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By Root 1900 0

around Herjolfsnes. Six had died at Gardar and thirty survived. And Gudrunn counted up the dead they had heard of in Brattahlid and Isafjord, and this came to about twenty-five. Gudrunn said, “There will be others in the lonelier steadings that we will hear of after Easter.” But indeed, this was little the case, and the greatest death occurred at the largest farms, in the most thickly populated districts. After the messenger had spoken to Gudrunn, Margret took him aside and asked about Gunnar and Birgitta, who lived at Lavrans Stead in Hvalsey Fjord, but the boy had not heard their names among the names of the dead. “What then,” she said, “of this name, Olaf Finnbogason?” and the boy said this was not the name of one of the dead. Of Vatna Hverfi, he rattled on. He told her that Sira Nikolaus, of Undir Hofdi church, had been taken, as well as his “wife.” And folk estimated that he was a hundred years old. At least this was true, that when they carried him out, he was as shriveled as a child.

Not the least curse of this general sickness was that it took place so early in the winter, and folk and beasts had to endure many weeks of snow and storming before the coming of spring. Many who were weakened died, and beasts on many farms went hungry for too long too early in the season for them to survive, and so this was a bad winter, with deaths and bouts of hunger stretching past Easter. At Hvalsey Fjord, Orm Guttormsson was among the dead, and Astrid Gunnarsdottir and Maria Gunnarsdottir, one in the morning of the mass of St. Stephen and the other in that evening, and after their corpuses had been wrapped and set into a snowbank, Birgitta came to Gunnar and told him of the sight she had seen these many months before, of all of the children vanishing before her eyes as they were gathering seaweed beside the water. And she said, “It may be that I am being punished for my pride, for I was much taken with Gunnhild’s beauty, and Astrid’s lightheartedness and Maria’s fondness for me, so that now I am afraid to look upon the others, and I seek ways to humble my pride in them and avert this punishment.”

Gunnar asked if she had spoken to anyone of this sight, especially to Sira Pall Hallvardsson, and Birgitta said that she had not, that she had feared to talk of it. And Gunnar said, “Surely the priest can give you a penance, or some prayers to say.”

“But,” said Birgitta, “when I saw this disappearance I had Johanna within me, and it happened that she jumped with glee that I should see it, and therefore it seems that she carries ill luck with her, and spreads it like a contagion, though not suffering from it herself.”

“And it gives you little love for her, that is plain to see.”

“It seems to me that she will live and they will die, just as she, of all of them, has not become ill in this sickness, and she goes about to all the bedclosets and looks in upon them with a curious and unwearying eye.”

But Gunnar would not admit that this sickness was any different than any other spell of the vomiting ill had been, where many live and some die and no man can say ahead of time which way it will go for him. Even so, Birgitta would not be freed of her notion that Johanna was an uncanny child, and she avoided her when she could.

Now it happened that the spring came on, and Sira Jon sent out messengers to every district with the news that he would hold an Easter mass and a feast at Gardar, to celebrate the Resurrection of the Lord and the resurrection of all the souls of the dead into heavenly life, for, the messenger declared, Sira Jon often spoke to the folk at Gardar, and declared that God had much in store for those who suffered among the wastes of the earth, and toiled there for His glory.

There was a woman at Gardar named Olof, who was the daughter of Anna Jonsdottir, who had been in charge of the housekeeping at the steading, and Olof, although she was but twenty winters old or so when Anna herself died in the first year of Bjorn Einarsson’s coming, had taken over her mother’s position and now had the care of Sira Jon and Sira Audun,