Birgitta put down her spinning and went for the case that held the scissors, as well as a piece of cloth for his shoulders and a stool for him to sit on. She possessed a fine ivory comb, made in Bergen and neatly carved, which was also kept in a case. This comb had come to her through her mother and was missing only two teeth. Now Gunnar sat down on the stool and Birgitta began to comb his hair upon his shoulders. Nalli stood up and trotted down the hillside before the farmstead and Gunnhild began to run after her, and little Helga after her. Many times the smaller child tumbled and rolled, and each time her sister came back and set her on her feet again. The dog came to the shore of the lake and began toward the byre, far outdistancing the girls, who stopped and sat down among the wild flowers on the hillside. Now Gunnar said, “Some would say that we have fallen on evil days.”
“No doubt some do say it,” replied Birgitta.
“Some say that there is little hope now of Gunnars Stead regaining the place it once had among the farms of Vatna Hverfi. It is true that Hafgrim himself, who came with Erik to Greenland, gave this farmstead to Gunnar Asgeirsson, and there was always one great field to feed folk and one great field to grow prosperous on.”
Birgitta took out the scissors and began to snip along the bottom fringe of Gunnar’s hair. She said, “Some would say that in these days, one field feeds you in the summer and the other feeds you in the winter. The richest farms eat some of their breeding stock before the winter is over, not only middling farms such as ours.”
Now Birgitta went to put away the scissors, but Gunnar stopped her, and asked her to cut more off. Then he said, “Even so, the evilest days have not come when one can look upon one’s children tumbling about and laughing, and see one’s wife as you are, and sit upon one’s own stool for the pleasure of a haircut.”
Birgitta smiled.
“Gunnhild is much like you. She looks about her, and sees what her eyes fall upon. She laughs little but smiles often, and she takes great pains over her dress and her hair. When I am with her, it seems to me that she is my favored child.”
Birgitta caught her comb in the hair and lifted it up, then snipped off what the comb held.
“Then Helga comes to me and climbs upon my lap and speaks nonsense exactly as if it were gossip, and looks into my face for a reply, and it seems to me that she is my favored child, although she is as unlike Gunnhild as she could be.”
Now Gunnar’s hair fell evenly to the middle of his neck, and Birgitta once again went to put away her scissors, but he stopped her and asked her to cut it shorter. Then he went on. “Soon,” he said, “another child will be brought to me, a boy, as you have told me from your dreams, and this child will be as different from the others as can be, and as appealing. And yet, I find lately that I do not look for this with pleasure, but only with fear, for the evilest days are yet to come, and not far off.”
Now Birgitta had cut the hair very short, so that it looked like a priest’s fringe, and she put away the scissors. Gunnar ran his hands over the bristles. She said, “These things may come to pass as you say, for only you know your intentions.”
“Sira Pall Hallvardsson is right in this, that there is such pleasure in enmity that after a while it cannot be left off even if one would will it. Another thing is also true, that when a quarrel is new, one’s friends hold one back, and give cool advice, but when it is long-standing, folk put off its end and goad the rivals.”
“If by this you mean that there is talk of what goes on about the district, and everyone must add a bit and let nothing go unremarked upon, that is indeed true.”
Gunnar turned and looked at her, but her eye was always partly on the two little girls, who were now plodding slowly up the hill. “It may come to pass that Lavrans will regret giving you to me, as folk said he would at the time.”
“It may, but if so, then he should come to me and find out what I think, as he did at the time. This is my thought, that for every soul, something must come to pass, and for everything that does come to pass, every soul can imagine many things that might have come to pass, all of them less evil than what actually fell out. Folk must have something to think on, or they would be unable to hope for Heaven or remember Paradise.”
And to this Gunnar made no reply, but carried the stool and the cloth inside. Soon after this, Birgitta and Gunnhild and Helga went to the bedcloset and made ready for sleep. Birgitta did not ask, as she always did, when Gunnar would be coming to bed. A while later, as dusk was falling, he went out.
