The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [125]
And it so happened that in the summer of 1381 a certain ship carrying Norwegian traders did arrive, a ship blown off course from Iceland, and the folk from this ship stayed at Herjolfsnes in the south. Still another ship appeared in the following summer, although much damaged, while the folk of the first ship were still at Herjolfsnes, and the folk on the new ship stayed for the winter at Brattahlid, and the captains of both these ships agreed to take the news of the bishop’s death to the chapter at Nidaros, and as payment for this favor, Sira Jon gave each captain something of worth. To the master of the first ship, which was called Olafssuden, he gave a pair of walrus tusks, and to the captain of the damaged ship, which was called Thorlakssuden, he gave a pair of white falcons, and these were the items of greatest value among the Gardar stores, for the wealth of Gardar was not as it had been, but even so, these shipmasters seemed little impressed with their gifts and the Greenlanders said that these Norwegians thought very well of themselves.
When it came time for the Olafssuden to return to Norway (the Thorlakssuden could not be repaired with such materials as were at hand), the two shipmasters went about getting provisions for their journey. In every instance when they were offered other goods for trade, they refused them, and denigrated their value, and maintained that they wished to keep their own goods for trade in Iceland. For the provisions they needed, they offered very little in the way of seed or pitch or iron goods or wood, much less than the Greenlanders considered their cheeses and dried reindeer flesh and dried sealmeat to be worth, and these two men were said to be stiff-necked and hard. Other shipmasters, especially Thorleif, were warmly recalled, and Thorleif’s ship as well, for it had been long and wide and deep and had carried such an abundance of goods and treasures that every Greenlander had been satisfied.
In the last days before the departure of these two in the summer of 1383, the master of the Thorlakssuden, a man by the name of Markus Arason, went about gathering payments for the wooden beams and laps of his broken ship, and those who refused to pay were told that they would have none of the driftage. This was contrary to the law of Greenland, which at this time said that driftwood was the property of that man whose strand it caught upon, but the Olafssuden’s master declared that he cared nothing for the law of Greenland, and that the ship would be burned to the water line if not paid for. And indeed, on the evening before the departure of the Olafssuden, the Thorlakssuden was broken apart with axes, and folk who had paid the Norwegian were given their beams and laps, and the rest of the wood was burned in a great bonfire, and his sailors stood about the fire with their axes to prevent anyone from throwing water upon it. And the Greenlanders considered this a great crime, but they were unable to prevent the departure of the Olafssuden, and this event was spoken of for some years.
Another topic of discussion among the Greenlanders was this, that following the killings of the Erlendssons by Gunnar Asgeirsson there occurred seven more killings in the course of five winters, and this was a greater number of killings than folk expected, and in addition to this, there were robberies and some rapes, and the desecration of the churchyard at the church in Herjolfsnes. Not all of these killings were properly announced, and in four of the cases, the killers went undiscovered, or at least, unpunished, for it is truly said that folk know more than they speak about. It was also true that those who desecrated the churchyard were thought to be sailors from the Thorlakssuden, and after the departure of the Norwegian’s men, it was a pleasure to the Greenlanders to blame these folk for all sorts of things.
But another thing was also true, and this was that the Greenlanders felt the absence