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By Root 2117 0

of the bishop and, as far as that went, of the king’s ombudsman Kollbein Sigurdsson, and disputes were too often decided between men on the spot, without the counsel of the prosperous farmers of a district. Since the coming of Bishop Alf, fewer and fewer men had bothered to make the long journeys that they had once made, either to Gardar at Yule and Easter for the celebration in the cathedral, or to Brattahlid just after the mass of St. Jon the Baptist in the summer, and Osmund Thordarson, the lawspeaker himself, declared that there was little he could do to persuade men to leave their farms in the middle of summer when there was much work to be done. Others said, perhaps truly, that there was little that Osmund tried to do, in fact. But the result was that some years Osmund was left to recite the laws to not more than two dozen men, and few cases were brought and only half of the thirteen district judges were present at any rate.

Sometimes folk declared that this was a great scandal, and other times they said that after all no murders had occurred in their district, or near their steadings, or only one, and the killer was known and would not kill again, for this is also true, that no matter how evil times become, they are not so evil as they might be, and even Erlend and Vigdis lived from day to day, and did their work, and carried on much as before, and if this was possible for them, then how much more possible would it be for others, who had not suffered as they had? Even so, there came to be some little dissatisfaction with Osmund Thordarson. He was too genial, or too careless, or too old—each complaint was different, but every man had one.

It happened that about two summers after the departure of the Olafssuden, another ship appeared in Einars Fjord, a large, richly painted vessel with a beautiful red and gold sail. Its master, a prosperous Icelander by the name of Bjorn Einarsson, was called Jorsalfari, or “Jerusalem traveler,” for he had taken a ship to Jerusalem and to many other places as well, including Rome and Spain as well as the more usual places. What was especially interesting to the Greenlanders was that his wife was with him, a woman who was very richly and fashionably dressed. A scribe traveled with him as well, his foster son Einar, who wrote down all of Bjorn’s adventures and all of his discoveries.

In addition to Bjorn Einarsson’s beautiful ship, there were three others in the party, and each of these three was a serviceable, seaworthy craft, and the Greenlanders were not a little impressed with the array they made. It was soon apparent that Bjorn was a man possessed of great luck. He was red-faced, portly, and high-spirited, and he himself said that he was much pleased at coming to Greenland, for though, he told Sira Jon, he had been heading for Iceland, Greenland was a place that few came to, a place lost to the considerations of men, especially since the coming of the Great Death and its subsequent visitations. And he went on in this vein. Sira Jon made him and his wife and foster son greatly welcome, and the sailors were sent with gifts out among the Greenlanders, and they had a lot to tell, much of it about Bjorn Einarsson, for he was a man whom talk clustered about wherever he went.

The first thing Bjorn did was ask who had the best horses in Greenland, and he was told about Thorkel Gellison of Hestur Stead and about Magnus Arnason of Nes and about Ragnleif Isleifsson of Brattahlid, who had the best horses in the northern part of the settlement, and he took four rowers and his wife and foster son in the big Gardar boat and went first to Brattahlid and then to Vatna Hverfi district, and at each of these places he traded for a fine pair of horses for himself and his wife, to be kept for him whenever he desired to come from Gardar and ride about the district. At Brattahlid he traded a fine pair of silver candlesticks, and with these a pair of iron wheel hubs to pay for the horses’ keep. To Thorkel Gellison he gave a carved ivory crucifix, and with this a bag of rye seed to pay for the keeping