The Greenlanders

by Jane Smiley

  Now it is usually the case that folk linger about the Thing field when they are taking down their booths, and making their arrangements to return to their own districts, for indeed, the opportunity to meet with folk and exchange news is a cherished one, and there is always the chance that some late bit of business will be carried out. But in this year, folk gathered up what belongings they could find, and carried them off, and many articles were left behind from the haste. At the last, when the pyre had fallen into ash and fragments, only Gunnar, Jon Andres, the Thorkelssons, and Sira Eindridi were standing about, and Gunnar saw that for once, Sira Eindridi did not know what to do, but kept looking over to him and looking away, but indeed, Gunnar himself knew not what to do, nor how to gather his strength to do it, and so they lingered into the late twilight.

  At last, Jon Andres spoke, and said, “It seems to me that we must pour water upon the ashes, and then gather up what bones we might find of our brother, and bury them where it is proper to do so, according to the law of the Church and of the northern places.” And he looked at Sira Eindridi. Sira Eindridi looked out toward the fjord, toward the ancient ruin of Thjodhilds church, that Erik the Red once built for his wife in the early days of the settlement, and he said, “Here at Brattahlid, there are men buried who never accepted Christ. These ashes may be put there,” and so the Thorkelssons went off to a nearby steading and got some spades, and set about digging a hole on the north side of the little church. And because the spades were small and the day had been a long one, they dug for most of the night. Gunnar and Jon Andres gathered up what seemed to be pieces of bone and laid them on the moist grass to cool.

  Now, after a short darkness the birds began to call again, and then the sky grew light, and Sira Eindridi and the Thorkelssons went into their booths and lay down for a short sleep, and Gunnar and Jon Andres sat down upon the hillside and began to talk. Jon Andres said, “I am little eager to bring this news to Helga, for we were not a little sanguine of the outcome before we came to the Thing field.”

  “Even so, it seems to me that she will hardly be surprised, and that my Birgitta will be less surprised. But indeed, there are times when a man knows not what to say of the will of the Lord, and such a time has come upon me.”

  “This is not the will of the Lord, but the will of men.”

  “The wish of Thorgrim, perhaps, who felt his injury so deeply.”

  “Do you not see that this Thorgrim is the dupe of the others? Men may go among the judges during the next winter or so, and gossip about this case,” said Jon Andres. “Certainly it will be on everybody’s tongue, and it will take little to put it on everybody’s lips. I have a great curiosity about who said what and to whom, do you not?”

  “Nay, my son. I have no curiosity at all.”

  “Evil has gone on here. We may at the least bring a case.”

  “Against whom?”

  “That is what we will find out by careful gossip.”

  “This seems an ill course to me. I have never had luck in the law courts.”

  “But I have.”

  Gunnar said, “I will say to you what Greenlanders always say to each other, which is that you will do as you please in this as in all else.” Now they sat quietly for a while, until the wife from a nearby steading brought them some bits of food for their morning meat, and then the Thorkelssons and Sira Eindridi got up, and the fragments of bone were cool, and these were placed in a sealskin bag, and buried among the remains of the unbaptized near Thjodhilds church, and the place of the burning was left through the summer, for no one cared to approach it or pick over the ashes.

  Now Gunnar and the others went in the Gardar boat to the landing place that sits on the Eriks Fjord side of the Gardar neck, and they walked over the hill, and then Gunnar and Jon Andres and the Thorkelssons got into the Thorkelssons’ boat, and set off down Einars Fjord, and the weather was calm and clear. None of the men spoke much among themselves, only to mention icebergs that were floating near, or such items of business that no one cared to hear about. It was the case that the sight that he had seen both recurred to Gunnar’s thoughts and did not. The familiar snowy peaks and gray slopes with their skating black shadows passed on either side of the fjord in stately progression, apart from the effort of the rowers, who heaved and sweated just in front of where Gunnar was sitting. It occurred to Gunnar that such an event as had overtaken Kollgrim had never happened in the sight of these slopes before, for all the dangers of the hunt, and for all the pleasure Greenlanders took in fighting and killing each other, and for this reason it seemed not to have happened, in fact. Certainly he felt little grief and less anger. The punishment had fit the crime fantastically, like a huge man’s robe on a tiny child. Gunnar knew not how to think of it, or to feel it, or, for that matter, to speak of it to Birgitta. Such were his idle thoughts as the boat slid nearer and nearer to the Ketils Stead landing. And it seemed to him that he felt the parting with his son-in-law and former enemy more than he felt the parting with his son, for indeed, tears came into his eyes to see the familiar supple figure and the well-known curly head turn away from the boat and begin to climb the grassy slope that led to the steading.

