The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [276]
“I hope to hear good news of Gunnhild, but every father must resolve to hear of the evils of childbirth, and so I am ready for that, too. But even with all of this, I am pleased that she finds herself in Iceland, as the affairs of the Greenlanders have gone so ill in late years.”
Now Snorri sat up and grunted, and looked Gunnar up and down. “It seems to me,” he said, “that the Greenlanders do quite well for themselves. The country is so rich in game that seals and reindeer hang drying about every steading, and the sheep are plentiful and free of plagues.”
“We have few cows, anymore, though, and few horses enough. Our hillsides are overrun with goats. Not many folk cherish their goats.”
“Even so, the Lord saves special punishments for the Icelanders, it seems to me. This girl, Steinunn, and her sister, Thorunn, whom we have with us—their steading was destroyed sixteen winters ago, and they were saved only because they were infants being fostered out at another steading.”
“How destroyed?”
“Such explosions at Hekla the volcano as sounded even in the farthest districts of the westfjords, and these were accompanied by hellfire shooting into the heavens, not only from the top of the mountain, but also from the surrounding forests, where the trees were seared as they stood, and this went on for two days and nights, and was followed by two days as black as midnight, and the air so thick with ash that folk considered that the earth had risen of itself and covered them. After this subsided, folk saw that a great avalanche had covered the entire steading of Langahlid, and scores of folk came out to look for Hrafn Bodulfsson but nothing of him was found, although the wife was uncovered and given burial. Some servingfolk were found dead in the byre, too. These girls, Steinunn and Thorunn, were with their mother’s mother at another steading.”
“This is special punishment indeed, but even so, the Icelanders have ships, and go off to Norway and Germany for goods. The Greenlanders sit idly in their steadings and hope for life or death, whichever seems to them the most desirable at the time.”
“Do the Norwegians have much for us Icelanders? Folk differ in their views on this. Most folk say that the Germans have stolen it all. They are an evil folk, but much preferred by the queen even so. At any rate, a dozen ships in the harbor cannot replace all of the lost cattle, or the sheep, or the grazing lands, or the steadings. And when these ships come, they bring goods, but, indeed, they also take away the queen’s impositions of tax. Men are better left to themselves. That is my opinion.”
“You have a bishop, the folk are blessed and married and buried, and prevented from falling away from the Lord through ignorance.”
“You may say so.”
“Indeed, we Greenlanders have had no bishop in nearly thirty winters, and of our old priests, the best educated one wastes away as a madman in a tiny chamber here at Gardar.”
“We have had bishops, indeed, but they have been fighting men or fools. We are better without them. Folk do not want to hear the Lord speaking through such fellows. And here is another thing. I have heard this summer from ships at Bergen that the Great Death has swept through the Icelanders, and many folk have been taken, although there has been no recent rising of this black miasma elsewhere, not in Norway or in Germany or even in England, where the venality of the folk makes them especially susceptible to this evil.”
And to these speeches Gunnar had no reply except the usual remark that the priests say that the people can bear their burdens well enough, and to this Snorri grunted, and then he went back to his morning meat, and Gunnar went out of the bishop’s house.
Now the winter came on, and folk were making their preparations, and it happened that some svid was stolen from a steading in Vatna Hverfi district, and after that some reindeer meat and some sealmeat, and from this, folk knew that Ofeig had returned to the district. Now men came together, and they agreed that any outlaw could be captured