At the farmstead, Asta had begun to look for Koll’s visit, for it was at this time of the summer and in such weather, brisk and bright, that he often came to her. This waiting was little agreeable to her, for fear was mixed with eagerness so that she alternately dreaded and yearned for the first sudden meeting. On the one hand, she had grown familiar with and almost fond of Koll’s face, so that it seemed as commonplace to her as any Norse face she knew. On the other hand, she had not gotten accustomed to the smell that arose from his clothing and his hands and his hair, and this came over her like a miasma, freshly each time. Fortunately, however, it seemed to go away after he had been near her for a while. Koll also seemed to share her fondness for Sigurd, whom he called by a name in the skraeling tongue. He always brought the boy exquisite gifts, finer even than those he had brought Asta to win her. The boy slept between two snowy white bearskins and as a baby had been swaddled in a length pieced from the fur of blue and white foxes. There were also carvings of ivory and two lamps of the skraeling style as well as various weapons and tools that Asta thought little of but kept for the boy.
As a balance to this anticipation, Asta had a great fear of Koll’s other fondnesses when he saw her, for he came for the purpose of having intercourse, that was plain to see, and this activity seemed odd and not a little shocking. She had learned at his first reappearance, about a year after the marriage proposal, that to run or scream merely inflamed him and gave him greater strength. And yet the penetration itself, the pinning of her arms and the writhing of his flesh against her made her gasp and choke. This was a thing he wished to do many times during each visit. Each time he did it, Asta thought of Sira Isleif and regretted her sin, for this was sin indeed, but after each time was over, it seemed a small thing in retrospect, and little to pay for such boons as Sigurd and the gifts and, even, the fondness of Koll himself, who slapped her flanks and laughed at her flesh, and chattered about it in the skraeling tongue as if it were a thing of great beauty and pride to him.
Now she sat Sigurd in front of the steading with a basin of water and some other vessels, both whole and broken, and Sigurd set about pouring the water back and forth among the vessels. Then Asta went into the steading and carried out all of the skins of the two beds, and laid them on the hillside in the sun. Then she gathered some birch branches and lashed them together with a willow whip and began to beat the skins so that the fleas and lice rose out of them as well as dirt and dust. After that, she took a comb and set about combing the remaining vermin out of Sigurd’s bearskins, and this was something she did four or five times in a summer, more often than most folk, because she was very particular about such things.
As she was engaged in this, Sigurd got up from his play and came over to the furs and began to lie down upon them and roll around on them, laughing merrily, for they were soft and clean and sweet to the skin, and though he was undoing her work, Asta was incapable of wrath at her son, and she merely laughed with him and knelt down and ruffled his hair and put her face close to his and looked at him. His mother’s admiration moved the boy to jump up and begin running back and forth on the flat place in front of the steading, as fast as he could. Then he began to gather small stones and toss them down the hill toward the water, for it was his fixed desire to stand just in front of the steading and throw a stone so that it went into the water, although the strip of hillside was some fifty paces in width. He threw these stones with great intensity of thought, one after the other. Asta went back to her work, and finished combing the skins and began to carry them indoors.
In the shade of the steading was a vat of ewe’s milk from the morning, and beside it a smaller one from the evening before. Asta went over to these and looked at the milk, then gathered some small pieces of driftwood and a clump of sheep’s dung and built a small fire. On this she set a soapstone pot, and into that she poured the night’s milk, letting it heat until she could just barely endure to touch it with her finger. Then she poured it out into the morning’s milk. Now she went into the steading and got a small basin of buttermilk from the butter making of the day before, and poured it into the milk. After this she took Sigurd farther down the slope so that there would be no chance of his coming against the vat of milk or disturbing it in any way. She sat with him on the lower slope, looking across to Brattahlid, and she played with him a game that involved their four hands, where she put one of her hands down upon her leg, and he covered it with one of his, and she covered his, and he put his on top. Then she removed her bottom hand and put it on top, and he did the same, and they did this, taking turns, faster and faster. This was the one game Asta could remember playing as a child, and Sigurd enjoyed it very much and could go very fast without becoming confused. Then Asta got up and returned up the hill and gazed upon the vat of milk, and she put her finger into the mixture so that a hole was made that filled up with whey, and from this she knew that the curds were ready to be cut. She went into the steading and returned with a long blade made from the shoulder bone of a reindeer and sharpened, and she cut the curd four times, not hesitating to remove such pieces as Sigurd had a desire for, for fresh curd was a favorite treat with him. And so she went on with the cheesemaking, until the end of the day, when she set the cheese to drip over the vat, wrapped in a piece of clean wadmal and hanging from the eaves of the steading by a hook made from a reindeer antler. And on this day, Koll made no appearance.
