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By Root 2158 0

into, as a man leans into the wind, and closes his eyes against the ice that flies in his face. As calm as this night was to him, threading his path between the mountains that rose on either side, just so violent would be this storm inside his steading, and it would lift him up and suck the breath from his corpus and set him down some other place, as another man, and though he walked eagerly, he also quailed before this storm. He saw that grief would be the gift that Birgitta would give him, as once before she had given him herself as a girl, then his own life, then his children, then herself again as an old woman. And it was the case that he must reach out his hands and take this gift with the same eagerness as any other gift. He came out at the top of the slope above the steading and saw that the sun was already brightening the sky above Hreiney. Now he paused for a moment, then he went on, and came to the steading.

Toward the feast of St. Lavrans, the old woman Birgitta Lavransdottir of Lavrans Stead took a long knife made of sharpened bone, and opened a great wound in her belly, although considering her age and her frailty, folk were much surprised that she had the strength to do this. She gave up much blood, and grew very ill after this incident, but lingered without dying, and then gained some of her strength back. Some folk considered that she performed this act out of grief over the death of Kollgrim Gunnarsson, and some considered that she performed it out of shame at his crime and execution. In the fall, she came into possession of a bird arrow and succeeded in driving it into her breast so that it pierced her heart and she died from this. Folk considered, as they do, that perhaps this was the best thing after all, if her grief was so great, although, of course, self-murder is a sin and affront to the Lord, and bars the soul from the hope of Heaven.

Now the winter came on, and it was much different from the previous one, being very snowy in every district. There was a great deal of visiting from steading to steading and district to district, for the fine days were still and pleasant for skiing. After Yule, Gunnar Asgeirsson and Johanna Gunnarsdottir piled all of their furnishings on a great sledge that could be pulled through the valley that leads to Einars Fjord, and they and some of their men servants pulled these things behind them. At the landing beside Einars Fjord, which was frozen, Skeggi Thorkelsson met them with three horses, and the horses pulled the sledge the rest of the way to Gunnars Stead, where Gunnar had decided to remove himself, and so it was that at the beginning of Lent some thirty-two winters after leaving, Gunnar returned to the steading of his fathers in Vatna Hverfi district. It seemed to him that although his daughter and his servants were with him, and his other daughter and her children were around the hillside at Ketils Stead, and the baggage and food they carried with them caused a great deal of annoyance and labor, he was returning to this steading a destitute fellow, and as it were giving himself up to it, that when he would open the ancient wooden door, coopered from Markland fir, he would enter and disappear. But of course, this did not happen. He only lit a seal oil lamp and looked about, then set up his parchment so that he might write something down if it came to him.

Jon Andres Erlendsson made many trips about the settlement in the course of the winter after the burning, and it seemed to folk that he wished to ingratiate himself with everyone in every district. Some folk declared that the burning was a great shame to him, but others did not know what to make of his actions, his smiles, his chat about sheep and cows and boats and all the business of the Greenlanders except the burning. But at the last, they all talked of this to him, too, for indeed, everyone wanted to know what the Gunnars Stead folk and the Ketils Stead folk were thinking, what had been done with the ashes, what had been said, what was planned. And so, though men vowed not to talk of this subject, Jon