The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [111]
One autumn, two ships containing all of the brothers and uncles set out from Norway, hoping to come to Greenland by the beginning of winter, and the short tale of this is that both ships were lost, one at Cap Farvel and one only the Lord Himself knows where, because it vanished. Thus it was that of all the men in his family, which numbered eight strong fellows and Thorbjorn, only Thorbjorn was left.
The family were greatly grieved of course, but Thorbjorn saw that the many cattle were taken care of and the women kept up the household economy, and so they considered themselves happy enough, and the farm was so rich, with such an abundance of goods, that it seemed to everyone that life on this steading could go on as it had forever. But of course, it went on as it had for only two winters, and at the end of the second winter, servingmen began pulling down the carved staves and throwing them upon the fire, for folk hate to be cold when they are hungry, and almost all of the cows and sheep had been slaughtered except those Thorbjorn wanted to use for breeding. These were folk who had never been hungry before, and they thought that if they had food, they had best eat it all and have a full stomach, as if a full stomach would last longer before it longed to be full again, and so, although they were plump and pink of cheek, Thorbjorn’s folk were always complaining of hunger pains and begging him to slaughter a sheep or a cow, for something was bound to happen that would replace the cow or sheep. Thorbjorn himself was sure of this, also, and still looked for the vanished ship that had carried his brothers and uncles to their doom. He spoke often of what would be on this ship, and how his folk would be saved when it came. But in that summer after the second winter it still did not come, and in the autumn, all of the servants had to be sent away, and Thorbjorn himself undertook to care for the beasts.
At the beginning of this third winter all of the carved staves of all of the outbuildings had been used up, and so Thorbjorn began pulling down the staves around the main house, and these lasted for a few weeks, although the fires got smaller and smaller. After that, he pulled down the decorations inside the steading and burned them, and these lasted about a week. Then he threw on the carved chairs, with their arms in the shape of lions’ heads and hounds’ heads and their feet in the shape of claws. At one chair per day, these chairs lasted twenty days. At Yule, Thorbjorn began breaking up the bedclosets and throwing that wood on the fire, and there were so many of these that Thorbjorn was sure they would last until spring and the return of the second ship. The gold-embossed cradles went on the fire, and benches and barrels—Thorbjorn’s folk drove him on as if under a spell of frenzy, for they were never warm, and talked always of how warm they had been a few years before. The wallhangings went on the fire, the trenchers, and, at last, all of the bedclosets, and still it wasn’t spring, and there was no warmth in the air, and the fresh breezes of Hvalsey Fjord blew into every crevice and chink, and the folk were nearly mad with the cold.
It happened that Thorbjorn still had two cows and one bull, and he went out one day to the byre to feed them. It was about twenty steps to the byre from the farmstead, and as Thorbjorn was making his way, a great storm blew up, suddenly, as storms do in Hvalsey Fjord, and in the midst of this storm, Thorbjorn saw that there was a man standing beside the byre, wrapped in a beautiful cloak of marten fur from Markland. The man came up to him, and spoke to him, and his words could be readily made out, even in the din of the storm, and the man said, “Thorbjorn, you need a little steading cloaked in turf. I have one, may I give it to you?” And Thorbjorn said, “Nay, a big hall is a fine thing to look at.”
And so the man said, “Thorbjorn, I have some sheep trotters in my pouch here. You might