The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [228]
But it happened that Gunnar was able to rouse, though with difficulty, and Thorkel was able to get some broth between his lips. More than this, the corpus of Birgitta was no corpus, but warm and living, barely living. Her eyes flickered and her lips moved when Thorkel brought her up out of the straw, and she, too, was able to swallow some broth. And so it was that most of the Lavrans Stead folk were saved toward the end of the great hunger by the good luck of Thorkel Gellison, although Finn Thormodsson never returned and was never found, and he, like Olaf, was a great loss to the household. Olaf was buried in the little churchyard at St. Birgitta’s church.
By the third day, Gunnar was able to sit up and hear the news of Vatna Hverfi, and Thorkel told him of the two great events, the murder at Gunnars Stead and the death of Sira Audun between Petursvik and Herjolfsnes. Thorkel was extremely bitter about Ofeig, and wondered aloud how such a devil had come into his family, and said that he and his wife Jona had had many words about the parentage of the boy, so that things were sour between them. He had gone to Jon Andres Erlendsson himself and given the young man self-judgment, and Jon Andres had not demanded Hestur Stead, as in law he could have, but had only exacted the promise of a pair of good horses of his own choosing, not, he said, because he held Vigdis’ death to be a small matter, but because he wished to exact his payment from Ofeig himself, for he did not concur that Ofeig had been stolen away by his infernal master, and was certain that the fellow would be found soon enough.
In addition to this, Jon Andres had declared his resolution to relinquish Gunnars Stead and have the steading found abandoned in law, for it was a steading full of ill luck. He told Thorkel that he doubted anyone would live there now, or even farm the fields, for fear of Vigdis’ spirit. Talk was, however, that Bjorn Bollason the lawspeaker had no aversions to possible spirits, and that he and Hoskuld his sponsor had already prepared to take the steading over. To this news Gunnar made no response.
Concerning Sira Audun there was this to say, that he had lived on air for four weeks, and just before leaving Petursvik on his skis, he had turned down some broth that one of the women there made for him, saying that he had his own food. But no food was found with the corpus, and his muscles had been so wasted that his knees and elbows were the biggest things about him. Even so, he had died smiling, with his eyes open so that they could not be closed.
Now Gunnar asked, how was it that Thorkel had had food to bring them, were conditions so much better in Vatna Hverfi, so that the Lavrans Stead folk could count on seeing Johanna Gunnarsdottir again? For they had given up that hope with all others. Thorkel said that conditions had not been at all favorable, until the storehouses at Gunnars Stead were opened, and it was seen that Vigdis had been hoarding food for ten summers or more—so long that certain things had turned to dust, but the rest was taken about to all the local farmsteads, and that, plus their own stores, would carry the district through Easter.
And on the next day, Birgitta awakened, and sat up, and the news was told to her, and she listened carefully, and then she said, “There is always a jest to be played upon the Greenlanders.” And now the hunger ended, for two whales stranded, one at Kambstead Fjord and one at Siglufjord, and after that the snow melted and the grass greened and the ice broke up and was blown out of the fjords, and one day in the late spring, folk got up and went outside to find swarms of reindeer running across their farms, reindeer in such numbers as the Greenlanders had never seen before, and only heard of in tales of the western settlement. Sira Pall Hallvardsson prayed on his knees in the Cathedral of St. Nikolaus for three days without sleeping, in thanks for the bounty of the