The Ice-Shirt

by William T. Vollmann

  One possible meaning of "Skraeling" was "Screecher" or "Hincher.'

  Sfiips and Coffins

  Even a potato in a dark cellar has a certain low cunning about him which serves him in excellent stead. He knows perfecdy well what he wants and how to get it. He sees the light coming from the cellar window and sends his shoots crawling straight thereto: they will crawl along die floor and up die wall and out die cellar window; if diere be a litde earth anywhere on die journey he will find it and use it for his own ends.

  Butler, Erewhon (1872)

  Polar men don't wait until the last minute to think of what they are going to do when winter is over.

  Welzl

  s

  he married a pliable man, who was easily enticed by her ways, just as King Harald Fairhair had been enticed by the Laplander Svase to meet his daughter Snsefrid, a lovely longhaired girl who stood before him in the hut and looked into his eyes until he thought he could see inside her all the sons that she was going to give him - to wit, Sigurth Bastard, Halfdan Longshanks, Guthroth the Radiant and Rognvald the Straightlimbed - and now Snaefrid filled his mead cup and he saw her naked arm and the sound of the mead-foam in the cup drove him wild and her Hps glistened and Harald knew now that he loved her so passionately that he must make her his vsdfe, at which the Laplander Svase looked him up and down with the utmost insolence. Seeing this, Harald threshed for a moment in the nets of Snsefrid's witchcraft, but he could not help himself When she died he sat beside her for three years expecting her to come to life again, and he bestowed costly coverlets upon her and she seemed to him unchanged, until at last Torleiv the

  Wise cured the King of his sad delusion by bidding him to honor her further by raising her and changing her dress, and when this was done all sorts of foul smells came from her body and it turned blue and worms and toads and newts and reptiles crawled out of it and it crumbled into ashes. - Like Snaefrid, Freydis was longhaired and slender. Freydis's husband, Thorvard, was a rich man from Gardar,* where the promontory was narrow between the sea-arms and fog hung over the mountains. Freydis seemed to him an unknown flower which had never existed before. - "I don't suppose you'll have much trouble with him," her father told her. "You'll live in comfort; you'll have whatever you need."

  On their wedding day, Thorvard gave her a pale blue dress which came from foreign parts. It was the most beautiful dress that she had ever owned. Freydis put it on and looked at her reflection in a slow-flowing stream. She laughed and laughed all alone. Then she rushed into the hills to masturbate.

  If Freydis had been as handsome a woman to look upon as Gudrid, she might have enforced her ways on people more quietly, gently snubbing the men who were enamored of her, for instance; and turning a radiantly intense countenance upon the others until their friendship was also excited, then siding with their wives. As it was, she was somewhat strident at times, and people dreaded her. - To Thorvard, however, his wife was always beautiful. When he lay rutting in her, she smiled coolly and endured it, and when Thorvard asked her if he did not please her, she replied, "I prefer to keep the advantages on my side." - Often Thorvard pondered this answer, but it admitted of many interpretations - none necessarily of great favor to him.

  But now Freydis, seeing from her successful marriage that she was held in high regard by AmoRTORTAK, became more grasping and open in her greed. Even on the Lord's Day she set her thralls to gathering driftwood (for in those days the coasts of Greenland were still congested with salty tree-trunks that had floated from Siberia). She made great stores of cod and seal-meat and birds' eggs, far more than she needed (though here her husband agreed with her, for he too was a hoarder). On the farm she superintended everything. A thrall who spilled a few drops of milk would be whipped. She wore seven gold rings, and hoarded many more. Perhaps AMORTORTAK knew her nature and was not surprised by this. In any event. He said nothing to her which would have prevented her bringing herself down, and neither did her brother Leif, though people spoke to him about her arrogance and ostentation. - "I do

  * Now known to the triumphant Greenland Skraelings as Igaliko, "the deserted cooking place."

  m ■-<

  FREYDIS EIRIKSDOTTIR

  191

  not have the heart to reprove my sister in anything," he said. - In fact he was afraid of her.

