The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [4]
Now a man spoke whom Gunnar had never seen before, dark and sour-looking, with odd, crinkly hair. “The news is that King Magnus has given the throne to King Hakon now, though Magnus still lives.” He spoke angrily, and Gunnar’s cousin, Thorkel, said with a grin, “Erlend Ketilsson, you sound as if he might have given the throne to you, had events gone another way.” Gunnar had heard the name of the man, Erlend Ketilsson, many times, and widened his eyes in the flickering light to get a good look at him. His gaze seemed to fall upon Erlend like the touch of a hand, for the young man turned at once and stared back. Now Gunnar raised his palms to his face and pulled his cheeks down, until his eyes were staring out of the sockets, then he thrust forth his tongue, nearly to the roots. It was the work of a moment. Thorkel saw him and laughed aloud. Erlend scowled. Ketil said, “That won’t be the only news, you may be sure, and the rest of it will be worse.”
“Few goods and bad news,” said Asgeir, “but I am content. That is enough for me, if there is nothing else.” The other men nodded and ate up the sourmilk and went off.
The next day, all the Greenlanders flocked to Gardar to catch sight of the Norwegians and to trade the goods they had been hoarding for many years. The captain of the traders, a Bergen man named Thorleif, seemed to laugh all the time. He roared with laughter at the sight of the Greenlanders’ tradegoods: sealskins and walrus tusks and lengths of homespun fabric, piles of sheepskins and reindeer skins and long twisted narwhal tusks. He came near to folk and peered at them, then laughed. The sailors seemed too sober by comparison, and hardly had a word to say. They stared at the Greenlanders, in fact, and stood like dolts around the Gardar field, as if they had never seen a cathedral, or a byre, or a hall such as the great Gardar hall, or sheep and goats and cattle grazing about the hillsides, or horses in their pens, or the landing spot, or the fjord itself, or the high dark mountains that rose all about. When Ivar Bardarson brought out cheese and sourmilk and boiled reindeer meat and dried sealmeat—a feast, in the view of most of the Greenlanders—they gazed at that for a long time before they began to eat it.
Asgeir said to Thorleif, “Are your men such farmboys that they’ve never seen wealth like this before?” and Gunnar thought Thorleif would choke from laughing at this joke.
“Nay, Greenlander,” he finally replied. “It is only what they have heard about this place. Some folk say that all Greenlanders are a little bluish, which is why you are called Greenlanders. And other folk say that you live on a diet of ice and salt water, and such a diet sustains you through your being accustomed to it.”
Now Asgeir grinned a wide grin, and said, “These things may be true of Herjolfsnes men, for they live far to the south and keep to themselves. You will have to see for yourself.”
“Perhaps I will. Our voyage was not so short that I can return this summer, as I had hoped.” Thorleif looked about and laughed again. Asgeir said, “Most folk do not laugh at the prospect of a Greenland winter.”
“But they may laugh at the prospect of telling tales upon it for the rest of their lives.”
The trading went quickly, and there was little fighting. Farmers from as far away as Siglufjord and Alptafjord appeared with their goods, and Thorleif seemed always to have more to offer. The Gunnars Stead folk had much to trade, because Asgeir had raised and sheared many sheep and Hauk had been three times to the Northsetur. The large boat they brought to Gardar was full of walrus hide rope, vats of blubber, feathers, down, and hides. When Thorleif returned a second time to negotiate about the tusks, Asgeir made him sit down and brought out a round of cheese. “Now, shipmaster,” he said, “you must try this, if you think the Greenlanders live upon salt water and ice, and then you must tell me some news. We Greenlanders have been pushing these goods out of