for in truth he had been so drunk that he could not remember whether he had fondled Sigrid, or whether he had striven to, or indeed denied her; as for Sigrid, such was her genius that no one ever found out. She fanned the midges away from her neck as they walked on the strand together; she said to him, "Aasta may be lower bom than you; but still it is true that she is pregnant v^th both your fortunes; for Saint Olaf now lies in her womb, not mine." - King Harald then became very heavy-hearted, as the tale says; but still he followed her up the country to her house, where she burned him as he slept, and the Russian King Visavald also. What she wanted from Harald in the end, then, remained as mysterious as Wineland; indeed it must be said that she behaved in a very contradictory way. - King Olaf might very properly have learned from this tale (so considered Karlsefni, tossing in his bed in Vinland, with Gudrid beside him - she always slept perfectly) to watch every quarter of the sky, having scorned so dangerous a woman - but of all men that King had been the bravest; for he never turned aside from anything: he would have gone to Vinland - why, he had fixed his shield on the very peak of Smalsar Horn, which no man before him ever reached! and it was told that in descending he came across one of his strongest followers, who for loyalty had sought to follow him, brisding with furs against the chill, but was now piteously trapped on a narrow ledge so that he dared to go neither up nor down; so King Olaf slung him over his shoulder and carried him dovm the Horn, setting him gently at last upon the plain and chuckling, "Return to your fellow palace-carles, man, and think not to go mountain-climbing again!" - So King Olaf went about his life. (But Sigrid, hearing this news, said, "He is not so sure-footed as he thinks himself" And her heart clanged wdth anger against him like an iron bell.) In Viken he killed King Gudrod, the last son left in life of Bloody-Axe's widow Gunhild, and was joyous, saying, "Now at last I have paid back that witch!"; in Drontheim he slew a highborn pagan called Iron-Beard, who sought to make him render sacrifice to ODIN; and when that carcass had fallen (at the very doorway of Thor's temple, as is told in the Flateyjarbok), then King Olaf took hostages and baptized all the Drontheim people, so that the deed became a famous success. Now the thin com would languish, for none could pour out the sacrificial blood any longer, as had been done from the days of the Ynglings; now the Cross took root. To compensate the kinsmen of Iron-Beard, Olaf took Gudmn Ironbeardsdottir to bed with him to be his wife; and the hangings closed behind them like rippling black water, and he said, "Do not be angry with me, maid, because I slew your father," and she said, "How could I be angry with my Lord?" at which King Olaf was much content.
and in that darkness they sank deeper and deeper into each other, but as soon as she thought him asleep a silvery fish swam in her hand. Snatching the blade (for like King Gudrod's brother, Harald Greyskin, he was rarely so careless as he seemed), the King arose and went to his men to tell them what had happened. Gudrun pulled her clothes on in a frenzy, biting her lip, and went away with all her serving-men, to grieve upon her father's mound; she never again entered Olaf's bed. Surely (thought Karlsefni) the King should have taken alarm at this happening; for if a mere girl could try such a thing against him, how much more dangerous must be that subde Sigrid, whom he had no less outraged! But Olaf was well used to juggling three knives in the air, after all, catching them in his hand as they flew point downwards. - Sigrid married King Swend Forkbeard of Denmark. The Danes had always been the enemies of the Norwegians, but even yet King Olaf did not take caution. His sister Ingigerd, the one whose eyes made Leif forget Thorgunna Witch so easily, was now due to be married; and Olaf gave her to Earl Rognvald, even though Rognvald's father was Sigrid's brother! Truly matters had gone beyond slapping Sigrid's face; he was slapping the face of Fate itself, which duly sent him Thyre, King Swend's sister, who was Christian and had fled the Russian marriage to which she had been assigned, praying to Olaf to protect her from lapping at the sacrificial bowl with those pagans. -"Well, you are a fine-spoken woman, and also good to look upon," said Olaf "I will gladly protect you, if you are minded to become a Queen." - Now at last Sigrid the Haughty had him in her power; for every morning as she woke beside King Swend she would say, "That Norwegian King, Olaf Trygvesson, has taken your sister without your leave! By all the snow in Sweden, it is a wonder to me how you suffer it!" So at last. King Swend sent word to his kinsmen-in-law (that is to say. Earl Eric and Olaf of Sweden, who was Sigrid's son); these hounds set out upon the hunt, and soon brought Trygvesson down. - But why should Karlsefni think upon this? Why?
