The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [161]
Gunnar Asgeirsson and Birgitta Lavransdottir made a gift of a length of red silk, sewn into a priest’s cope. Folk saw that much elaborate stitching concealed where the lengths had been pieced out.
Other gifts, of wadmal and weaving and furs and sealskins, were plentiful as well, and many were given by unknown folk, in the dark of the night, and among these was a lovely carved olive wood cup wrapped in a woven blue and white border. And after Margret Asgeirsdottir placed these with the other things, she owned nothing more that had once belonged to Skuli Gudmundsson.
After the giving of the gifts, Sira Jon conducted the first mass, with Sira Audun assisting him, and Sira Audun spoke the following prayer:
Lord, we lie in our turf houses,
As in graves covered with snow,
And our prayers rise to you as loudly
As the voices of the dead.
Lord, You break the ice for us,
And call forth the green grass,
And so we rise out of our houses
And come forth singing.
But folk did not consider this prayer as good as others of Sira Audun’s, and only a few praised it.
Now at this feast, the great topic of talk besides the sickness and the harsh winter was Bjorn Einarsson, and folk recalled how he had acted and the belongings he had brought with him, and the articles of dress Solveig had worn about in every sort of weather. Folk who were interested in ships and boats, as the Hvalsey Fjord folk were, recalled the trim lines and fine carving of his four ships. Folk from Vatna Hverfi recalled the expert way that he had chosen for himself the very best horses in the district. Thord of Siglufjord recalled the types of food he had sent during the hunger of 1388—only wholesome and delicate and tasty items, nothing from the back of the storehouse. Gardar folk recalled his tales of Rome and Jerusalem and France and Iceland, and the way that Einar always stood by to correct and add to these tales. Sira Audun recalled some jokes that Bjorn had made while settling his dispute with the Alptafjorders about where they should worship, and others were led to recall Kollbein Sigurdsson, and his wooden-headed manner of doing the same thing, so that everyone felt cheated when Kollbein was through, and everyone felt benefited when Bjorn was through. Those who had not known Bjorn, or had seen him only from afar, related to their neighbors what they had heard about him. This became a topic of controversy, whether Bjorn in his four ships had carried as many goods to Greenland as Thorleif had in his one ship, and there was great disagreement about this. The result of this was that at the end of the evening, it seemed to folk that visitors such as Bjorn were too good to be true, and some doubted in their minds that he and his ships and his tales had ever really been among them, or declared that he couldn’t have been a man, but must have been a ghost or an angel or a devil sent to try or to bless the Greenlanders, and as they went back to their booths and chambers, folk recalled other uncanny things, both those that they had not seen and those that they had seen.
After the visitors passed a short while resting, they got up in the dark and went to another mass, where Sira Jon wore the gold vestments, and Sira Audun repeated his prayer from the morning, so that most folk were confirmed in their dislike of it, while some praised it even more than they had, perhaps as a way of amusing themselves at the expense of their neighbors.
After this second mass, there were more refreshments laid upon the tables of the hall, and folk took their trenchers and sat about on benches next to the walls or sat upon the floor, and the business of this gathering