In the winter, as always in Greenland, every day was much the same, and every night. About the eaves, the snowy wind howled, but was muffled by the turfing. Snow mounded against the door, pressing it closed so that two men, or three, must press it open in the morning. The children sat in the bedcloset, by the light of a seal oil lamp, and played or slept. Jon Andres and Johanna sat over the chessboard, for folk may not contemplate their fates all the time, and must play as well as work. The great loom, upon which Margret Asgeirsdottir had woven her lengths of wadmal, and before her Helga Ingvadottir, and before her Maria Steinsdottir, and before her Asta Palssdottir, and many generations of wives before them, cast its black shadow across the wall. In front of Gunnar, on the table, the small seal oil lamp that he used flickered and burned for a moment more dimly and for a moment more brightly. He thought of going to his bedcloset and huddling under the old bearskin that his uncle Hauk Gunnarsson had left him, but then Johanna looked up from the game, with her cool and serious countenance, and said, “My father, it is very silent, except for the wind. You might enliven us with a tale.” And the children peeped out of the bedcloset, and Gunnar told his tale.
Jane Smiley, The Greenlanders
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