Amortortak ondKtuskap
spontaneity is only a term for man's ignorance of the gods.
Butler, Erewhon (1872)
o,
n the way to the place where Glooskap lived, the Skraelings said, you first clambered down a little cliff onto a long shelf of rock, riddled with fissures in which barnacles and snails clung by the thousands, and there was a constant trickling at low tide as the water drained from tide pools through channels no wider than a finger, down to the sea, which was calm when Freydis came to it, the waves slapping almost inaudibly against the wet kelp-green rocks that served as a token barrier. The kelp drooped, wet and rubbery with yellow bulbs. Snails crawled on it. Clams and mussels rested in the peace of the tide pools, their shells ajar. The sand was whorled with designs of algae, mussels and agates.
You turned inward, the Skraelings said, through the forest, where the low sun shot its rays between the dark trees in a way that seemed sinister to Freydis. The trees were very thin but densely crowded. She could see no sky between them. For her, whose mind held always a gloomy cast, it seemed already much darker than it was. Each new winding among the trees led her into another funnel of darkness. Everything was grey and vague. The color had gone out of the world. The tree-boles rounded upon her like the heads of reptiles. Crooked sticks beset her way like snakes. She walked along a deer trail, through muck and mucky meadows, across stone outcroppings the same dark grey as the cliffs and the tidal shelf below; and presently the trail ascended into the low SUN, Whose satellite constellations were lily-of-the-valley, crow's-foot, starflower, clubmoss. Some pines had bare branches, like rungs of ladders leading into the evening. As she rounded the first bend in the cape she saw the ocean through the bushes; she heard the gulls. - Presently she came into a high place of ferns and mossy maples,
between the trunks of which the sky and the sea could be seen, both of them very near the ground; the SUN seemed so close to her head that Freydis could almost have jumped up and seized Her, as would Fenrir the Wolf of Doom. Everything was lonely and blue and green as the light began to fail.
It was her intention to kill GloOSKAP. She had prayed to Him, but He had not helped her. Now the Skraelings were hostile, and she and her men must therefore expect difficulties - difficulties which Blue-Shirt might not necessarily excuse. - So GLOOSKAP didn't want the frost, did He? Well, she'd stuff frost dovm His throat! She could see trees and sky reflected in the silver mirror of her knife-blade. And yet she kept thinking to herself, "Perhaps this is an unwise course to follow." (For GLOOSKAP was a god.) But she had to do her duty to Blue-Shirt. - Well, perhaps GLOOSKAP would help her! She would see. - She hesitated; she slid her knife back into her belt-scabbard; but then she pulled it out again, screaming silently behind her teeth.
