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By Root 2109 0

the same summer that Kollgrim moved to Gunnars Stead, Larus Thorvaldsson came to Ragnleif’s steading on a visit, and began to talk a great deal about the desires and strictures of God Himself. Larus declared that God had presented Himself at Larus Stead three nights running, around the time of Easter, and had spoken clearly to him about many matters. One of these was that the old priest who was kept at Gardar was the Devil himself, and that the servants and the other priests there did him homage. Folk laughed at this news, but listened more carefully to other things, namely that in three years, a ship would land in Greenland, and it would carry many Icelanders, and also that God had reviled both the Roman pope and the French pope, and had not allowed anyone into Heaven who had died since the beginning of the schism, for the real pope hid himself in Jerusalem, and would soon burst forth with such a light that it would be visible and known even to the Greenlanders. He said much more in this vein, and some folk laughed at him and some folk did not. After a few days at Ragnleif’s steading he went home again. Even so, he was much talked of in Brattahlid through the summer.

It was the duty and right of every steading to send a man, at least, with arrows, or some other weapons, to the spring and autumn seal hunts, and those steadings with serviceable boats were required to send these also. Such was a new law made by the Thing shortly after the passing of the hunger. What once had been custom was now compulsion, for there were few men in Greenland and fewer boats, and every one was needed if folk were to have enough meat for the winter. This autumn was the first Larus Thorvaldsson spent on his own steading, and as he was the only man there, he was the one who had to attend the hunt, although he had never done so before. It happened that Larus made of this hunt an opportunity to expound upon the views of God about the ways of the Greenlanders, and their futures. It was not, Larus said, that the popes of Rome and Avignon could not or would not approve a new bishop for the see of Gardar, or even that the archbishop of Nidaros was negligent, but that the church itself was being overthrown in Europe, even as the Greenlanders were now speaking of it, and priests and nuns and bishops and archbishops were being tossed out of their pits of corruption and dispossessed of their sinful wealth. When the ship that was coming should arrive, it would carry the tidings of a new age. No priests would stand between the pope of Jerusalem and the faithful folk. God would give up Latin and speak in the tongue of the people. Each man would give himself and his family the meat of communion. So Larus spoke, wandering among the seal hunters as they sat about each evening after their work, and although it is not the way of Greenlanders to allow fear much entrance, some shifted in their seats and looked about themselves, for they were afraid.

Larus Thorvaldsson could not be moved from his tale that God had come onto his steading and spoken to him. He had sat upon the bench with Larus and Ashild and little Tota and partaken of their sourmilk and their new goat cheese. He had filled Larus’ bedcloset with light. He had turned rotten meat back to fresh, folk could come back to his steading and see the meat itself. He had spoken in a low, golden tone. When Larus had asked Him why He had come to him, Larus, and not to someone else, He had laughed and said that Larus was as good as anyone else, was he not? All souls look the same to God, who sees not the carapace of self men wear in the world. And although some folk quizzed Larus on these particulars, saying that he was known as a great liar, he was firm in his relation of them, and even folk from Brattahlid, who were the most inclined to laugh, held their peace. Later in the fall, long after the seal hunt, three servingmen came to Larus Stead and summoned Larus, Ashild, and Tota to Solar Fell, for Bjorn Bollason, who had not himself participated in the seal hunt but sent some of his servingmen, was very curious