Authors: Margaret Elphinstone
When Leif told me I said nothing at all. In private he could be surprisingly kind, and he did nothing to press me, but walked with me in silence up to the church where it lay tucked away behind a little hill. When I went and looked at the fresh mound where they had buried my father as soon as the ground was warm enough, I neither
wept nor keened, but stood frozen, as if the ice had entered my blood and made me a dead thing in a living body. I felt nothing of my father but a great emptiness inside me, and I saw him neither in heaven nor walking the boundaries of this earth, and I have never had any glimpse of him since.
Of course I inherited everything my father had, as well as Thorstein’s farm at Sandnes, and now I was also part of Eirik’s family at Brattahlid, so I was able to be generous in giving gifts for the first time in my life. I’ve enjoyed my wealth most of all for that reason; I inherit my father’s pride in giving lavishly. Thorstein the Black had told me that he had no wish to return to the Western Settlement. He had buried Grimhild there, but he said, ‘She’ll rest more peacefully if I’m not there to bother her.’ I think the trouble he’d had with her ghost had shaken him more than I knew, and I was so wrapped up in my own troubles, young as I was then, that I didn’t think enough about what it all meant to him. But I got him his farm. I asked Eirik if Thorstein the Black could work my land at Stokkanes, as I was now to live at Brattahlid, and Eirik agreed at once, and Thorstein the Black has lived there ever since. When I left Greenland, I made the place over to him outright. I’ve not heard of his death, so it’s possible he lives there still.
Thorstein Eiriksson was buried next to my father by the church, and his men further away by the wall. So many more lie there now, so many men and women that I knew. Who do I tell this story for, when not one of them can ever hear it? Who else would care? It’s a bad thing to outlive your friends, Eiriksson. You can’t imagine it now, can you? No one can, until it happens. Who is there in this world now who knows me? My sons? What’s the past to them? A few stories that I told them when they were small, that they half remember. And half of that half they’ll make into another story, and tell their children, and maybe a fraction of that will go into yet another story, and be told to their children’s children. Many generations, Thorstein the Black said to me. No woman could wish for more, and yet what are these people to me, whom I shall never know? When I was young and had children, I thought the most important thing in life was the future, their future. But now it seems that the most important part of my life is buried in
the Green Land, and the future belongs to somebody else. When I die I hope to rest in peace. I think the worst thing would be to stay here as a ghost that nobody remembered.
I’m being a miserable old woman, Agnar. Stop writing, and tell me about something else. Remind me I’m a Christian, if you like, or give me a penance. You can’t? Never mind. Tell me more about wine then, about these different vineyards you mentioned, and what makes a good vintage. How did you learn about these things? Do you go round tasting them all? Tell me all about it.
Some people believe you can read the threads of fate in the palm of a hand. I don’t disbelieve them, but I’m not sure that it’s necessary. When I look back on my own life I see very clearly that the threads of my fate haven’t been spun together firmly, but have woven their ways separately. Sometimes one, sometimes another, has come out on top at different times. When I came back to Brattahlid as Eirik’s daughter-in-law, it seemed there was nothing in life but death. Life didn’t seem to offer anything more for me, but the truth was the thread of an unlucky fate had spun itself out. Why I had borne this burden from the beginning of my life I don’t know; the fates are beyond reason. But I had borne it, and now it was done. I come now to a new phase of my life, and now I look back and it seems as clear as the spring following the winter. I’m not saying everything now was easy, but the dark had cleared.
It still seems odd to me that the sun goes on shining day after day. It’s like living in a hot spring, but it’s the contrast I miss; you know what it’s like lying in hot water with the snowflakes whirling round your head. There’s piquancy in that. I do like the light and dark here – walking in from the white heat into a dim room that smells of earth. I hope heaven, if it pleases God we get there, isn’t all brilliance; eternity under those conditions would be exhausting. Perhaps the old way is better, just to survive in shadows and memories; at least one day there’s an end to that. I’m a great-grandmother by now, I think. Snorri’s daughter was pregnant when I left. I’d like to live long enough for the child to have known me – something to tell his (or
her) great-grandchild perhaps? I bought a mass for its soul, living or dead. Perhaps by the end of the year we’ll have a letter from Iceland.
Has it occurred to you, Agnar, what a cold place this Christian heaven is? For mortals, I mean. Sometimes I wonder if to be immortal is to be free not from time but from cold. Spirits feel no warmth or cold; some souls are content to lie in their graves while the ground freezes, and others wander over the icefields where no living man would survive one night. Sometimes at sea I’ve looked out on endless water and the cold sky, and I’ve thought that were I not earthbound, were I not cold and afraid, this would in fact be heaven. It fits, you see: heaven lies to the north of earth, outside the boundaries of the world of men. To the living it’s ghastly in its frozen loneliness, but to the dead, untroubled by winter and night, it’s the place of everlasting light, the sun that never sets. But cold, Agnar, and so large you could wander up and down forever, and never see the tracks of another soul, not even those you loved. When I see it like that I think I would rather die.
* * * * *
I’m sure what you say is orthodox, Agnar. It may even be true. But that’s not the point.