Amortortak 1987
I know now what Freydis was, because one evening in Greenland, as darkskinned Christian sat waiting for money to come so that he could fix his fishing boat, and Christian's Mommy and Daddy were playing cards with friends in the kitchen again, laughing and crying, ''EhhhF and sweet Margethe laid her head down in Christian's lap to sleep because tomorrow she had to work early at the hospital. Christian lit up a cigarette and told me about Qivittoqs. A Qivittoq was a man who was desperately unhappy because his family didn't like him or because the girl he loved wouldn't have him; and he sweated in the bright nights of the hot Greenland summers and the ocean creaked in his ears and the mud stank and the mosquitoes swarmed on his face and he was so we
ary, so alone that the unhappiness screamed and screamed inside him and suddenly he could take off his shirt! He could go inhumanly naked, like a stone; he could put on the Bear-Shirt, the Blue Shirt, the Ice-Shirt, or any other; then he could take it off again! - oh, it was glorious; that was what Greenlanders had always done. Christian said proudly, until the Danish people had come and taught them to jump into the sea, to hang themselves, to shoot themselves like black-handed Tunersuits. -But a few still remembered how to be Qivittoqs. A Qivittoq went rushing into the mountains; he lived alone there for the rest of his life, howling on the steep green ridges between fjords where the water shone silver and gold in the sun; or sometimes milky-blue as it was in Ameralik Fjord, just beyond
which, about a century ago, the great explorer Nansen began his crossing of the Greenland icecap; and the Qivittoq was pierced by all these colors (in Slab-Land the lichens were black, white and orange, the island brown, the sea blue and the sky grey; but in Greenland there was so much screaming greenness and silver and gold ... ; he ran up cliffs whose hair was green grass; he crossed the fjords by leaping from sandbar to sandbar and rushed toward that blue ice, rushed faster and faster toward that inland ice that called him; then as the wildness beat in his heart he began to acquire great powers. He could change himself into any animal; he could fly anywhere. When other men came near, the Qivittoq would turn his back to them and be silent if his disposition was good, for otherwise he could not help killing them with his eyes, his terrible voice. - Ten years ago. Christian said, there was a very powerful Qivittoq in Kapasillit. He hunted two brothers and killed them in the long yellow grass. At first it was thought that one brother killed the other and then himself, but the younger brother's son would not believe that. He went into the mountains and saw the Qivittoq running faster than a man should run, up and down the ridges. The man went back to Kapasillit and told the police. The police had a helicopter in Kapasillit at that time because they were shooting reindeer. They flew over the mountains in their helicopter and found the Qivittoq still running, so they hovered as close to him as they could and shot one of his legs out from under him. Then they took him to the hospital. He screamed like the wind (it is wind that makes wildness). - He had had a wife in north Greenland, but she wouldn't stay with him because his face was hairy like the face of an animal. He was crazy. They took him to a mental institution.
The Way to the Sea
Pieces of birch bark were scattered on the trail ahead like mysterious signs. It was twilight, and the blue had now washed out of the sky. The bark was rubbed to ribbons on the trees, as if something large had recently been here. A bare tree loomed, painted in circles of red and yellow. Then suddenly Freydis heard a sound like a dog, like creaking wood, like someone in pain. It was a gull's cry. The gull rose in front of her and beat its wings wamingly. The ferns were upcupped like supplicating hands. Louder and louder was the sound of the sea. - She came to a dark grey cliff. There was a rocky beach far below. The water was very cahn. - Then the path burst out of the trees and onto a grassy shoulder, with nothing around her except sea
and blue peninsulas. The SUN cast Her golden wake on the water as She departed. Half a hundred steps beyond the edge of the precipice stood a rugged column of cliff, grass-grown, and on its top, which was only a few paces wide, the gulls lived. At her approach they rose and cried their hoarse alarms in two syllables, the second rising; they swooped and glided. In the air they were black against the westering SUN; later, resting once again on the grass, when they saw that she could not hurt them, they were white, with greyish-black wings. They groaned contentedly, like suckling babies. -Freydis looked down over the edge. - "Ha!" she said scornfully to the cliff. "I've seen worse than you!" - She let herself down with a walrus-skin rope; she stood upon the shore in that fatal sunset. Not too far away, she saw the silhouette of Someone walking on the beach.
A Person amonq Persons
KluskaP, the Living Power, walked slowly by the edge of the sea. The coast consisted of great grey slabs, worried through with thousands of ledges wide and narrow. Pebbles and mussel shells tinkled under His step. He strode past tide pools in which the rocks were round and green like turtles. The kelp-flowers and sea-moss made of each pool a garden suffused with green algae-light. Here lived snails and hermit crabs. The kelps were trees with ripe green-golden berries, which the snails relished. Here, if anywhere, might Freydis have found Yggdrasil.