Beside the cowbyre Gunnar encountered seven men, and besides Olaf and Finn Thormodsson, these were Axel Njalsson and his two sons Bessi and Arni and in addition to them Thorkel Gellison and his son Skeggi. Each of these men carried no weapons, but each carried a spade and Finn carried a bundle of something tied together and wrapped in a reindeer hide. Now they went to Asgeir’s second field, as it was still called around Gunnars Stead, and began to dig a long, deep ditch across the edge of the field, like a reindeer pit, but wider. The men were strong and the work went quickly. After it was deep enough, Finn went along the length of the ditch, and distributed the contents of his bundle, which turned out to be the antlers of reindeer and also the ribs, sharpened at one end to a keen point. After he had finished, the men laid willow brush thinly across the opening, and, on top of that, mats of grass woven by Finn to look like turf.
Now it was not long before sunrise, and the men went to Ketils Stead, where they loosed all of the cows, and one of these Gunnar killed, and slit open its belly, and inside he placed a little figure of a man carved of soapstone. Now the band of men stood off a little ways while Gunnar and Olaf went to the doors of the farmhouse, for it was a large building with two doors, and they pounded on them, shouting, “Rise, sleepers, rise! The cows have gotten into the homefield!” The first one out was Kollbein Erlendsson, in his nightshirt and to him Gunnar sang out the following verse:
In the farmyard lies a pregnant beast
Within, there sits the son of a whore.
How black is the cooking pot?
How leaky is the kettle?
Now Hallvard Erlendsson came forth, followed by two servingmen, and Gunnar and Olaf backed away, for they could see that the servingmen were armed with axes. Soon enough Ketil Ragnarsson himself came out, and he too carried an ax, and he was the first to see the effigy of himself in the cow’s belly. Now everyone was up and attempting to herd the cows out of the homefield, but the Ketils Stead herd was large and the cows lively and independent. The band of folk from Gunnars Stead were barely within sight by the time that Erlend’s sons and Ketil had armed themselves and their men and begun to chase them.
Gunnar’s men moved slowly, staying well within sight, and calling out to the others from time to time, so that Ketil was soon beside himself with rage. Now Gunnar and the others came to the second field and began to walk across it. Gunnar looked about himself and remarked to Olaf that it was still a beautiful piece of ground, and Olaf nodded. After this, Gunnar began to run, and Ketil’s folk to run after him, and the pursuers appeared to be gaining. The Gunnars Stead folk ran between the ditches, on the narrow paths they had left, but in the blue light of early sunrise, these were not so visible to the others, and, much like reindeer, they fell through the brush and into the pits, Ketil, Kollbein, and Hallvard first, for they were in the lead, and one of their servants after, for he was just behind Ketil, and fell upon him, but the others had been a step slower, and were able to stop themselves.
And it happened that the three brothers were impaled upon the stakes in the pits, and Gunnar and his men ran back to the pits, and prevented the Ketils Stead servants from aiding the dying men. There was great groaning until the men died. When this had happened, Gunnar and his men went to a nearby farm, where the folk were just rising for the day, and they announced the killings of Ketil Ragnarsson, Kollbein Erlendsson, and Hallvard Erlendsson.
At Gunnars Stead, the servingfolk came out of their sleeping places and Birgitta saw that Olaf and Finn were no
t among them, and she bade the women to begin putting all of the housewares into chests, and the children’s clothing and toys. And after they had done this, she went to Svava Vigmundsdottir and bade her to return to Kristin in Siglufjord, and then she went around to each of the other maids, and sent them on their ways to other farmsteads. Then she bade the men to begin carrying the chests to the new Gunnars Stead boat where it sat in Austfjord. And by the time Gunnar returned with the news of the deaths, the farmstead was empty of furnishings.
Gunnar gave his four horses to the men who had helped him—two to Axel and his sons, and two to Thorolf and Skeggi. Olaf called his five sheep dogs to him, and he killed the three old ones, including Nalli. After this Gunnar, Olaf, Birgitta, Finn, Gunnhild, and Helga went to the boat and embarked, and they rowed to Hvalsey Fjord and announced the killings. And after this they lived at Lavrans Stead in Hvalsey Fjord, and Gunnars Stead was the following year confiscated by the Thing and awarded to Erlend. This farm Erlend gave to Vigdis, so that it would, he said, remind her of the consequences of her schemes. Erlend had asked in his case for greater outlawry and death for Gunnar, but certain powerful men, led by Thorkel Gellison, said of Gunnar that he had been greatly provoked by damages done to him through the agency of Ketil Ragnarsson, and so he was only sentenced to lesser outlawry, which meant the payment of compensation, for there was no going abroad.