Margret returned with the sheep and folded them, and Sigurd went to her and was pleased to see her and carried to her some stones of peculiar shapes and made a gift of them to her. In return she presented him with an ancient ram’s horn she had found near the old steading farther up the fjord, and when she came into the steading she could see that Koll had not yet come, and of this she was somewhat glad, for it seemed to her when he did come that it fell upon her as mistress to put a stop to these visits, and yet she could not bring herself to do it, and made many excuses and so he came like this every half year, drawing mistress and servant deeper and deeper into sin.
And after Sigurd went to the bedcloset, the two women sat spinning just outside the door of the steading, by the light of the late sun, and though they did this almost every night of the year, even at Brattahlid, these recent nights they did something else, also, and that was wait. And this new thing that they did made the customary spinning seem especially tedious and difficult. Margret saw that this is how it is that folk are made to desire what they know they should not have, they are made to wait for it, so that when it comes, no matter how dark and full of sin and repellent it is, they are glad enough to welcome it.
It happened that Bjorn Einarsson Jorsalfari stayed among the Greenlanders year after year, and he performed his office as the king’s revenue officer just as they wished he might, for he took little revenue from them, and none that he did not pay for with some goods as the Greenlanders wished to have. He traded from time to time with the skraelings and got from them good wares. In addition to this, he saw to the punishment of two men who killed a third man, in the southern part of Vatna Hverfi district, and also of a man who killed his wife out of anger, a man who lived behind Brattahlid where the river came down to Isafjord. There were some boys who smashed up the boat of a neighbor, who were required by Bjorn to put the boat in good order, and there was other business that he did in the southern region, at Herjolfsnes, having to do with a dispute over a stranded whale (for Herjolfsnes sits at the outer reaches of Herjolfs Fjord, and the folk there often have such disputes) and at Arosvik he settled a dispute between the farmers and the church concerning services owed to the church, although the church building itself was in great disrepair and Sira Audun had refused to preach there, insisting instead that the Arosvik folk, of which there were about forty, journey to Petursvik for services. Bjorn Einarsson reprimanded both the folk of Arosvik and Sira Audun and made peace between them, and he decided other cases as well, in as judicious a manner as could be wished for. When he didn’t sail away by the end of the second summer, folk cease
d speculating when he would leave Greenland. He was much liked by all.
It happened that during Lent of Bjorn’s third winter in Greenland there was a hunger similar to the hunger of twelve winters before, only it struck differently, so that the folk in Vatna Hverfi and to the south were greatly affected but the folk at Brattahlid and at Gardar and at Hvalsey Fjord, where the summer weather had been drier and brighter, were not so affected. And the first person to die in this famine was Erlend Ketilsson. This is how it came about. It was still the case that Erlend and Vigdis were living apart, the one at Ketils Stead and the other at Gunnars Stead, and some of the servants were living with one and some were living with the other, except that Erlend’s servants had a habit of leaving him and going off to Gunnars Stead, for matters were better ordered there, and Vigdis, for all her niggardly ways, treated all fairly. There was much intercourse between the servants of both places, and when the servants who had stayed with Erlend gossiped with those who had gone with Vigdis, they were often persuaded to change places. Vigdis was much pleased by this, and rewarded any who came to her with extra food and pleasant tasks. In the meantime, she spoke evil of the servingmaid Ulfhild, who had recently had a daughter by Erlend.
