The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [7]
Hauk smiled, and Asgeir looked at him briefly, then said, “My brother, it seems to me that you are looking for a reason to absent yourself from the gathering, and seek the wastelands, even in the dead of winter.”
“It is certain that there are not a few pursuits I prefer to sitting about the steading with a lot of folk, stifling from the lamps and the talk.”
“Even so, you will not find a wife in the wastelands, unless she is a ghost or a snow demon.”
Hauk made no reply, and Ingrid spoke up and said, “A wife would be ashamed to go with a man who wears feathered birdskins next to his flesh, as skraelings do.”
“And an old woman should be ashamed,” said Asgeir, “to notice a young man’s undergarments,” and he laughed merrily, for he was much pleased at the prospect of his feast, and it seemed to him that he had repaid Ingrid handily for her prediction concerning the mead.
Now the day of the feast came around, and many folk came from Gardar and other farmsteads to Gunnars Stead, and it was Margret’s task to help with the serving, but also, of course, to keep her eye on Gunnar. She sat him at a bench with Skuli and Jona Vigmundsdottir, the wife of Thorkel. Margret was a little shy of Jona, though Jona was but a few years older, in part because Jona was married, but largely because Jona had been born in the western settlement. Those folk had come in many small boats, hugging their sheep and goats to their breasts and sitting on what remained of their wealth, carrying tales of year after year of bad weather—rain and ice all winter, wind and wind-blown sand all summer, fights at the Northsetur hunting grounds between Norsemen with their axes and skraelings with their bows and arrows. They had arrived thin and remained thin, most of them, moving to vacated farms in the southern parts of the eastern settlement, or taking service in Brattahlid or at Gardar. Once, Asgeir said, it was the western settlement where the wealthy Greenlanders lived, but now not even the attractions of the Northsetur, where men went to hunt narwhal, polar bear, and walrus, could compensate for the dwindling of stock in the homefield. Men must eat mutton and cheese and drink milk. A diet of wild food makes them demons. Now only a few of the hardiest souls, like Hauk, went to the Northsetur, and most folk sought the eastern wastelands, though the game there was not as plentiful.
Even the fact that Jona had been married at such an early age betrayed her as a westerner, for these farmers from the west were anxious to get their daughters off their hands, and find them places at other folks’ tables. Gunnar sat across from her, and Margret set a big basin of sourmilk and a small one of honey between them. Jona had one child, Skeggi, some two winters old, who sat beside her. Gunnar passed the time making faces at the child, and Skeggi, who was a bold, defiant boy, only laughed at whatever Gunnar attempted. Soon some young men from Gardar took places at the bench, and when Margret brought them basins to eat from, they said their names were Olaf Finnbogason and Halldor Karlson. Halldor was another of the boys from the ship, and he and Skuli were much pleased to see one another.
Margret knew of Olaf, though she had never seen him. He was a boy from Brattahlid, whose father had died on a seal hunt one year, and his mother had sent him to Gardar to be made a priest. He was a quiet boy, thick and short of stature, about Margret’s own age. His spoon, which he took out of his spooncase rather furtively, was of Greenlandic horn, and a bit of the bowl was broken off, too. The sailor boys had wooden spoons, and Skuli’s, especially beautiful, was of carved Norwegian ashwood, decorated with clusters of grapes. Margret had admired it before. She went off to serve some other folk, then sat down beside Gunnar to eat her own meat.
Skuli and Halldor had dipped portions of honey