The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [17]
The land was well wooded, and materials for repairs were not far to seek. While the sailors went about this business, the Greenlanders lashed together a large vat, filled it with water, dismembered the corpuses, and set to boiling the flesh off the bones so that they could be carried back to Gardar and buried in consecrated ground. Two sailors explored the shore, but the body of the drowned man did not appear, so one of the Greenlanders carved him a runestick, and put this in the sack with the others’ bones for burial at the church. By the time the ship was repaired, the Greenlanders and the sailors had little to say to one another.
Thorleif sailed north along the coast, putting in from time to time to look for game or fish, but everything seemed to have vanished, as if by some curse. When, after six days, they found the timber and furs they had gathered, these treasures now seemed somehow of little worth and yet cumbersome. Hauk and a few men went snaring game in this spot, but had no luck. After some debate, because of the lateness of the year, the ship set out with few provisions, only some fresh water and a bit of dried meat. The sailors taunted the Greenlanders, saying, “Tell us your tales, now.” But the only tales the Greenlanders knew were of ships that had missed Greenland entirely and found themselves in Iceland, or, worse, Ireland, after weeks of drifting. Had not Thorvald, a mighty Viking hero who sailed with Karlsefni on his famous voyage, been swept to Ireland and enslaved there?
After three days of slow and careful sailing, Thorleif brought them to Bear Island for the night, and here a fight broke out between two of the sailors and two of the Greenlanders, a man from Herjolfsnes and Erlend Ketilsson. Erlend lost two teeth. Osmund tried to prevail on Thorleif to stop the fight, but Thorleif said, “A stopped fight must start again, when men are angrier. If they break each other’s bones now, they must kill each other later.” In the morning, the travelers awoke, hungry again, to discover that Hauk Gunnarsson had disappeared.
Of all the people on the voyage, Hauk Gunnarsson was friendly only toward Odd from Siglufjord, whom he had known from boyhood. The others he rarely spoke to or even looked at, and the Greenlanders, familiar with Hauk Gunnarsson’s ways, did not take this amiss. The sailors, however, spoke ill of Hauk, and accused him of being haughty. One man, especially, named Koll, whose temper was inflamed by the death of his cousin Lavrans, seemed to take great pleasure in baiting Hauk at mealtimes and times of rest. The humor of this fellow Koll was not improved by the diminishing food stocks, but Thorleif exerted no restraint, for that was not his way. Now Koll began suggesting that they would not soon get another wind as good as the one then blowing, and they had better set forth, for obviously, Hauk Gunnarsson had been swept away, or lured away by trolls. The Greenlanders scoffed at this, and replied that Hauk was no doubt hunting.
And, indeed, Hauk Gunnarsson had seen a wealth of birds flying around the cliffs of the island, and had set out to snare some, the work of a morning, but once he was away from the ship, he saw many signs of bears. The tale of his hunting trip is a famous one, for after men ceased going to the Northsetur, the hunting of bears grew rare in Greenland, and few men knew how to come upon them, lure them into the water, and kill them as they were swimming, for unlike the skraelings, the Greenlanders were not adept with skin boats, and did not especially enjoy ice hunting, or sea hunting. Hauk Gunnarsson was crouched down, setting a snare for a bird when he smelled the odor of bear, and then a small she-bear and her single cub came over the cliff near where he was hidden in a cleft. As he stood still, the bear came closer, neither smelling nor seeing him, and he silently removed a loop of walrus hide from