The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [108]
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.
Ragnvald was much downcast through the winter, and so spirit-ridden that he could neither sleep nor pay attention to his tasks, but woke up screaming every night and often entertained the ghosts of his sons and his wife, who had followed him southward.
The folk at Hvalsey Fjord were much concerned with these events, for there were fewer farms there, and the district was more subject than others to the comings and goings of groups of skraelings. For many years a band of skraelings had been in the habit of hunting whales at the mouth of Einars Fjord, where there are many islands. It was the practice of these demons to hide among a group of small islands in their skin boats, and one sign of their diabolical nature was that they could rest quietly in these boats even in rough seas for long periods of time if they knew that a family of leviathans was approaching. Greenlanders had once or twice gone with them, but it was impossible for men to sit so quietly as these skraelings. At the approach of the great sea beasts, the hunters would fix their harpoons, and then, quick as lightning, the barbed spear would hurtle into the flesh of any whale that surfaced. And then the other boats would descend upon the place like a flock of wheatears, and the demons would kill the beast with their harpoons and tie their boats together and float the beast to others standing on the shore. Some of the Greenlanders were much envious of this sort of hunting, for one whale could feed many folk for many days, but this sort of hunting is not in the nature of men, and whales come to Christians only by the grace of God.
This latter point had sometimes been the object of much debate among the folk of Hvalsey Fjord, for folk disagreed about whether whalemeat traded from the skraelings was wholesome to eat without being blessed, or even after being blessed. Sometimes folk grew sick from it and sometimes they did not. Sira Pall Hallvardsson had learned nothing of this at his school among the Flemish, and folk were greatly surprised at this, that such an important question was unconsidered