The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [256]
One day in Lent, a servingman from Ketils Stead carried some cheeses over to Gunnars Stead and gave them to Helga, saying that Helga’s and Kollgrim’s late coming would have robbed them of the summer’s milk. The fellow was ill at ease, and not very well schooled in the proper phrases. Helga thanked him and he went off. Now Helga sat down in the steading by herself and gazed upon the cheeses. They were misshapen and Birgitta would have thought them very badly made. Helga looked at them for a long time, as if they were an omen whose meaning she could divine.
When Bjorn Bollason and his family returned to Solar Fell, Sigrid went at once to Margret Asgeirsdottir, who had stayed home from the feast, and showed her the foxskins, and she said, “These were gotten for me by Kollgrim Gunnarsson, your nephew, who seems to me a fine fellow, with a great steading and the reputation for many skills. His father is a man who is said to read and write as a priest does, his sister is married to the foster son of the greatest man who ever came to Greenland, and his other sister is a handsome and well-dressed woman with no reputation for peevishness. It seems to me that such a man would be proper for me, more proper than any lad from Herjolfsnes could be.”
The next day, when the two were at their sewing, and Sigrid brought these things up again, Margret said, “Is it not better that you should speak to Bjorn Bollason of this matter? He has more of worth to say to you about it than I do, and also more to say to those you think upon, for indeed, I cannot help you there.”
“My father cares little to hear of how this Kollgrim’s eyes twinkle, or how he laughs aloud when I laugh, or how tall he is, or how quick he is at untying the knots of his pack. My father would wish me to say that Kollgrim Gunnarsson goes about as other men do, only with more weight.” She laughed merrily. “But indeed, he is not as other men, and they would rather be apart from him and he from them.”
“It seems to me, my Sigrid, that your days will be happiest if you find yourself some prosperous, sanguine, and energetic fellow with wide fields and plenty of livestock, as well as many friends who think well of him.”
“What Greenlanders are there these days who could be so described? None that my father has found, other than himself. Even my brothers seem to stand gaping in the presence of Bjorn Bollason, and there is more to them than most other folk. This Kollgrim stands apart from the rest of the Greenlanders, as you yourself do. You are an old woman, but you stand as straight and move as quickly as a girl. Gunnar Asgeirsson looks to be his own wife’s son, and his own son’s brother.”
“But things in the world do not look as they are. Nor does the unreliable husband look anything like the handsome suitor, though they be the same man.” Now Sigrid Bjornsdottir laid her sewing in her lap and looked at Margret with her lips tightly closed, and Margret saw that the girl’s purpose was fixed. She said, “We Gunnars Stead folk are an unlucky lineage.”
Sigrid tossed her curls and laughed. “And we Solar Fell folk are as lucky as can be.” And that was all they spoke of the matter for the time. Sigrid made herself a very long hood that came down around her shoulders and dangled in the back almost to the hem of her dress, and this hood was neatly sewn, so that the bluish color in the foxskins formed a pattern of chevrons over Sigrid’s shoulders and about her face, and was flattering to her.
Now the spring came on, and the ice broke up in the fjords, and the time for the seal hunt came around, and at the seal hunt, Larus the Prophet, as folk called him, sneeringly, declared in the hearing