The Greenlanders

by Jane Smiley

  Sira Pall Hallvardsson was much bent with the joint ill and went about on two sticks. His knees and hips were much misshapen, and he was unable to kneel at prayer, but indeed, he said to Gunnar, if the Lord has no eyes in his head to see the burdens of his folk, then no one has such eyes. Whatever men see, the Lord sees with infinitely greater clarity. Sira Jon, he said, was indeed still alive, and he asked Gunnar please to come into the man’s chamber and speak to him, for it was the case that Jon spoke of Gunnar from time to time. “My friend,” said Sira Pall, “it may not soothe his spirits to see you, but it will help his eternal soul.” And Gunnar followed Sira Pall Hallvardsson to the other priest’s chamber with some trepidation.

  Sira Jon was as small as a handful of twigs lashed together, and he lay covered with a piece of wadmal on a pallet of woven rushes. The room was close and damp, small enough so that the breathings of the man warmed it. Gunnar stood hunched beneath the low ceiling. Sira Jon’s hands lay upon the coverlet. The fingers were so afflicted with the joint ill that they were turned back upon themselves, and the flesh of the man’s arms had wasted away to bone. Sira Pall Hallvardsson said, “My brother, here is a soul who seeks comfort from you.”

  “He is a Greenlander, I see by his brawn.” He spoke with bitterness.

  Gunnar looked at Sira Pall Hallvardsson, and then at Sira Jon, and said, “All men seek the Lord’s forgiveness for their sins. I, as well.”

  “It may be that the Lord forgives them, it may be that He does not. Such things are not for a priest to know, that is the substance of the tale I have to tell. Seek nothing from me, Gunnar Asgeirsson.”

  “Indeed, I know not what I seek, except a kindness between men.”

  “The Lord cares nothing for the kindness of men.”

  “But men care for it.”

  “I care not for it. You and your sister were as ripe figs, swollen with pride in your beauty and the sweetness of your wayward natures.”

  “I remember this not.”

  “It was the case that the vision came to your wife, the vision of the Virgin and the Child, and in your carelessness you deserved it not.”

  “Indeed, Sira Jon, I saw it not, for I was sleeping. Only the girl saw it. You must forgive her, my Birgitta, for she has suffered from her visions, and never gained pleasure from them.”

  “Greenlanders know little of suffering.”

  “It seems to me that each man knows the suffering of others through the suffering he feels. If you say to me that Greenlanders know little of suffering, then I must reply that it is you who know little of suffering.”

  “You Greenlanders have always held my office in small respect. I am not surprised to hear such speeches from you.”

  All of this time, Sira Pall Hallvardsson had been leaning himself partly against the wall and partly against his two sticks. Now he stumbled, and Gunnar reached out and lifted him up, and then said, “It seems to me that we are old men wrangling as young men. On the day of my Helga’s wedding I gave up the Greenlander’s pastime of cherishing enmity. I seek the forgiveness of the Lord and the kindness of men from you, Sira Jon.”

  “Nay, Gunnar Asgeirsson, these goods are not mine to give you. Look elsewhere than in this coffin. Be off now, for I care not to have you stooping about here any longer.” And he closed his eyes. Gunnar helped Sira Pall Hallvardsson through the door and followed him into the passage. Sira Pall Hallvardsson smiled sadly into Gunnar’s face, and said, “Here is the brother who was given to me. His flesh is as well known to me as my own, his words pour into my ears. I am his priest, his nurse, and his only companion, for the others about the place fear him. He nears death, and I can give him nothing for the journey.”

  “Thus it is that I think of my son, Kollgrim. It seems to me that there are men whose way through life is so lonely that they shun the Grace of God itself.”

  “Every man may be saved in the last moment of his life.”

  “Do all men wish to be?”

  “It is said that they do.”

  “Then it must be the case. We are old men who will soon know for ourselves.”

  “Sira Audun made a prayer for me once, to tease me with it. It goes, ‘Our Lord, this is I, Pall Hallvardsson, far out on the western ocean. I am the priest in this place who thinks well of You.’ ”

  Gunnar laughed. Sira Pall Hallvardsson said, “This is my daily prayer.” And they walked out of the hall and into the field, where many folk were milling about and exchanging news of the autumn.

  Birgitta was sitting on the hillside, between Helga and Kollgrim, and she had her arms through theirs. Below her on the hillside sat Elisabet Thorolfsdottir, with little Egil at the breast, and though Birgitta clung tightly to Helga and Kollgrim, it was Elisabet that she was speaking to. She said, “My girl, you must sit up and hold the boy up, and let him suck the teat far into his little mouth, and then, indeed, he will not be able to bite you. But he is too young yet even to have his meat chewed for him.”

  Elisabet murmured, “Yes, well,” in a low voice, but the child shifted and fell away from the teat again, and the mother made no effort to lift him. He began to whimper. Birgitta said again, still with patience, “Indeed, girl, your child is hungry and desires suck. Does this not give your ears pain to hear his cries?” And Elisabet remembered herself and sat up straighter on the hillside. Birgitta turned to Helga and said, so that Kollgrim could hear, “This child is as small as a puppy and prattles not, though he has lived most of a winter and a summer.”

