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By Root 2050 0

that Sira Eindridi’s sermon went on so long, and the cathedral was so close with folk that some of them had to go out into the air toward the end of the service, and one of these was Steinunn Hrafnsdottir, the Icelandic woman. She slipped away from the side of her sister Thorunn, and when she stepped onto the grass, she saw that the fjord below the cathedral was lit by the red and white glow of the setting sun, and so she thought to stroll down beside the landing place, where all the boats were drawn up on the strand. Her sister Thorunn was somewhat afraid of the Greenlanders, and disliked to walk among them alone, but Steinunn could not see this. These folk had rather poor manners, and were inclined to stare, and knew not how to speak with the proper forms, but in Steinunn’s view, they were no worse than some Icelanders who lived in remote districts. The field before the cathedral sloped gently downward, and Steinunn took some deep breaths of the chilly air. She was not a little pleased to be by herself, for indeed, Thorgrim, her husband, was a hovering, attentive fellow, and his hands were always upon her. Now she walked among the little boats and marveled at them, for they were patched together any old way, out of scraps and pieces of planking, and they stank strongly of seal oil. All of Greenland stank strongly of seal oil, Steinunn had discovered. Even so, she had no longing to return to Iceland, but rather a horror of it, although Thorgrim was a powerful man there. It seemed to her that Thorgrim would do well to settle in Greenland, since he had not chosen to settle in Norway. It was said among the Greenlanders that there were many good abandoned farms, and it would not be so hard, after all, to go off to Iceland or Norway for a cargo of sheep and cows. Snorri’s ship was big enough for that. Whatever Thorgrim chose to do, it seemed to Steinunn that she could not go back to Iceland, for indeed, everyone there, it was said, had died. The thought made her heart flutter, and she put her hand to her breast and stopped walking to catch her breath.

Now, in Greenland, she saw what a mistake she had made in accepting Thorgrim, a failing of will that she had expected to regret at the time, and did regret now. But her days among the Norwegians had been unhappy ones, and the only Norwegian farmer who had made an offer for her hand was a fellow with a great goiter at his neck, and although he was wealthy and powerful, she saw at once that he had never had a chance among the Norwegian girls, but had thought so little of her that he had been confident of her acceptance. A woman who had lands in Iceland, especially lands partly covered with smoking lava, was not such a prize to a Norwegian. Even if her father had been lawspeaker, her father was dead now, and his death in a volcanic avalanche so peculiar as to put folk off, unless they were Icelandic.

Thorgrim was fair enough, and it had been a great pleasure to Steinunn to speak to him of things they both knew. It seemed to her that her melancholia lifted when he was about, or else she made it lift for his sake. It lifted little now, except when she raised her eyes to the mountains of Greenland and reflected that none of them were volcanoes, that their shapes and their quiescence were changeless and eternal. The winter would pass, and the summer would come on, and Snorri would make up his mind to go off to Iceland and see what his wife had done with his farms over the years.

The sun had set, and twilight deepened over Gardar field. Only the snowy tips of the mountains cast any light back to the sky. Steinunn turned away from the boats, and began the climb back up the hillside, and she was so sunk in thoughts that she nearly stumbled over a man who was kneeling in her path between two of the boats. He leapt up and caught her, so that she did not fall, and she saw that it was the tall fellow who had been betrothed to the girl Sigrid, but she could not recall his name. She had seen him only once or twice. “Indeed,” she said, “the darkness makes me careless,” and it seemed to her that