Thorvald and his men wandered ashore, Thorvald exclaiming over how beautiful it was, and how much he wanted to make his home there, and then as they strolled back to the ship they saw three humps on the sandy beach. The humps were skin-boats, and under each one three Skraelings were sleeping. -"These must be outlaws," said Thorvald. "KiU them." - They divided into groups and seized all but one, who managed to escape in his skin-boat. Quickly slaying the other eight, they scanned the country more closely and saw other humps at some distance up the §ord, which they reckoned to be setdements. From these soon came a great army of Skraelings in their skin-boats, and Thorvald ordered his men to set up a defensive breastworks on the gunwales of his ship and ride out the attack there, conserving themselves and their weapons as best as they could. The Skraelings swarmed closer and closer and then began to shoot great clouds of arrows, which hummed across the water like insects and stuck in the side of the ship until it brisded. - "See the string-birds!" cried Thorvald, laughing. "See the glad-flyers!" - After a rime the Skraelings gave up and paddled back up the §ord as quickly as they could. When they were out of sight Thorvald said, "Is anyone hurt?" - "No," said his men. - "Well," he said, "an arrow flew past my shield, and here it is." He pulled it out firom under his armpit, and blood gushed forth. "I guess I will settle here for awhile after all. It's rich country; look at all this fat around my guts." Then Thorvald died, and they buried him diere. They raised no rune-stone to him, but put a cross at his head and feet, and the place has been called Cross-Ness ever since. Then they filled die ship with grapes and grape-vines, and the following spring returned to Greenland.

  The Voyage of Thorstein and Gudrid

  Thorstein mourned for his brother, and said that Wineland must be a dangerous place, but Gudrid said that the grapes there were certainly very fine, at which

  Thorstein said that the ship was full of them, so they hardly needed to bring back any more, at which Gudrid said that she wished she had married Leif Gudrid sat at her loom, which was over two ells high, with its cross-post that always made Freydis think of a gallows, and strings of wool fell from the half-completed garment like rain, almost down to the ballast-stones; and she refused to speak to her husband until he agreed to go to Vinland. Then Gudrid kissed him.

  Gudrid's father had a ship, and they manned it with a crew of twenty-five and set out that spring. But they encountered unfavorable winds, and were blown around all summer, sometimes to Iceland, sometimes to Ireland. A week before the onset of winter they made landfall in Lysu^ord in the West Bygd.

  In the West Bygd 1987

  The white grass blew in the wind. The place seemed to be merely a tussock-bog at first, so long had the grass been growing. Then I saw t
he ancient stone-lined ditches, hidden under the hair-grass, and the huge rooms, now roofless and carpeted only with green grass; and I walked through the foot-wide passageways between, waist-deep in the ground. A black tree was growing in one of the old rooms. - There was a little rise, lined with straight stones, on which we all sat for a moment, enjoying the sun. In the hollow beyond, great slabs had been set in the ground. Then came a grassy dyke, and another chamber floored with moist moss. By the far wall of that pit were two slabs set upright, with just enough space in between them for me to stand in the grass, as in the old generations horse after horse had done: this was the one surviving stall of a stable. - I clambered up the little wall and saw another rise that bore a stone building whose floor was a single slab. (From a distance it looked like a square array of fire-stones.) Then came low ridges, and then the milky-blue fjord, whose face was traversed by thick lines of cloud-shadow.