  “Yes, my mother,” said Helga.

  “Every one of my children was standing and looking about after such a time as has passed with this one. My boy Kollgrim was already walking out of the steading. These are a poor stock, this lineage of Thorolf. Their blood is thinned by too much fish, it seems to me. They are like priests. Thorolf is willing about the steading, but indeed, at times in the winter he cannot lift himself out of the bedcloset. The son will be as bad when he has gotten on a few years. Have you hope for this child, Helga?”

  “I hope in the morning that I will see him in the evening, and I hope in the evening that I will see him in the morning, and my hopes are always fulfilled.”

  “But soon you will have your own child, and have to give over your visits to this one.”

  “We may yet persuade Elisabet to bring the child to Ketils Stead. But, indeed, it is a hard thing to move her. Jon Andres declares that she looks like a bird but is as heavy as a whale.”

  Now Kollgrim said, “Things are not ill for her at Gunnars Stead. There is plenty of food about the place, and warm furs in the bedclosets.” And after this, Birgitta and Helga gave over their talk of Elisabet and the child. Now a procession of finely dressed folk came down the hillside, and the group was comprised of Sigrid Bjornsdottir and some other Solar Fell folk and some Icelanders, including Thorstein the rhymer, Thorgrim, his wife Steinunn, her sister Thorunn, Snorri the ship’s master, and some other folk. All the Greenlanders turned their heads to gaze upon these newcomers, and Kollgrim gazed upon them, too, Helga saw, as if his eyes were starting out of his head, and Helga had not known that he cared so much for Sigrid. She grew frightened, and gripped her mother’s arm tightly. Now the group passed where they were sitting, and Sigrid’s gaze fell first upon Helga and then upon Kollgrim, and she smiled, but as much in embarrassment as in pleasure. Helga saw that her eyes searched Kollgrim’s face for a moment before dropping to the grass. Helga turned and looked at Kollgrim. He looked at Sigrid not at all, but at someone else in the group. Helga could not discover who this might be, for all were bunched together and talking merrily. Sigrid joined them with hardly a hesitation, only the hesitation of her fleeting look at Kollgrim, then at Elisabet Thorolfsdottir, then at the child. The procession passed on. Now Helga looked at her mother, and Birgitta looked as well at her daughter, and it seemed to Helga that some knowledge passed between them, and Helga was much afraid, for Birgitta had a great reputation for sight.

  It was the case with this Gardar feast
that there were actually two days of eating, as well as four services, for indeed, if many men were to make their way to St. Nikolaus Cathedral, then they must gorge themselves on liturgy and prayer, for they would see little enough of it through the winter, in spite of the efforts of Sira Eindridi and Sira Andres. The cathedral was always full of folk, for folk like to pray in the presence of a relic, though it be only the last finger bone of the least finger. Many offerings were left to this St. Olaf the Norwegian, and folk felt better for it. Larus the Prophet himself spent a deal of time kneeling before the reliquary, and folk remarked at the stillness of his posture and the length of his prayer. Ashild stood nearby, with little Tota, watching him, and when he was finished, she helped him to his feet, and he staggered away leaning upon her shoulder.

  Now folk were called into the cathedral for the first service, and they packed in so tightly that they sat upon one another on the benches, and although there was no fire, there was sufficient warmth. Sira Eindridi pronounced the mass, and it seemed to some folk that he filled out the parts he didn’t know with bits of prayers that he remembered from elsewhere, or had made up. As usual, he gave a great long sermon, full of damnation and sorrow, and dire predictions of Hell, where, he said, fire burned like ice, and damned souls eked a bit of rotten cheese out for eternity and their bellies were never full, and always raging with the stomach ill, so that they covered themselves with shit, and suchlike predictions, and during this sermon, as usual, folk began to talk quietly among themselves, which drove the priest to an even greater pitch of anger, so that his face grew as red as ash berries and he had to stop speaking for gales of breath that shook him. But now came the communion time in the service, and men fell quiet and attended to their prayers.

  It happened that Sira Eindridi’s sermon went on so long, and the cathedral was so close with folk that some of them had to go out into the air toward the end of the service, and one of these was Steinunn Hrafnsdottir, the Icelandic woman. She slipped away from the side of her sister Thorunn, and when she stepped onto the grass, she saw that the fjord below the cathedral was lit by the red and white glow of the setting sun, and so she thought to stroll down beside the landing place, where all the boats were drawn up on the strand. Her sister Thorunn was somewhat afraid of the Greenlanders, and disliked to walk among them alone, but Steinunn could not see this. These folk had rather poor manners, and were inclined to stare, and knew not how to speak with the proper forms, but in Steinunn’s view, they were no worse than some Icelanders who lived in remote districts. The field before the cathedral sloped gently downward, and Steinunn took some deep breaths of the chilly air. She was not a little pleased to be by herself, for indeed, Thorgrim, her husband, was a hovering, attentive fellow, and his hands were always upon her. Now she walked among the little boats and marveled at them, for they were patched together any old way, out of scraps and pieces of planking, and they stank strongly of seal oil. All of Greenland stank strongly of seal oil, Steinunn had discovered. Even so, she had no longing to return to Iceland, but rather a horror of it, although Thorgrim was a powerful man there. It seemed to her that Thorgrim would do well to settle in Greenland, since he had not chosen to settle in Norway. It was said among the Greenlanders that there were many good abandoned farms, and it would not be so hard, after all, to go off to Iceland or Norway for a cargo of sheep and cows. Snorri’s ship was big enough for that. Whatever Thorgrim chose to do, it seemed to Steinunn that she could not go back to Iceland, for indeed, everyone there, it was said, had died. The thought made her heart flutter, and she put her hand to her breast and stopped walking to catch her breath.

