The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [60]
“And then on the third day, the priests Jon and Pall Hallvardsson came to us, and I knew at once that they were coming about Olaf, although they spoke for a long time of another matter. And we had this bit of luck, that Pall Hallvardsson, who was a friend, spoke first, and asked me directly if I was betrothed to Olaf, and I saw in his glance a message that Olaf was as unhappy at Gardar as we were to have him there, and so I said I was. And one of the servingwomen slipped out and carried this news to Gunnar, so that when Jon spoke to him, he, too, attested to a proper betrothal. And so, a day or so later, Olaf returned, and we didn’t starve after all, but prospered, even in this year, when hardly anyone in the eastern settlement can say the same.”
“It seems to me that you have not done ill to take such a talented husbandman into the family, but in the court of Queen Margarethe and in other great houses in Norway and Denmark, it is not considered ill for a man to admire a married woman, to recognize something graceful in her figure, for example, or to see something precious in the color of her eyes.” Now he touched one of her braids with his finger, and said, “Indeed, it is rare for a woman’s hair to grow heavier and paler after girlhood, but your braids are thicker than a man’s wrist and as pale as hay in the sunlight.”
Now Margret felt her face grow hot, and said, “At Gunnars Stead, the married women are sometimes careless of our headdresses, and this is a shame to us.”
“Nonetheless, a man’s eyes do no harm to a virtuous woman, and those things he might do in her honor or for her benefit are no compromise to her.”
“Now it seems to me that we have been talking too long and will be missed from the feast.” And she turned and went inside without looking at him again.
In this year after Yule, the weather grew very cold, and a great deal of snow fell, so that the horses and sheep could not paw through it to the grass beneath. Because of the vomiting ill a year before, there were few extra hands for chasing sheep who strayed toward the fjords or for gathering seaweed as feed. Many sat beside their fires wrapped in cloaks and furs and declared that God would have to take care of the sheep this year. In some low, moist places, the cowbyres were almost entirely covered in drifting snow, and holes to the breathing vents had to be dug and redug. In other ways, too, the winter seemed especially fierce, and this was a great topic of conversation until the feast of St. Thorfinn, when a very perplexing thing occurred in Eriks Fjord. There was a farmer named Helgi Grimsson, who had a small farm called Mel, where he lived with his son. One day this Helgi went out after a blizzard to seek his sheep, and found them not far from the farmstead, twenty-six of them, and all had had their throats cut, and they lay frozen in the snow.
Shortly after this, Helgi dreamed the same dream for two nights in a row, and that was that a rank of fire came marching up his hillside homefield like an army of men, and burned everything in its path, including Helgi, who both saw himself burn and felt the burning. On the second morning of this dream, Helgi took down the south wall of his cowbyre, in spite of the snow, and led his four cows outside and fed them some hay. That evening, he refused to put the