Now this Ulfhild was only some eighteen winters in age, and the daughter of a servingwoman herself, and it was easy to see that she was not a little defeated by the variety of business at Ketils Stead. She did not see how it happened that the storehouses that had once been full had become empty and the servants who had once sat happily at the benches with their trenchers were now departed. As for Erlend, folk said that he fell upon the girl without resting or ceasing, even in the sinful time when she was with child. His antics raised a good deal of laughter about the district, and folk recalled how quickly Vigdis herself had produced a daughter and four sons, although only one of these was still alive.
At Gunnars Stead, though the summer was a cool and damp one, Vigdis’ folk were out early and busily, manuring the fields where they could and making expeditions to the fjord for seaweed and to the hillside for angelica and bilberries. At Ketils Stead there was none of this, and what work the remaining servants did was done late and with little will, for the servants saw the idleness of the master and mimicked it.
The short tale of this is that Ketils Stead sheep were lost, cheeses went unmade, cows died in calving because no one was there to help them. Birds in the mountains went unsnared, herbs and berries went ungathered, and Ulfhild gave out things from the storehouses in the middle of summer. Still, everyone in the district was much taken with surprise when Erlend failed to send out messengers with invitations to the usual Ketils Stead feast, and were surprised again when only a few of the Ketils Stead folk appeared at Undir Hofdi church for the Yule services of Sira Audun. But it was also true that Erlend now drove people off sometimes when they came toward Ketils Stead, and so no one cared to go there. It was said that any number of new young women would have no effect on Erlend’s temper, which used to be sour, was sour now, and would always be sour. In this fashion the days went by before and after Yule, until at last Vigdis yielded and sent one of her servingmen to Ketils Stead with a message, and this man went on skis and found the door to the steading drifted shut with snow, and when he got it open, he discovered only the dogs alive, and that because they had been gnawing the bones of the folk, which numbered five—Erlend, Ulfhild, two elderly servingmen, and the babe. And this was a tale told avidly in Vatna Hverfi district for a few weeks, until it became clear during Lent that this tale might not be the last such of the winter.
This mischance was followed by another one, this one in Hrafns Fjord and Siglufjord, where the nuns’ cloister and the monastery lay. Here it happened that the January thaw was followed by a driving storm of rain that drenched the sheep that had been let out to forage, and filled their eyes and noses so that they were maddened and panicked, and many of them fell over cliffs into the fjords or stumbled into clefts and broke their necks and died, and by the time the rain was over and folk had found their lost sheep, the carcases were rotten from the warm weather, and so Thord Magnusson of Siglufjord and four other farmers and their men went north to Vatna Hverfi district on horseback, although the mud was very deep, and they went seeking food from the Vatna Hverfi folk, who had little to spare. After this Thord and his friends and two men from Vatna Hverfi district went on skates to Gardar, though after the thaw it was considered by many that the ice in Einars Fjord would be treacherous and thin. But Thord would not be dissuaded, and the men arrived at Gardar safely, and at Gardar all was much as usual, and folk were getting up from their meat sated before the meat was gone. Now Sira Jon sent a messenger to Bjorn Einarsson at Thjodhilds Stead and some three days later twelve Eriks Fjord farmers and twenty servants besides appeared dragging sledges over the ice, and these sledges were laden with dried meat and cheese and sour butter, and to this Sira Jon added what he could, which was not a little, and thus the folk of the south were saved, and only those at Ketils Stead and three more who lived at outlying farms, including one outlaw, died in this hunger.
Now the spring came on, and the ice broke up under the winds off the inland ice, and was swept out of the fjords. The farms of the south were much diminished of their sheep and goats and especially cattle, and it happened that some farms were abandoned at Alptafjord and at the head of Ketils Fjord and the folk from these farms moved their belongings down the fjord to Herjolfsnes, where there dwelt a rich and powerful family, still after many generations the lineage of Herjolf and Bjarni Herjolfsson, who was the first man to sight Markland. These Herjolfsnes folk, because their steading had been built near the ocean, had bad years that were stormier and good years that were more prosperous than most folk, and in addition to this, they were a family of sailors. Herjolfsnes was always the first landing place for ships that came to Greenland and the last for ships that were leaving. The folk of Herjolfsnes wore the most outlandish clothing, and prided themselves on attending to what was going on elsewhere in the world of men. The head of this family was named Snaebjorn and he had three sons named Ari, Sigtrygg, and Flosi. All of these men were experienced sealers and whalers, and the Herjolfsnes folk relished sealmeat and whalemeat even more than the Hvalsey Fjord folk. They also had some knowledge of the ways of the skraelings in their skin boats, but, of course, little of their skills, for these are reserved to demons and closed to the minds of men. Nevertheless, between the seals and the whales and the bird cliffs and the coming of ships from afar, the Herjolfsnes folk lived a life that was somewhat peculiar, and it was said in other districts that the hunger back in Alptafjord must have been severe to drive those folk to Herjolfsnes.