Lavrans’ farmstead at Hvalsey Fjord was smaller and poorer than Gunnars Stead had been, but the fact was that all of Birgitta’s best livestock was there, now numbering some fifty or sixty beasts. These, with Lavrans’ own flock, made a sizable holding. And Finn Thormodsson was with them. It was here that the boy she expected was born to Birgitta, and at the last minute before the baptism, she recalled Asgeir Gunnarsson, the child who had died, and the name seemed ill-omened to her. So she told the priest to name him after Lavrans’ father, that was, Kollgrim. And Kollgrim Gunnarsson was a fat and bonny babe, and all went well with him.
THE DEVIL
IT HAPPENED IN THE AUTUMN OF THIS YEAR 1378 THAT RAGNVALD Einarsson, who lived with his folk at Solar Fell in Eriks Fjord, grew very suspicious and apprehensive, so that he often saw apparitions among the icebergs in the fjord, and he was never so happy during the whole summer as when the fjord was free of ice, and never so haunted as in the time after the seal hunt, when icebergs, small and large, began to calve and cluster between his farmstead and the two beaches where he had killed one skraeling and allowed the other to escape. Tidings that Ragnvald Einarsson was spirit-ridden were greeted with much interest all around Eriks Fjord and Gardar, for Ragnvald was a prosperous and powerful man.
Now one day toward the end of the summer half year, some days after St. Michael’s mass, folk at Solar Fell were engaged in making preparations for the winter, and were busy slaughtering sheep. On this day, Ragnvald’s spirits seemed to lift, and he no longer stared out into the fjord, but instead admired his fat sheep and handsome children, including especially his young grandson, Olaf Vebjarnarson, who had been born the previous fall. Late in the morning, one of Ragnvald’s servingmen came to him and declared that he had seen a strange boat in the water, such a boat as appeared and then disappeared, neither a skin boat, as skraelings paddle, nor a wooden boat, as Norsemen row. Ragnvald said that this would be a peculiar sight indeed, and laughed heartily at the idea. However, his children and servingfolk grew uneasy, and began casting glances toward the fjord.
Sometime after this, when most of the sheep had been slaughtered, Ragnvald’s folk built a fire and began singeing the hair off the heads of the slaughtered sheep. Ragnvald himself oversaw this operation, in the company of his wife, who was a sturdy, gray-haired woman named Svanhild Erlingsdottir, and had produced five sons and three daughters for Ragnvald. When this job had been done, and the sheeps’ heads carried into the storehouse, the folk went inside for their evening meal, leaving one servingman, Gaut, tending the fire and boiling a large vat of water for washing wadmal cloth. All of a sudden, Gaut ran to the door of the house and shouted that the skraelings were coming, and all of Ragnvald’s folk streamed out of the house, but they saw nothing. Ragnvald himself reassured them, saying, “It is only that the ice is so thick in the fjord.” They went back to their meal, and Gaut back to his work.
While Gaut was engaged in putting driftwood on the fire, a strange iceberg floated to shore, and figures silently slipped out of it and silently ran up the strand, and one of these figures, who were skraelings after all, dealt Gaut a blow on the head with a rock. Blood and gray matter spilled out onto the turf. Then the skraelings grabbed the burning faggots from the fire and carried these and some other brush they had brought with them to Ragnvald’s farmhouse and set the turf afire. And the turf went up very quickly, for it was the end of summer: little rain had come yet, and no snow.
