The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [99]
Now Sira Pall Hallvardsson went out and found the room where the bishop had been laid out, and he got to his knees at the feet of the corpus and said many prayers. After a few days he returned to Hvalsey Fjord for the seal hunt. The death of the bishop was the subject of great talk among the Greenlanders, especially in light of how young he had been next to Sira Nikolaus and his “wife.” Some folk laughed and said that Sira Nikolaus would come to be the bishop after all, if he hung on long enough. Folk found it reassuring that activities at Gardar went on as before, with no change or diminishment, for all greatly feared even the slightest falling off, declaring that this would betoken only a steeper decline into the godlessness of the earlier time. Families hurried to send their sons to Gardar for training, and some of these were taken on and taught some letters. There were, perhaps, fewer feasts and masses, but folk said that this was less important than other things, namely the richness of the Gardar hay crop, the good repair of the buildings, and the state of the beasts. Although he was not the bishop, Sira Jon began wearing bits of Bishop Alf’s apparel, and speaking to folk with more of the distance and formality that the bishop had used, and the Greenlanders spoke of this with approval, and recalled how lowly Ivar Bardarson had held himself, so that others, too, held him lowly, and his office.
It was a fact that Erlend Ketilsson was one of the two or three most prosperous farmers south of Gardar. He farmed not only Ketils Stead, but also two other farms in Vatna Hverfi. Sigmund Sigmundsson of Petursvik, the husband of Thorunn’s niece, had died during the vomiting ill, willing his farm to Erlend as well, for, folk said, the case Erlend had won for him against Asgeir Gunnarsson had made his rotten dried sealmeat taste like roast lamb and his sourmilk taste like wine to him, and he had never considered himself a poor man again. Nonetheless, the farm fell waste, for Petursvik was far away, and the folk there hard put, and Erlend could not find anyone to do the farming for him.
When folk died, or farms were abandoned, as had happened more and more after the vomiting ill and the famine, people came to Erlend and Vigdis first, asking to be put to work and bringing their livestock and their goods, and most of these folk Erlend and Vigdis took in. Erlend was as tight-lipped as ever, and Vigdis as stern, and in addition folk were made to work long hours, but, it was said, folk always work long hours, and at Ketils Stead, the hours ended in a full trencher. In addition to this, wherever many folk gather, there is talk, and jesting, and tale-telling, no matter whether the master gains enjoyment or not. Erlend had many friends.
It happened that in this year the seal hunt was especially lucky, with many seals taken and no man killed, nor even injured, and so folk prepared for the winter with more confidence than they had in recent years. At Gunnars Stead, a third child was conceived, and Birgitta Lavransdottir had such experience at these things now that she went about her business unfatigued and full of joy, for it came to her in a dream that the child was a boy. Svava Vigmundsdottir had become a regular member of the Gunnars Stead household, and two chests of her treasures had been carried from Siglufjord to Gunnars Stead. She was given Margret Asgeirsdottir’s bedcloset, and Olaf went to the one Ingrid had used.
Folk in Vatna Hverfi no longer spoke of the dull wits of Gunnar Asgeirsson, but declared that although others had sometimes doubted Gunnar’s future, they had never done so, but had always considered that the shrewdness of Asgeir Gunnarsson and his brother Hauk would surface in the boy sooner or later. Gunnar was not as powerful or prosperous as the richest men in the district,