  Now, in Greenland, she saw what a mistake she had made in accepting Thorgrim, a failing of will that she had expected to regret at the time, and did regret now. But her days among the Norwegians had been unhappy ones, and the only Norwegian farmer who had made an offer for her hand was a fellow with a great goiter at his neck, and although he was wealthy and powerful, she saw at once that he had never had a chance among the Norwegian girls, but had thought so little of her that he had been confident of her acceptance. A woman who had lands in Iceland, especially lands partly covered with smoking lava, was not such a prize to a Norwegian. Even if her father had been lawspeaker, her father was dead now, and his death in a volcanic avalanche so peculiar as to put folk off, unless they were Icelandic.

  Thorgrim was fair enough, and it had been a great pleasure to Steinunn to speak to him of things they both knew. It seemed to her that her melancholia lifted when he was about, or else she made it lift for his sake. It lifted little now, except when she raised her eyes to the mountains of Greenland and reflected that none of them were volcanoes, that their shapes and their quiescence were changeless and eternal. The winter would pass, and the summer would come on, and Snorri would make up his mind to go off to Iceland and see what his wife had done with his farms over the years.

  The sun had set, and twilight deepened over Gardar field. Only the snowy tips of the mountains cast any light back to the sky. Steinunn turned away from the boats, and began the climb back up the hillside, and she was so sunk in thoughts that she nearly stumbled over a man who was kneeling in her path between two of the boats. He leapt up and caught her, so that she did not fall, and she saw that it was the tall fellow who had been betrothed to the girl Sigrid, but she could not recall his name. She had seen him only once or twice. “Indeed,” she said, “the darkness makes me careless,” and it seemed to her that though she spoke of the lack of light, she was referring to her thoughts, and this fetched from her a deep and melancholy sigh.

  “You have strayed from the flock gathered to hear the priest.”

  “And you, as well.”

  “Priestly talk does not much interest me.”

  “This Sira Eindridi likes to attract attention.”

  “That may be. I know nothing about it.”

  “Then why have you come to the feasting?”

  “I heard there would be Icelandic tales. I thought they would beguile the mother of my son.”

  “Why does she need to be beguiled?”

  “Because she is a woman, it seems to me. I know not what she is determined upon, whether life or death. Tales are entertaining to most folk. Perhaps they will draw off her thoughts from whatever they linger over now. Why have you strayed from the flock?”

  “I grew breathless among them.”

  “I have seen you before. Among the chatterers, you have the least to say.”

  “Is that the case?”

  “It seems so to me.”

  Now they fell silent, and he took her hand and placed it through his arm, and led her among the boats to a space above them, where she would have clear walking back to the cathedral, but as they stood in this space, she did not want to give up his arm, nor did he give up her hand. They stood silently for some little while, neither looking at one another nor looking away from one another, and it seemed to Steinunn that her earlier disquiet was stilled by the fellow’s presence. Now he released her, and put his hand lightly on her shoulder, and pushed her away from him, and she began up the hillside, and he went back to the strand, and continued with whatever he had been doing. When she got to the cathedral, Steinunn recollected the fellow’s name, Kollgrim Gunnarsson, a great object of joking among the Icelanders for his betrothal to Sigrid Bjornsdottir.

  Now the time came for the first evening’s feast, and all the folk poured into the great hall of the bishop’s house, and sat themselves at the benches, and the women and servingmaids went about with bowls of ptarmigan stewed with seal flipper and seasoned with thyme, and this was considered a good dish, even among the Icelanders. After this came bowls of sourmilk, thick and cold, sweetened with bilberries, and these had been gathered for the feast over three separate days in the hills between Gardar and Hvalsey Fjord, and they were fat and juicy. After this came svid and also roast mutton, and this mutton was a little tough and overgrown, but savory all the same, and folk considered that they had done well to make
their way to the Gardar feast. Now there was another dish, and this was dried capelin with sour butter, and this is a dish that Greenlanders are very fond of, for the little fish snap and crackle between the teeth and the butter makes the lips pucker. The Icelanders were not especially taken with this dish. Now was the moment in the feast when folk begin to push themselves away from the table, but even so, look around a bit for just a single last thing to taste before they finish. And so the women and servingmaids came about with something most folk had never tasted before, and this was angelica stalks seethed in honey, and this was so delicious and sweet that folk’s teeth ached with the pleasure of it.