The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [106]
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