  Just as grey mountains and green mountains become blue when seen from a distance, but white ice-mountains never do, so Freydis's schemes kept their

  ,.- CAPE FAREWELL

  0)v;€S,Vea b^ ^^-vX The »ovjthem Up ^

  color through the years. She remembered the name "Wineland," and one night Blue-Shirt visited her in a dream and told her that He had been watching her, at which Freydis said that she had not expected anything different, and Blue-Shirt said, "Neither ice-crags nor die Frozen Sea wiU hide you from

  My sight. Now, as I once told you, there is a place called Wineland where you may go, if you wish to be rid of Me, but I tell you this because I expect you will prefer to bring the ice there, and extend My kingdom. Then, even though you are but a woman, I will let you sit in one of My earl-seats, and you will have great influence and all the power that is needful to carry out your wicked designs."

  Hearing this, Freydis conceived a great desire to go to Wineland, and asked how she might manage it.

  "I leave that to you," said Blue-Shirt. "You have enough cunning to do whatever you are determined to do."

  And Freydis saw that He mocked her somewhat, but she said nothing, because one must humble oneself when craving boons of one's betters.

  Freydis's next task was to convince her husband that the two of them must go to Vinland. Here perhaps she took less trouble than she might have, because Freydis was a proud and impatient woman. He, therefore, feeling himself not so much convinced as bullied, said that he was quite content where he was. Here in Greenland, he said, at least he had solid ice under his feet. Who knew how firm the ground was in those fabulous countries? Freydis railed at him horribly, but he became more and more silent and at last she sat beside him in a silence of her own, expressing hatred for him in every part of her, fi*om her bitter eyes to her sharp elbows.

  "I regret that we didn't understand each other," her husband said the next day, but Freydis was stiff and silent.

  "WeU?" he said.

  "I regret that we still don't understand each other," said Freydis coldly.

  Just as white lichen resists the Arctic winds without even stirring, but crumbles under a touch, so Thorvard too had his vulnerabilities. The long and the short of it was that he agreed to go to Vinland.

  The Seduction of the Brothers

  Freydis, who was a plausible woman, immediately made people feel fiiendly towards her. She rode over to the stead of the brothers Helgi and Finnbogi and asked them to go to Wineland with her. Whereas the brothers considered every aspect of the matter at length, and took their time before entering into the agreement, Freydis immediately accepted any condition which they asked of her, for when Freydis could not defy she suppHcated. Natures more suspicious than theirs might have wondered whether instead of being accommodating

  she simply cared nothing for her own promises, but they were strangers in Greenland, and knew little of people there; so once again the long and short of it was that Helgi and Finnbogi agreed to go to Vinland with her; for when she spoke the distant call of Wineland's sun-birds was already deep inside her, and those birds were what Helgi and Finnbogi heard. (At diat time she was still considered an excellent girl.)

  Freydis and the brothers made a compact to take no more than thirty able-bodied men apiece, with as many women as each party desired. That way, if there were some treachery they would be equally matched. Freydis broke the compact at once by making arrangements to conceal five extra men on her ship. She saw no reason to take any chances.

  Giadness

  Of course she herself did not want to go. But whom could she cry to? Vinland terrified her the more she insisted on going there. In her imagination the S
kraelings were already waiting for her in Vinland, their skin-boats swarming through the tall-treed §ords in search of her; and there were cruel smiles on their painted faces. - "But after all," she said to herself, "I am Blue-Shirt's thrall, with thrall's rights. If any harm is done to me, Blue-Shirt will take compensation." Then in her mind she saw hundreds of Skraeling corpses floating in the warm, bloody water; their eyes were open, and their chests were pierced with spears of ice. So she was reassured.

  The Axe

  That winter her father Eirik died at last on a bed of sickness, and a magnificent coffin was made for him. In the spring they laid him in a mound away from Thjodhild's church, since he had never accepted the True Faith, saying that he was content to let matters stand where they were. For this reason he and his v^fe had had very litde to do with each other in the last years. As soon as the howe was sealed, Thjodhild took up Eirik's bench-boards from the high-seat and threw them into the fire, although Leif argued with her, saying, "Mother, I myself am pictured there, plucking the grapes of Vinland!", to which she replied, "The worse for you!", so Leif let her have her way, as she was freshly widowed. It is said that when the bench-boards began to bum, a scream came from them, and the carved figures were seen to writhe, as if

