The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [191]
On another visit, he asked Jona and Thorkel whether they had ever heard Ofeig speak of Kollgrim Gunnarsson, but they had not, and anyway were more interested in relating to Gunnar tales of the fondness that the infants showed for Johanna, for indeed, the older child preferred the girl to her own mother, and always called out for her when Johanna went out of the child’s sight.
It must also be said that in these years after the lesser famine, Gunnar spent a great deal of time at his writing, summer and winter, and became more fluent, and one of the things he wrote about was Sira Jon, the mad priest who haunted Gardar. He set down the tales that folk told concerning the priest, but the truth of the case was difficult to discern, for Sira Pall Hallvardsson had drawn off from his old friends and associates, and now spoke to everyone only in the most formal and benign manner and disclosed nothing.
Now what is known as the great famine came on, and it did not come on unexpectedly, for most folk understood that life in Greenland had become more dangerous as the weather worsened and the numbers of folk on the farms dwindled, but it had always been the case that bad weather for cows was good weather for seals and reindeer. It happened, however, some eight summers after the departure of Bjorn Einarsson, that when the Greenlanders went out in the spring to herd the seals onto the beaches and kill them for the summer’s and winter’s food and oil there were no seals to be found, or only one or two where there had been scores and hundreds.
Of such an event as this there were a few tales from early times. In those times the result had been that most of the men of the settlement had spent most of the summer and part of the autumn in the north, and had brought back many walruses, and in the spring men had set out in ships for Iceland and brought back sheep and cows to replenish the flocks that had been eaten up during the winter. Such were the measures that those Greenlanders had taken. But now the Northsetur was in the hands of the skraelings, even if the Greenlanders had had the boats to get there or a place to stop in the western settlement. And no ship had come to Greenland since the departure of Bjorn Einarsson. And some folk said that this would be a good time for Bjorn to return, or the bishop to come. Others planned for the autumn seal hunt and for a reindeer hunt on Hreiney, such as had not happened for many years. But there was little food for the summer, and Birgitta would say, as she served up the sourmilk, “Here is your cheese for St. Joseph’s mass,” or “Our Lenten fast will carry us straight to Heaven this year.”
At the time for the Thing this year, which was the year of our Lord 1397, by the reckoning of Sira Audun at Gardar, Gunnar said to Helga that it was time for her to accompany him to the new assembly fields at Brattahlid, and Helga understood that the purpose of this was to find her a husband among the men of other districts, so she put together her best finery and braided her hair in an intricate manner, so that part of it spread golden and thick down her back and part covered the top of her head as a cap might. And on the day that Helga was to depart, Birgitta came to her and said, “It seems to me that you make your preparations with a cool hand, and are little eager for this journey.”
“It is true that I have few desires one way or the other. It is many years since I have been taken