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By Root 1865 0

Yuletide feasts, at Gardar and Solar Fell, as well as in Brattahlid and at Arni Magnusson’s steading in Vatna Hverfi, the Icelanders were much in evidence, for it was the case that they had a great deal of news to tell over and over. It was also the case that a few of them knew how to tell long tales such as was the fashion to tell in Iceland. These were in rollicking, rhyming verse, and sometimes they were spoken, but often they were sung, and the women—Steinunn, her sister, and the others—were fond of dancing to them. The Greenlanders thought this a great entertainment. One of these rhymers was a man named Thorstein Olafsson, and he was a cousin of Snorri the ship’s master, from the southeast of Iceland, and he was said to have a large steading there, with fifty cows and hundreds of sheep, which he shared with his brother. He was about twenty-five winters of age, and he had a great, rolling voice which he used to good effect when telling his rhymes. He also had this faculty, that he could make up verses at the moment, about such things as the evening meat or the look of the clouds above the fjord, and he could make these verses either in the old style or the new style, tight, as folk said, or slack. The Greenlanders thought well of him, and he stayed with the priests at Gardar, although there was much going back and forth between Gardar and Solar Fell all winter long.

Snorri the ship’s master and Bjorn Bollason the lawspeaker became good friends in this winter, and it was agreed between them that Bolli Bjornsson would go off with the Icelanders when they should depart, although when this might be, Snorri was not especially ready to decide. He was happy enough in Greenland, he said, especially as he knew not what he would find when he should return to his steading. The tales of the Great Death in Iceland were grim ones, that was a fact. He supposed that it was to be expected that the Greenlanders would be eager for news of elsewhere, but such news as Snorri brought with him he would not be eager to hear, if he were the Greenlanders, for it was all bad. For Snorri this winter, it was sufficient to go from bedcloset to table to the southern slope that lay before the steading and back to the bed-closet, where he lay under the furs and called out to such folk as were about to come and talk to him. The Greenlanders considered this peculiar behavior for such a well-thought-of ship’s master, but Thorstein Olafsson only laughed and said that this was Snorri’s nature—he didn’t know what to do with himself on land, which was why he left his steading to his wife. Thorstein said that she was glad to have him off, since he never turned a hand to a lick of work. But indeed, he was a good ship’s master, and had never lost any cargo, much less any folk, or a ship itself. On a ship he was as light and active as a goat, running here and there, seeing trouble before it appeared. Folk were glad to travel with him, if they must travel.

Bjorn Bollason did not seem to care that Snorri had supplanted him as the center of the household at Solar Fell. He spent enough time sitting in the doorway of the bedcloset himself, asking about this and that—what folk did in Norway and Iceland mostly. Snorri was especially fond of Sigrid, for the sake of her jests and merriment, and she got into the habit of sitting nearby every day, and he would tease her in this wise:

“It seems to me that you will make a poor enough wife.”

“Nay, indeed, I will make a good wife, a wife such as many men want but not all men deserve.”

“And what sort of wives do most men deserve?”

“Little meek things, who serve up the sourmilk with a spoon and a wince.”

“It is true that a wife must cast her eyes down before her husband.”

“As men cast their eyes down before the face of God. Yes, folk say this, but wives who cast their eyes on the floor see nothing but their own feet.”

“And what sort of wives do most men want?”

“Someone who will tell them what they might do, but not what they must do.”

“And what sort of husbands do most women want?”

“Someone to tell them what they must