The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [6]
Ivar Bardarson, who was a great friend of Asgeir, found Thorleif an entertaining companion, and brought him to Vatna Hverfi to visit with Asgeir rather often, and Asgeir answered Thorleif’s questions with glee. How was it the Greenlanders were so big and fat? (Plenty of sealmeat.) How did they do without bread? (Plenty of sealmeat.) Why did their houses have so many rooms and passageways? (The better to be warmed by seal oil lamps.) Why were the sheep and goats so big and the cows and horses so small? (Because they always had been so, since Erik the Red brought his shiploads of settlers from the west coast of Iceland.) What did the Greenlanders do for a bishop? (They waited, as they had been waiting for ten years, since the death of the last bishop, Arni.) Why did the Greenlanders have no ships? (The law of the king and a dearth of wood.) Nor did they have any cats, or chickens, or pigs, though some farmers had a fine breed of deerhound that Thorleif admired. The Greenlanders were so poor in weapons, how did they manage to hunt? (Even the best hunters, like Hauk Gunnarsson, used snares and traps more than spears or arrows.) Nor did they have any swords. Thorleif marveled. “There are other ways to settle disputes,” Asgeir told him, “and Greenlanders prefer the peaceable ones no more than anyone else.”
“And how,” Thorleif said more than once, “have you escaped this pestilence that haunts the rest of the world?” For this, Asgeir had no answer.
Some sailors wintered in Vatna Hverfi district, and one of these, a boy named Skuli Gudmundsson, stayed at Gunnars Stead. He was very deft, and he always had a bit of wood in his hands, or some soapstone. He carved Margret a spindle whorl in the shape of a grinning face, which Ingrid said was sinful and idolatrous. For Asgeir he carved a set of chessmen. Even so, he had little to say of interest, for he had lived at his father’s farm near Bergen until the very day he went off with Thorleif on the ship to Greenland.
It happened that the autumn of this year was an especially prosperous one for Asgeir. The grass stood high in the fields, there were many lambs to be slaughtered, Hauk brought back so much sealmeat and blubber from the autumn seal hunt that the drying racks bowed beneath it, and so Asgeir declared his intention to give a Yule feast for the priest Ivar Bardarson, Thorleif, and his cousin, Thorkel Gellison, who had just come into possession of his steading in the southern part of Vatna Hverfi district. And it was the case that Asgeir had given no feast at Gunnars Stead since his homecoming feast to celebrate his marriage to Helga Ingvadottir.
One night, when Hauk and Ingrid and the other members of the household were sitting about, Asgeir went to the storeroom and came back with a vat of honey, which he had gotten from Thorleif in exchange for two walrus tusks. The others sat forward where they were dozing or occupying themselves with game counters, and Hauk said, “It seems to me that we are not about to dish this onto our sourmilk.”
“Nay, indeed,” said Asgeir, and he mixed all of this honey, which was a great quantity, with some fresh water and with some measures full of rotten bilberries, and then he put it away.
Ingrid looked at him, and said, “This mead-making will have ill results.”
“It will be a good surprise for Ivar Bardarson,” replied Asgeir.
“You think to impress the shipmaster with the acquirements of the Greenlanders. Greenlanders always run after folk from other lands as if they were saints in heaven.”
“We know what is suitable to a feast, as others do, and if we may supply it, then it is pleasant to do so.”
“At least we will see,” said Ingrid, “who has the head for drink and who does not.”
Now Hauk spoke up and said, “Will the Ketils Stead folk be invited to the feast?”
“If they are not,” replied Asgeir, “then Ketil will stand upon his fence and count our guests as they come into the steading, and in his opinion, he will be counting the heads of his enemies. It is better to have him