  Now Gunnar took his place at the oars, and the mountains, darkening with nightfall, began to recede from his gaze and disappear, leaving only the light of the water and the glow of the icebergs floating here and there. Skeggi Thorkelsson said, “Gunnar, the long day is ending, and my father Thorkel will be pleased if we bring you to Hestur Stead for what remains of the night.” But Gunnar refused this offer, and so some while later, they put him down at the landing, where folk who do not care to row around the wide spit of land that folds about Hvalsey begin their trek through the valley that leads to Lavrans Stead. And when they put him down here, the sky was as dark as it gets in midsummer, but light enough for him to see his way.

  He was an old man, some fifty-six winters old, and he had repeated every step he was making myriad times before, and yet he was born like a baby into a new life, and each step toward Lavrans Stead was unsteady and frightening. Each glance ahead into the night was an effort to see into the future, which men cannot see, though they think to themselves that they can make familiar furniture out of the shapes before them. He stopped and looked about. A great storm of grief was waiting for him at his steading that he must lean into, as a man leans into the wind, and closes his eyes against the ice that flies in his face. As calm as this night was to him, threading his path between the mountains that rose on either side, just so violent would be this storm inside his steading, and it would lift him up and suck the breath from his corpus and set him down some other place, as another man, and though he walked eagerly, he also quailed before this storm. He saw that grief would be the gift that Birgitta would give him, as once before she had given him herself as a girl, then his own life, then his children, then herself again as an old woman. And it was the case that he must reach out his hands and take this gift with the same eagerness as any other gift. He came out at the top of the slope above the steading and saw that the sun was already brightening the sky above Hreiney. Now he paused for a moment, then he went on, and came to the steading.

  Toward the feast of St. Lavrans, the old woman Birgitta Lavransdottir of Lavrans Stead took a long knife made of sharpened bone, and opened a great wound in her belly, although considering her age and her frailty, folk were much surprised that she had the strength to do this. She gave up much blood, and grew very ill after this incident, but lingered without dying, and then gained some of her strength back. Some folk considered that she performed this act out of grief over the death of Kollgrim Gunnarsson, and some considered that she performed it out of shame at his crime and execution. In the fall, she came into possession of a bird arrow and succeeded in driving it into her breast so that it pierced her heart and she died from this. Folk considered, as they do, that perhaps this was the best thing after all, if her grief was so great, although, of course, self-murder is a sin and affront to the Lord, and bars
the soul from the hope of Heaven.

  Now the winter came on, and it was much different from the previous one, being very snowy in every district. There was a great deal of visiting from steading to steading and district to district, for the fine days were still and pleasant for skiing. After Yule, Gunnar Asgeirsson and Johanna Gunnarsdottir piled all of their furnishings on a great sledge that could be pulled through the valley that leads to Einars Fjord, and they and some of their men servants pulled these things behind them. At the landing beside Einars Fjord, which was frozen, Skeggi Thorkelsson met them with three horses, and the horses pulled the sledge the rest of the way to Gunnars Stead, where Gunnar had decided to remove himself, and so it was that at the beginning of Lent some thirty-two winters after leaving, Gunnar returned to the steading of his fathers in Vatna Hverfi district. It seemed to him that although his daughter and his servants were with him, and his other daughter and her children were around the hillside at Ketils Stead, and the baggage and food they carried with them caused a great deal of annoyance and labor, he was returning to this steading a destitute fellow, and as it were giving himself up to it, that when he would open the ancient wooden door, coopered from Markland fir, he would enter and disappear. But of course, this did not happen. He only lit a seal oil lamp and looked about, then set up his parchment so that he might write something down if it came to him.