The skraelings were diabolical in this, that they filled the doorway with brush and whale oil-dipped faggots, so that those who attempted to escape by the door were burned to death. Among these was Svanhild. It happened, however, that Ragnvald himself escaped through a back passage with his grandson Olaf in his arms, and he fled at first up the hills toward Isafjord, but the skraelings cut off that route, and so he turned and ran along the fjord toward Brattahlid with the child screaming in his arms. Many skraelings pursued him, both on foot and in skin boats, and he grew despairing, for he saw that they had many arrows in their quivers. Ragnvald was sure of death, both for himself and for his grandson, and much talk had gone around of what the skraelings were known to do with the children of men, such as roast them like sealmeat and drink their blood, and so, fearing such a fate for his beloved grandson, Ragnvald came to the fjord and threw the child into the water, while at the same time repeating the last prayers, as it is spelled out in the laws. The child drowned, but was assured of Heaven, and Ragnvald ran on. As it turned out, the skraelings were unable to catch him, and he came to the farms of Brattahlid district. The number of those killed, including Olaf Vebjarnarson, amounted to fifteen. A large band of skraelings settled at Ragnvald’s steading, and took prisoner two of Ragnvald’s shepherd boys.
Those Greenlanders who were in the habit of trading with the skraelings soon had news of this fight from the demons they traded with, and this was, that a certain warrior by the name of Kissabi was resolved to kill Ragnvald himself, for Ragnvald had killed his brother, cut off the brother’s arm, and shamed Kissabi with it. Other than this, it was discovered that two of the skraelings had been killed in this fight. During this winter, Ragnvald moved to the southern fork of Hrafns Fjord and took over an abandoned farm there. As many of his children and folk as had survived the attack at Solar Fell came to live with him, and this included two daughters and one son and one daughter’s husband and nine servingfolk. One of these daughters was named Gudny, and her husband had been the Solmund who was shot by the arrow of the second skraeling when he was innocently gathering shells. She was now married to a man named Halldor Grimsson, and these two lived with their baby son Grim at Hrafns Fjord with Ragnvald.
Folk in every district spoke about this attack until Yule, through Lent, and past Easter, for it was the greatest event to take place in Greenland for many years, and now folk looked upon the skraelings with renewed fear and contempt. Some men, Erlend Ketilsson among them, gained great respect from this attack, for Erlend had always refused to trade with the skraelings and to learn any of their language, for, he said, those who speak the tongue of the devil will soon be doing the devil’s work. Vigdis, too, spoke of this, and she said that she looked for the great conflict between Goodness and Evil in her own lifetime, when the skraelings would come down from the north in myriads and overrun the farms of men, and they would cease to look like men, as they did now, but be revealed as giants and trolls. At this time there was a prayer that began to be repeated during services, and this prayer went:
Lord, we see Thee in Thy might,
Higher than the cliffs of white,
Greater than the ocean gales,
> Thou who mad’st both bear and whale.
We call to Thee, Father and Son,
Look down upon these lowly ones,
Scattered thinly in these hills,
Beset by demons and devils.
This prayer was the work of the Greenlander priest Sira Audun, and was highly thought of by every one of the Greenlanders.
Certain men thought differently than Erlend did, those who had grown rich trading with the skraelings, or were married to skraeling women and had their wives’ mothers with them on their farmsteads. These men remarked on how exactly the skraelings’ attack had matched Ragnvald’s attack upon the skraelings after the killing of Solmund; but the killing of Solmund was itself a sore subject, as it had been unprovoked.
Another tale much repeated was the tale of the drowning of Olaf Vebjarnarson, and Ragnvald was greatly praised for his course of action, although much pitied for the extremity of desperation he had found himself in. There began to be talk of how little Olaf might be made a saint for this, and Sira Jon declared that there had to be evidence of miracles. Some declared that a holy glow emanated from the water where Olaf was drowned.
The case was that the Greenlanders could do nothing about the skraelings living at Solar Fell, as they did not have enough weapons to make a proper attack, not enough boats to come by sea nor enough skis to come over the hill from Isafjord, and so it was judged better to leave the skraelings be through the winter. By spring hot blood had cooled, and men thought more carefully of the bloodshed and death that would be involved in such an undertaking. Ragnvald, after all, lived far to the south, at Hrafns Fjord, and was not present to excite the anger of the other farmers.