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By Root 2024 0

time, the grandson of Ragnvald Einarsson, named Olaf Vebjarnarson, who had been pitched into the fjord when Ragnvald was running from the skraelings, was declared to be a saint on the evidence of three cures and a vision which was attested by Bjorn Bollason and his wife, who had lived at Solar Fell for five years now, and also on the strength of his martyrdom. A small shrine was built on the strand beside the spot where the child went into the water, and folk got into the habit of going there for cures and other intercessions, especially as it was not far from any district, and Bjorn Bollason and his folk were considered to be quite hospitable. The child was called St. Olaf the Greenlander and the water where he was drowned often gave off a holy glow. Many folk saw it. Folk discovered that he was most effective in problems of childbirth, and sufficient prayers to him could make a breech baby turn of itself and present its head, or slow gushing blood to a trickle. Some folk about Solar Fell who had lived there in the days of Ragnvald remembered that the baby’s crying could be stilled by the sight of a crucifix, at which he would smile and gurgle with pleasure.

Sira Pall Hallvardsson did not know the rule about saints, and had little to say when he heard the news of the cures, and of the fact that folk had begun calling the child St. Olaf the Greenlander. When the new bishop arrived, Sira Pall remarked, he would look into the miracles and make a decision. Meanwhile, folk considered that if the lawspeaker himself referred to the child as St. Olaf, then others might do so.

It was the case, however, that St. Olaf the Greenlander had no effect on the weather, which was chill and damp and sunless every year, so that the hay crop was always poor. Cattle became fewer and fewer. Even at Gardar, only thirty cows stood through the winter in stalls built for eighty. And those cows that survived seemed not so sturdy nor so healthy as most cattle had once been. Now folk began paying attention to their sheep and goats, and taking the sort of pride in them that they had taken in their cows, and the news got about that the rams at Lavrans Stead in Hvalsey Fjord were especially large and potent, so that a ewe bred to one of these rams would almost always produce twins, and almost always both would survive. And so for a year or two folk got into the practice of bringing their ewes to Hvalsey Fjord just after Yule, when Birgitta preferred to breed her sheep, so that they would be born in the good weather, and Lavrans Stead prospered. When Johanna Gunnarsdottir went off to Hestur Stead in Vatna Hverfi to live with Thorkel Gellison and Jona Vigmundsdottir, at ten winters of age, she took with her fine things in her chests, and when she went through these things, Jona Vigmundsdottir saw that her husband’s cousin Gunnar was not such a man of ill luck as he was reputed to be.

Jona Vigmundsdottir had become a red-faced and loud woman with a hot temper but a kindly manner, and folk said that she was well matched with Thorkel Gellison, who was cooler and more calculating most of the time, but not unlike his wife in the way he welcomed folk to his steading and took pleasure in the roar of many voices about the place. If there were no visitors, Jona and Thorkel would gossip with servants. If the servants were working, the two would walk back and forth in front of the steading, looking out for travelers or itinerant servingfolk who might be going from steading to steading. Horse breeding and large fertile fields and access to both Vatna Hverfi district and Einars Fjord had made Thorkel a wealthy man. Thorkel prospered through these hard years, for indeed, in all times some folk prosper, even when most do not. These folk had grown sons living at home with their wives, and one of these wives had two infants, one of one winter in age, the other newly born. It was the duty of Johanna Gunnarsdottir to help care for these children, to follow the one about and carry the other, and to chew meat for the older one, as he did not yet have his teeth, and to look