At KluskaP's left shoulder was the ocean, beyond which lay Markland with its blue cliffs and grey lakes. On His right stretched the forest, where dew lay in the hollows of strawberry leaves. Indian tobacco grew everywhere, with its white and yellow flowers. Oaks and junipers cooled the day; their shadows were full of dew.
He was very tall (for People with Power must stand higher than people wdthout) and He was handsome of feature. He held His head high. His black eyes shone; His black hair fell to His shoulders. He wore a blanket-robe of white moosehide that fell loosely to His knees, for He was a shape-changer and would not be constricted. On his breast were painted all the birds and animals known in His country, from foxes to whales, worked in the Power-colors: red, yellow, black and white. All these creatures were alive. The hems of His sleeves were painted with every tendril, root and bud; - with the heart-shaped leaf of the groundnut, the fragrant sweetflag plant, the Indian tobacco with its flowers like bells, the straight stalks and firm heads of cattails, whose
pollen and roots fed His People; the great, irregularly serrated leaf-lobe of a bloodroot; and each of these, too, was alive; each was a Plant Person who brought food to KluSKAP's People or gave them fragrant medicines. Kluskap knew them; He knew the Animal People and the Star People; the Stone People; He was one of those People with Power. He wore mooseskin leggings fringed with colored porcupine quills; His moccasins were omamented with wampum beads. A tobacco pouch was slung over His shoulder.
As He strode there waiting for Freydis, He smiled slightly. People had come to importune Him before. If she chose to be meek with Him and her aims were pure, He would help her. In any case He would treat her as she deserved.
The twilight was very calm. - ''AoohulogeakT said KLUSKAP, nodding His head. "The wind goes down with the sun."
Tfie Frost-Seetf
In Vinland there is a plant called twinflower (Linnaea borealis), so known because from its sweetly creeping stalk rises a shoot vdth two pink flower-heads looking down at their own round leaves. KLUSKAP and Freydis made such a picture presently, for they stood very close together on the beach, she sheltering herself from the sea-winds beneath His arm (and always she thought, too, that since Gudrid could have her way by smiling - oh, how easy it looked to Freydis when Gudrid did it; she did not know the labor of a smile - so now she thought to win GloOSKAP's favour by casting her smile towards Him, although her smile was no more attractive than a splitting seam); and both their heads bowed down in the last orange bars of sunset, looking at something that GloOSKAP held in His palm. - "Well, granddaughter, this is your frost-seed," He said. "I hear you want to bring winter here. If you plant this little blue seed at night in the shade of the woods, then winter wdll come, and we vdll also have creeping snowberries." - "Yes, yes!" cried Freydis in delight. "That's what I want!" Her second heart, her wolf's heart, almost came alive. - "Then take it," said GLOOSKAP, sighing. "Take it from My hand." - Eagerly Freydis snatched the ice-crystal from Him, but at once she shrieked in pain and dropped it in the sand, for it was so cold that it burned her. Where it had fallen it became merely a grain of sand among the sands; it was dark, and she could not find it, and if she did she would not be able to take it. ..
KLUSKAP puflfed at His pipe. He never laughed at anyone. "Granddaughter,"
He said, "what do you really want?"
"I want to be rich," Freydis said.
"Well, here you are in My country. Everyone who comes here is rich. Some of My People say you Jenuaq are rich already. They don't mind it, but they know what you're doing here. Your ship is full of timber and
grape-vines. Your men must have all the game they want, because they leave good buck-deer rotting for Skofte Carrion-Crow. I've seen that. We don't do that here. Your husband is happy trading milk for skins - that was a good idea of yours, Freydis Eiriksdaughter! - and Gudrid and Karlsefiii have found a place to live, where the berries are as many as stars, and the fish are as many as hairs on your head. Of course my People are angry about the man you killed, but I can smooth that out with them if you pay compensation. What more do you want?"
Sullenly, Freydis dug her heel into the sand. "I want everything" she said.
"At least you're honest, granddaughter," said Kluskap. "Well, what you've asked is hard, but I'll see what I can do for you."
The Ice-Shirt Page 29