  Jon Andres Erlendsson made many trips about the settlement in the course of the winter after the burning, and it seemed to folk that he wished to ingratiate himself with everyone in every district. Some folk declared that the burning was a great shame to him, but others did not know what to make of his actions, his smiles, his chat about sheep and cows and boats and all the business of the Greenlanders except the burning. But at the last, they all talked of this to him, too, for indeed, everyone wanted to know what the Gunnars Stead folk and the Ketils Stead folk were thinking, what had been done with the ashes, what had been said, what was planned. And so, though men vowed not to talk of this subject, Jon Andres was so agreeable and mild about it, that they did talk of it after all, and they did speculate about how it had come about that a man had been burned for such a little thing. What man had not gone with another’s wife? or at least another’s daughter or sister? If such things were to be punished in this wise, well, there would be no men left in Greenland, and that was a fact. Jon Andres nodded and smiled. He gave gifts, cheeses, dried sealmeat. He gave advice. He offered his rams and bull for breeding. He was a prosperous farmer and a well-known man. Folk were flattered at his attention. He came back to Gunnars Stead and he said to Gunnar, “It was Bjorn Bollason who suggested that they douse our brother in seal oil. If they had not done such a thing, there would not have been wood enough to carry out the burning.”

  “Who has told you this?”

  “Folk speak of it everywhere.”

  “But perhaps only those who have something against Bjorn Bollason?”

  “Nay, they praise him for it, though rather shamefacedly in front of me. They consider that he showed a little wit, as he did during the hunger, when he took provisions that had been stacked up at Gardar. Folk speak of him as an enterprising fellow, as good as the Icelanders in his way.” Now Jon Andres smiled bitterly.

  It seemed to Gunnar that this talk brought Kollgrim’s death throes into his mind more vividly and with more completeness than when he had stood there as a witness to them, so vividly that the pictures took his breath away, and he felt the burning smoke in his eyes that Kollgrim must have felt, and his own flesh shrank as Kollgrim’s must have shrunk from the heat, and this happened, also, that he felt a little flame in his innards that was the desire to crush Bjorn Bollason. And this desire came to him with as much urgency as any in his life—the desire to marry Birgitta, the desire to look upon his children, the desire to preserve Kollgrim from his fate. He said, “I have killed men twice in my life, and one of those times, the men who met their fates were your brothers. We dug that pit, and set the trap for them, and we were serious, but antic at the same time. It was a great chase, for deadly stakes, but our hearts were high with trickery, and running, and the secrecy of nighttime, and it might have been that they would have caught us and killed us and the contest would have gone the other way. When another man died, the Norwegian Skuli Gudmundsson, my foster brother Olaf and I went to the killing with heavy heart and more anger at the perfidy of women than at the fellow himself. Now I feel something else in my bosom that frightens me, and it is the will to make Bjorn Bollason suffer and suffer and suffer. To bring him into such agonies as a man should never know, to deny him shrift, to tear his flesh shred from shred. And how will I ever be forgiven for such a lust as this?”

  Jon Andres looked Gunnar in the face, and Gunnar saw that his daughter’s husband, a peaceful man, carried the same desire in his heart. The younger man shrugged his shoulders, and the two sat silently for some little time.

