The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [331]
As for Sigrid, it was her secret that once in a while a curious dream came to her, always the same dream. In it, she was standing in the doorway to the steading at Solar Fell, looking down the hillside toward the strand. The turf was green, but the fjord was white with ice, and the sky above the mountains was piled with clouds. These were shot with all colors of red and gold and purple, and looked not as the sky ever looked in Greenland, but as it was said that Heaven itself looked. In the first part of her dream, she only stood there, holding a trencher in her hand, and gazing upon the scene. After this, a man would appear, a stranger, and he would come toward her over the ice, and she would begin to float down the hillside toward him, holding out her trencher as an offering. But though she floated toward him, she was much afraid of him, and of how he would greet her. Even so, she could not stop herself, or turn back up the hillside. He came on skis, but not with the swinging laboring motions of a skier. He, too, was floating. And as he came closer, he did not become more familiar to her. He was always a stranger. Even so, when they met, he always took her in his arms and embraced her, and happiness rushed through her like a strong wind, and of itself, her body pressed against his, and then the dream was over, and she woke up. And this was also the case, that she awakened from this dream elated rather than despondent, and it seemed to her that as long as she held this dream secretly in her bosom, it would return to her again and again.
She was not unpleased with her marriage to Thorstein. It seemed to her that he had her firmly in his power, and that with him, she was out of danger. In addition to this, her wedding was to be at the loveliest church in Greenland, and her wedding clothes were as splendid as hands could make them—her hands, the hands of Margret Asgeirsdottir, the hands of all the women round about. First there would be the wedding, then there would be a little boat ride to Iceland, then there would be large farms with many sheep and cows and horses and servants, and then there would be such children as her brothers were, obedient, strong, lucky little boys, four or five or six. Snorri Torfason said, sometimes, that conditions in Iceland could not but surprise them, but were not the Icelanders possessed of many fine things? Did they not speak in such a way that pleased the ear? Did they not know more of the world, and of the entertainments of the world, than any Greenlander? And did they not think a great deal of her, Sigrid Bjornsdottir, though she was but a Greenlandic maid?
She did not hate Kollgrim Gunnarsson, though folk thought she must. She did not know exactly why they had parted, except that it was their fate to do so. One day he had come to Solar Fell, and found her in the steading doing some tablet weaving while the others were out or in other chambers, and he had sat down near her without touching her, but only looking into her face, and she had let the weaving fall from her hands, although it tangled the threads, and she had known without speaking that they were parted, that their marriage could not be, and she had known so clearly that in spite of their wills and desires something was stopping them, she had not even felt grief, only a sort of relief that greater grief was being avoided by this parting. She saw that he knew this, too, and that they were parting as friends. That was in the autumn, and in the winter her fears had been fulfilled with