Another thing that happened after this hunger was that Bjorn Einarsson Jorsalfari declared his intention of remaining year round at Thjodhilds Stead, which was in Kambstead Fjord, at the back of Hvalsey Fjord, instead of spending part of the year at one farm and part of the year at the other, for he hadn’t enough men to make something of both farmsteads, and he preferred the location of Thjodhilds Stead, for it gave his ships easy access to the sea but also to Gardar and Brattahlid. For this reason it happened that Gunnhild Gunnarsdottir would be within a day’s walk of her own home when she went to stay with Solveig for the summer. She was now fourteen winters in age, and it was necessary to take this course for her to learn the ways of her new family, who after all were not Greenlanders and would for this reason do things differently from the Greenland way.
Gunnhild was now half a head taller than her mother and fully grown, so that she seemed to be three or four winters older than she was. She held herself with pride and reserve, which also made her seem less girlish, and she knew well how to spin and weave and sew and make cheese and butter and look after small children, and so when she came to Birgitta one day, after Birgitta had nursed Johanna and took the baby into her arms, Birgitta smiled at her and declared that she carried the little one with as much ease as if it were her own.
“Perhaps, then,” said Gunnhild, “
I might stay home for another summer, because Johanna is happier with me than she is with Helga, and she cries after me when I leave her.”
Birgitta smiled now and said, “Even so, Johanna is learning to walk, and everyone knows that the first thing a baby does when she learns to walk is she walks away from those who care for her. And that is a good time for parting.”
“Lavrans says you were not sent off before you were married.”
“But, indeed, I was wed at your age, and, in addition, Gunnars Stead daughters always went off, and then it is not so burdensome to them when they leave for good. It is the way with you that you are always reluctant to begin with, but happy when the beginning is over. I have more faith in you than I do in Helga, who rushes into things and is afterward filled with regret.”
“Helga can’t persuade Kollgrim or Astrid to do their tasks.”
“When you are away, she will learn how.”
Now Johanna, who had been sitting on Gunnhild’s hip, leaned forward and cried to be put down, and so Gunnhild set her on her feet and she took a few steps to the bedcloset and began to walk around it, holding on and looking to Birgitta and Gunnhild for praise. Gunnhild was distracted by this from her thoughts and began to laugh, and Birgitta jumped up and made her escape, for indeed, the plans that they had made for Gunnhild made her somewhat uneasy, and she found it not a little difficult to talk to the child. Since the betrothal and Bjorn’s move to Thjodhilds Stead there had been some visiting back and forth, with feasting and tale-telling and the usual amusements. The case was that Birgitta and her family did their best to show themselves happy and welcoming to the Thjodhilds Stead folk, and Bjorn and Solveig did the same, and yet, when Birgitta and Gunnar went to the other farmstead, they were annoyed by the stiffness of things, and Solveig’s affected manner, and when Bjorn and Solveig visited, Birgitta could see that they, and especially Solveig, were attempting to overlook this and that, out of conscious generosity. Always Solveig’s eyes went around the room with veiled dismay, and then fell upon Gunnhild, and Birgitta could see that the other woman was thinking that at least the girl was lovely to look at. Solveig herself was not, and Birgitta found this increasingly disturbing, for each time she saw the other woman she seemed to see only her jiggling chin or the peculiar way she sniffed and blinked when she was talking. During and after these times, she prayed mightily for the grace to look past Solveig’s earthly appearance to her soul within, for the woman was as kind as she could be, but the next time Birgitta always failed again.