  The Ice-Shirt

  they sought to save themselves, but Leif's priest said a prayer and then the wood shattered and began to bum briskly, with much smoke and stench. -"Now we must look to new ways," said Thjodhild, "and change ourselves cleanly, with the help of CHRIST." - And they all knelt and praised Him. - Freydis bought a fine ship with her inheritance and announced to Gudrid that she would join her convoy to Vinland, and so would the brothers Helgi and Finnbogi. Gudrid and Karlsefiii were not gready pleased to have her, but they could not refuse her without incurring the consequences of her ill will.

  and anyhow, as Gudrid said to her husband, Freydis was a staunch woman whose courage might be useful if they met the Skraelings. And so the ships gathered at the landing in Eiriks^ord - "those sea-beasts with heads bent low," as Snorri called them - and the Greenlanders loaded them with catde, provisions and weapons - especially weapons. Freydis took hewing-spears and string-spears with gold-inlaid sockets. She took arrows and shields and bows. And she did not neglect to bring her axe.

  Preparations for Trade

  Now it is to be told that in those last days of winter Gudrid's husband Karlsefhi had not been at ease in his mind, and spoke often, too often, to Leif concerning the way to Vinland, and the Isle of Dew, and the path to Leif's houses, which questions Leif answered with a will, for Gudrid was his brother's widow; but he began to wonder at last whether Karlsefni might be a nidderer; as for Gudrid, she was occupied with the provisioning of their ships (for if Vinland was as good as was said, she expected to live out her life there), so that she had no time at first to find Karlsefni's disquiet out; but presently it seemed to her that he watched sideways when the black snow-winds came; and he was sleeping poorly, so that she stroked his hair and requested him to tell her whether he were still resolved to carry matters through, and he looked out the bladder-window into the darkness where Eirik lay frozen in his coffin and Karlsefiii's ship endured in its berth, piled high with snowdrifts; and he said, "It is no matter, Gudrid; I am one of those men who is a coward before the batde, but not when it happens. I think that that is the way with us traders." - They were in their bed. The night was very cold, even though the mattress was piled high with reindeer-skins. Gudrid perched herself on her elbows above her husband, gazing down upon him as she had done with the dying Thorstein; coolly she asked, "Do you think it will be a batde, then?" -so coolly, so gendy like Sigrid the Haughty rising with the imprint of King Olaf's slap freshly red on her cheek as she whispered, "This may well be your death," but Karlsefiii thrust that comparison aside and replied, "I am sure there will be little enough fighting, except perhaps with Skraelings, and they are scarcely men at all, as I have been told, but ignorant trolls who may easily be killed." - Then Gudrid smiled at him and laid her head down on his breast, at which he was enveloped in her warm cloud of sureness, as if she had let down her hair like a maiden again to refresh him; and he was content; but later that night, when he still could not sleep, the story of Queen Sigrid came back to his mind like water dripping from an icicle, and he knew it well, having been in Norway when Sigrid won her triumph at last. - But why should this plague him? It was not at all that he mistrusted his wife, and thought her kin to Sigrid in her behavior, for he knew diat her heart was true to him; no, it was Vinland that menaced him. He could arm and provision himself for Vinland, but it was still an unknown country. Once when Eirik die Red was still alive, die conversation had come around to Greenland in the first days and Karlsefiii had asked what it was like to discover that country, to which Eirik replied, "This is a beautiful country.

  and I am very satisfied to have taken it." - Karlsefiii said, "Indeed you made a success, which seems to me more marvelous still when I reflect that there was no one to help you on your first voyage, when you were outlawed." -He said these things only to please his host. But the shafts of flattery seemed to have hit a diflferent mark fi-om the one intended, for Eirik was displeased. "If there was help, it was help that I well earned," he said, and would say no more, but screwed up his features most sourly. Karlsefiii saw that he had troubled him, and turned the subject; but ever since that day he was convinced that Greenland must not be so fair a country as it appeared. (Nor did it appear so fair now, to tell the truth, in that sunless space between Harvest-Month and Sowing-Tide.) As for Vinland, what might it be? That promontory, or isle, seemed to glower across the sea at him like Queen Sigrid; nobody knew her; no one could guard against her. Olaf Trygvesson had been brave indeed to slap her in the face with his glove and call her a heathen bitch, for he must have been told her reputation. But then, never had he been afi-aid of anything - not when he struck down the pagan images with his axe (as he first ascended the throne he proclaimed: "All Norway shall become Christian, or dieF'); not when he baptized in Viken and Agder and Hordaland, mutilating and torturing whoever would not submit. - No, he would not have feared Vinland; after all, what was there in that country for anyone to fear?

