The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [5]
“That is such a coin as you might be sorry to receive, when you have heard what I have to tell.”
“Nevertheless, you must tell it.”
“Has a great pestilence not come to you here in Greenland?”
“No more than usual, though not so many years ago bad conditions drove folk out of the western settlement, and they have settled among us here.”
“The hand of God has not fallen heavily upon you?”
“Shipmaster, the hand of God rests heavily upon the Greenlanders, and that is a fact.”
Now the two were interrupted by an acquaintance of Asgeir’s, named Lavrans Kollgrimsson, of Hvalsey Fjord. Folk considered Lavrans rather foolish, but good-hearted, and Asgeir shared in this estimate. He offered Lavrans a bit of cheese.
“Nay,” said Lavrans. “I am here about this bearskin business, and will stand before this Norwegian until he gives me what I desire.”
Thorleif replied, “Old man, you are a fool. Folk tell me you had considerable trouble for this bearhide, and yet all you want for it is a length of red silk, no wheel hubs nor pitch nor iron goods.”
“It would have been a great thing to send a live bear back to the king of Norway, as Greenlanders did in former days, but the animal died in my cowbyre, though not before it maimed a servant of mine. Nevertheless, I have my heart set on this bit of shining red, for no one in all of Greenland has such a possession. My wife is with child again, and it is no secret that she has lost the other three. Perhaps it will be good luck to have this banner from afar waving over her bedcloset when she comes to her time. I cannot be dissuaded.” And so Thorleif agreed to trade the silk, which he had brought for the see of Gardar, to Lavrans Kollgrimsson, a poor farmer from a poor district. Folk said Lavrans had gotten little for the trouble he had taken with the bear, but Lavrans, as always, paid no attention to the opinions of his neighbors. Now Osmund Thordarson, of Brattahlid, who also had a bearskin, and furthermore, a big one he had taken from the bear in the wilds, got two sacks of oatseed, one iron ax head, a vat of pitch, and a knife with a steel blade. But Osmund was known as a lucky man, who stepped forward and spoke up in all things. His mother’s brother, Gizur Gizursson, was the lawspeaker, but it was well known that Osmund knew the laws better than any man in Brattahlid district.
What with the trading and bargaining, it was well toward nightfall before Thorleif had the breath to tell his news, and then it was wondrous news indeed. For the wrath of God had indeed descended upon the Norwegians, and not only upon them, but upon all others in the world as well, man and woman and child, rich and poor, country folk and town folk. It was such an ill that no one had ever seen the like of it: there were families, said Thorleif, who were healthy at dinner and died before daybreak, all together; there were whole districts, where every soul in every parish, excepting only one child or one old man, died within days. The streets of Bergen were less crowded during the sailing season, he said to Asgeir, who had been there, than they had once been in the dead of winter. Every sailor had lost parents or children or wife or brother; every sailor had seen the trains of penitents going from town to town, raising a great roar of prayers and alms-begging. Thorleif had seen the death ship itself, a little ship that floated into Bergen harbor from England—all of the sailors had the mark of death upon them, and then all were dead, and then folk in the town began to die off, and others fled, but the pestilence followed them into every valley and up every fjord. And there was more: poisoned wells and folk burned at the stake, priests found dead upon their altars and corpuses lying in the streets with no one to gather them into their graves, or to say a last prayer over them. Had none of this touched the Greenlanders? It had not. The sailors marveled at this, but in their turn, the Greenlanders were struck speechless and