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By Root 1983 0

in Greenland, with wide, moist, south-sloping pastures for growing hay, rising to tarn-filled highlands for the summer grazing. The wool of the sheep was long and soft, with much distinction between the silky outer coat and the woolly undercoat. If she spun her thread from only the outer wool, the cloth she wove was thin and liquid, and nicely showed off her patterns. If she spun the two together, the wadmal was thick but light and springy to the touch. Signy was full of praise for her work, and greedy for it, so that she left off drawing her away from it. Throwing the shuttle and devising the weaves reminded her of Kristin and Marta and Ingrid and the others who had taught her to weave and were all now dead, of old age or sickness, and they in turn reminded her of Asta and Hauk Gunnarsson and Asgeir and Skuli and Jonas and Olaf and Gunnar as a child, and she sat at her loom, deep in thought, day after day. This lengthy reflection was another thing that made her feel that Solar Fell was to be her last home, and that this year, or the next year, or the year after that was to be her last.

Now it happened that the dreaded turn of the century came around and passed, and another three years as well, and although Finnleif Thorolfsson’s prophecy about the fewness of those that would be there to greet the new age was borne out, folk considered that there were not so few as to be a sign of anything. Hunger and disease had come and gone before, and now that the great hunger was over, men saw that such things happen in the natural round of events, for the world is by nature fallen from Paradise, and the Lord has made no promises about repairing it for the pleasure of men, but asks men to use the world as a tool for repairing their own souls.

There were many abandoned steadings, and the greatest of these was Gunnars Stead, but there were other good steadings, as well, in Brattahlid and the southern part of Vatna Hverfi district. Any man in Isafjord could have himself a new steading, but there were no men left in Isafjord, and the place was abandoned to the skraelings.

Now it seemed to folk that they had learned something new. It seemed to some that they had learned of the importance of the appearances of things, that, for instance, a few articles of clothing nicely made and painstakingly decorated gave more pleasure than many plain robes, or a small quantity of food eaten slowly, using the spoon even for the bits a man might have picked up with his fingers before, lasted as long and filled one up almost as well as a large quantity. It seemed to others that they had learned how appearances were unimportant, for death came to all men, whatever they were wearing and wherever they slept, whether in the steading or in the byre, and a strong sturdy boy infant was a marvel whether the priest had had anything to do with his parents or not. Still others reflected on how quickly the food could be snatched from a man’s table, or the child from a woman’s breast, or the wife from a man’s bedcloset, that no strength of grasp could hold these goods in place. And others remarked to themselves how sweet these goods were, in spite of that, and saw that the pleasure lost in every moment is pleasure lost forever. Some folk learned the nature of God, that He was merciful, having spared a husband or some cattle, that He was strict, having meted out hard punishment for small sins, that He was attentive, having sent signs of the hunger beforehand, that He was just, having sent the hunger in the first place, or having sent the whales and the teeming reindeer in the end. Some folk learned that He was to be found in the world—in the richness of the grass and the pearly beauty of the Heavens, and others learned that He could not be found in the world, for the world is always wanting, and God is completion. Some declared that they had learned that a man’s luck and his might are his only god, as folk once thought in the ancient days. Was Erik the Red so unfortunate a fellow, or the men with him who never accepted the teachings of the church about the White Christ?