  Karlsefiii had a fiiend fi*om Iceland named Snorri Thorbrandsson, whom he knew to be shrewd and reliable, for he had often bested these Greenlanders at trade. Snorri and another captain, Bjami Grimolfsson by name, had both agreed to accompany him to Vinland. So it came into Karlsefiii's mind to share his forebodings with them and listen well to whatever they might reply. When the opportunity arose, he sailed to Herjolfsness, where they were being guested with all their men at Thorkelsstead, and called them aside.

  When he put the case to them, Bjami stood fi-owning (he was a melancholy fellow), but Snorri chuckled and said, "That was ever your way, Thorfinn, to act like a new bride who knows not which will come first, her churching or her childbed. What danger can Vinland hold for Norsemen such as ourselves?"

  "Mark you, I have no notion of withdrawing fi-om this voyage," said Karlsefni, feeling somewhat foolish.

  "Of course not," said Snorri. "Your wife has a mind of her own, so people say."

  "What do you mean?" said Karlsefiii.

  "Thorkel guested her, you know. He and Helga remember her well. They ask after her father Thorbjom."

  "Thorbjcm Vifilsson is dead."

  "Well, well," said Snorri. "At all events, Gudrid is a very accomplished woman. I wish you much success."

  Then Bjami Grimolfsson said, "Is it the Skraelings you fear after all?"

  Karlsefiii was quiet for awhile. "No," he said. "And yet, I suppose ..."

  "If it is the Skraelings," said Bjami, "you need only tell your men to guard their weapons. For the Dwarf-Folk never came to Vinland, as it seems, since the Skraelings know not the use of iron. With our axes and swords we shall always bring the matter to a good ending."

  Snorri interposed, "Remember that we are all traders. There may well be profit to be gained from these Skraelings. Of cou
rse there is Utde enough room on our ships for trading-goods, if we mean to bring all our cattle and other possessions with us. But perhaps something bright and gaudy, of litde value, might help our luck."

  "You know that Freydis Eiriksdottir and her husband Thorvard are coming with us?" said Karlsefrii. "It seems he too is quite the trader."

  "He has a sharp mind for money, they say, and little else," said Bjami. "He is no man. But I believe that he is bringing a few bales of trade-cloth with him."

  "Well, and I shall do the same," said Karlsefrii.

  After this talk he felt much easier, and thought that his fears and fancies had been childish. Yet his mind, being a trader's mind, often translated among currencies, so that the equation between Vinland and Queen Sigrid was not such a strange one for him to make. Karlsefrii decided to be vigilant in the strange country, just as King Olaf should have been.

  The Seduction ofLeif

  In Ram's Month, when she was certain of finding him in, Freydis sailed up the straight and narrow §ord to Brattahlid, and paid a call to her half-brother. Although he preferred Gudrid to her, Freydis had insisted that she be the one to ask him for the loan of his houses in Vinland, for so she hoped to make the others indebted to her. - Gudrid was beside herself v^th rage at this presumption, but Karlsefiii (who underestimated Freydis almost to the end) said merely that he supposed Freydis craved her importance, and he did not begmdge it to her; for he was not a smallhearted man. - With this, Gudrid's party yielded to Freydis.

  Leif was sitting by the long-fire, which bumed blue and green with the salt from driftwood logs, and he stared out the window at die snow-swirls.

  and the wind keened songs of beautiful cruelty from the Ice-Mountain and Leif drummed his fingers on the arm of dead Eirik's high-seat - his now, for all that that mattered to him. Matters had not gone badly for Leif of late, but neither had they gone especially weU. Certainly it was pleasant to be the master of Brattahlid; certainly it was pleasant to have money and reputation, but now that he had attained those things he was not certain what to do next. He should probably marry, for he did not much care for this pale creature of a Thorgils who had lately come to Greenland - his son by Thorgunna Witch. He did not propose to let Thorgils inherit Brattahlid. Nor, to tell the truth, did he desire Freydis to do so. - So there sat Leif the Lucky, at the peak of his prestige, and the peak was not as high as it had once seemed, and ahead of him waited the Valley of Death, as it waited for all; and Leif did not much like this.