  Now it became known among the Greenlanders that Larus the Prophet and Sira Eindridi Andresson were much seen together these days, with Larus going back and forth to Gardar in the small Gardar boat, and Sira Eindridi going to Larus Stead, and standing outside and looking in when Larus was carrying on one of his little services. After this, Sira Eindridi said nothing about it, neither for it nor against it, and so some folk were made bolder in their attendance at them. Larus pretended not to care one way or another, but went on, always in low rounded tones, always telling this bit or that bit of his visions, always having a little something to eat after. Where there used to be three women for every man who came to the services, now there were almost as many men as women, and folk spoke openly about these things, even when they were with others who did not participate in them. He and Ashild and little Tota dressed as simply as possible, all in the same sort of long robe woven and pieced together by some of the women who came to the services. They went bareheaded, and wore no hood nor headdress, but indeed, folk said that they were as unpretentious as could be. After the burning, everyone waited eagerly for the bishop’s ship to come. Larus and Sira Eindridi were very assured about it, so assured that they did not look for it at all, but went about their business as if it weren’t ever going to come.

  The old mad priest, Sira Jon, died in this winter after the burning, and was carried out, wrapped in a fine silk shroud, and was as little as a child. The women who laid him out said among themselves that his hair had grown to his waist, and his eyebrows hung into his eyes, and his beard matted on his chest, and altogether, their duty had been an unpleasant one, for the lice jumped off him as lively as capelin jumping into the nets in summer. There was a great smell in his little chamber that had gotten into the very stones themselves, and the cook, not such a fastidious soul as a rule, said that nothing edible could be stored there, and so the door to the place was closed as tightly as it had been in the old fellow’s life, and most folk forgot that he had died, and two or three times, the cook made up his dinner, as she was accustomed to doing, and left it by habit for Sira Pall Hallvardsson to take to him.

  Sira Pall Hallvardsson was much crippled now, and had a boy who ran about for him, and either sat down or stood the whole time while he said the services in the cathedral.

  It also happened to Sira Pall Hallvardsson that after the death of Sira Jon, he found his food so distasteful that it nearly gagged him to eat of it, although always before he had been of good appetite. It was a tenet of his preaching that whatever the Lord gave men for their nourishment was wholesome to them, and it was good for them to eat their fill of it, unless for some special penance they had engaged to fast for a brief time. He had also early gotten a taste for the foods of the Greenlanders, as sour and pungent as they were. But now the very odors of his meat brought nauseating juices into his mouth, or else his mouth grew so dry that he could not chew what he took between his teeth. Those about him urged him to eat, as he had always urged Sira Jon, and he found himself toying with it in the same wise as Sira Jon had always toyed with his meat.

 
; He did not regret Sira Jon’s death, for it is a sin to do so, when a man has been shriven and reconciled with the Lord and his friends may be confident that he has received his best reward. But it was also the case that there were many hours of the day to fill that had been filled before with something—carrying food, or talking, or sitting nearby, or whatever. These days, Sira Pall could not exactly remember what they had been filled with, but these days, also, he sat a great deal in the high seat of the great Gardar hall and looked about himself, or lay in his bed in the dark hours, sleepless, or sat in the cathedral, praying, sometimes energetically, sometimes idly, but always with the sense that while things needed to be done, there was nothing for him to do.

  When he sat in the hall and looked about, it was his habit to remember the cathedral as it had once been, under the care of Bishop Alf, or even under the care of Sira Jon, a pleasant and well-kept spot, where folk took holy pleasure when they came. This was no longer the case. The floor was a mat of old and new rushes and leaves that gave off a rotting, dusty odor. The tapestries hung in blackened shreds, and no one dared to touch them, for the slightest pressure separated thread from thread, and they fell into bits on the floor. The altar furnishings were as black as could be, and dinted and bent. The high seat itself wobbled, for the joinings were coming apart, and the crucifix had a great crack now, that ran from the legend above His head, through His cheek, down the left side of His torso and His leg, so that the leg was separated from the body, and then through the lower limb of the crucifix. Once in a while a dream came to Sira Pall, in which he was praying with great fervor, lying on the floor beneath the crucifix, as he had not been able to do for some number of years, and the very pressure of his praying split the crucifix in two, so that as he looked up at it, it fell apart and toppled to the floor.