I knew Karlsefni so well, body and mind, for thirty years, that now he hardly seems separate from myself. We didn’t get on very well when we were first married. He was so self contained, I felt I could make no impression on him. He never set himself up. I don’t think he thought at all about the effect he had on others. He was shockingly single-minded, at least, it shocked me. He looked after his own, and I was part of his own. He didn’t care much about anyone who wasn’t.
So what did he seem like before I knew him? It’s hard to go back to that, but I’ll try. Walk around the cloister a couple of times, Agnar, and let me think.
Eirik Raudi sits in his hall at Brattahlid
.
His face is wrinkled now like
the surface of a glacier
,
his body hunched into itself
.
Only his eyes are dark
and alert
.
On the long hearth in front of him the fire that he first
lit
here
twenty years ago still smoulders
.
The hall is full of men
,
but Eirik Raudi
looks only into the fire
,
and tells nobody his thoughts
.
Tonight there are guests at Brattahlid. An Icelandic ship has arrived direct from Norway, loaded with goods from Europe and beyond: grain, salt, wine, iron, linen and spices, luxuries hardly seen before in Greenland. The ship took the bold route due west from Bergen, sighting land once two weeks ago, when the last island in Faroe showed to the north, half sunk below the horizon. Leif took the same route five years ago, and now Leif is talking excitedly to the captain of the new ship, whose name is Thorfinn, nicknamed Karlsefni by the king of Norway himself.
Karlsefni answers Leif quietly but with complete assurance. He is a smaller man than Leif, strong and compact. His curly hair is cut short, and his beard is newly trimmed. His eyes are the grey of fresh water under cloud, and his skin is the same colour as his salt-stained deerskin tunic. After making one of the longest voyages in the world, he looks as neat, after half a day ashore, as a man on his way to mass on Sunday morning. He accepts sour buttermilk to drink as if it were the finest wine at the court of Norway, and while he eats he goes on answering Leif’s questions steadily. He seems to know exactly what he is about. He has come to the Green Land to make as much profit as possible.
Three women of Eirik’s household sit with the men at the high table. Thjodhild has grown larger, her presence sterner. She says little, but she watches the newcomer, she watches her son Leif, and from time to time she glances at her husband’s impassive face. Freydis, Eirik’s daughter, came to Brattahlid this morning, as soon as the news came to Gardar that a merchant ship had been sighted on its way to Brattahlid. Her husband Thorkel is not with her; he is irrelevant to Freydis’ mercantile ambitions. The third woman is Eirik’s daughter-in-law Gudrid, widowed for almost a year. She fulfils her role as daughter of the household with more grace than Freydis ever did, but she and Freydis seem to be as friendly now as sisters should be. Freydis has a man and is mistress of an estate, and Gudrid has lost the advantages of both.
At the lower table the crew of the strange ship tear at fresh seal meat and salmon with teeth and knives, and down their fermented milk as if their stomachs had no limits.
Thorfinn Karlsefni has been a trader for a long time
,
and his face gives
no clue to his thoughts. His manner is open and friendly, but he has said nothing at all yet about the price of his cargo, or his reasons for coming so far off the main trade routes. He seems absorbed in his conversation with Leif, but occasionally his eyes flicker away and glance down the room. They rest for a moment on Gudrid, and a little later they come back to her again, and twice again.
He arrived at Brattahlid at the end of the summer, and naturally he was invited to spend the winter with us. Leif liked Karlsefni at once – they knew each other by hearsay – and treated him with the utmost friendliness. Eirik was getting old by now, and quite irascible, but he soon took to Karlsefni. They spoke the same language; they were both shrewd, and they both knew how to use the rules to get exactly what they wanted. It was like watching a game of chess to see them together. Eirik made the first move. He was silent and withdrawn for about a week, until in the end Karlsefni asked him straight out if his presence at Brattahlid offended his host.
‘No,’ said Eirik. ‘Far from it. It’s not that. But I’m ashamed that I can’t offer you better hospitality. We live in a poor way here; dried fish and seal meat and buttermilk are what get us through the winter. But you’ve been used to wintering in Norway, and I know I can’t offer you the fare you’re used to at the Yule feast. It hurts my pride to treat you so shabbily.’
‘If that’s all, there’s no difficulty,’ said Karlsefni at once. ‘I’ve a cargo here with wine from the Rhineland, spices from Russia, and this year’s grain from the Baltic harvest. What’s mine is yours, for as long as I’m your guest here. I’d like to make you a gift of all the food we’ll need for the winter feasts.’
Eirik clasped his hand at once. ‘You’re a man after my own heart,’ he told Karlsefni. ‘I’ll accept your offer, and now we can treat you in the way I’d like to do.’
So at the price of half his cargo, Karlsefni set up his winter trading post at Brattahlid, and made a good profit from all the settlers round Eiriksfjord, getting white bear furs and sealskins and narwhal and walrus ivory from that year’s hunt. I’m sure everything went exactly as he’d calculated, and all the time he was building up good will for
future years. There’s more than one ship coming regularly from Norway to Greenland now, in fact one of them belongs to my son, part of his legacy from his father, but Karlsefni was the first. No one else had the imagination to go straight from Norway to the new settlement until he did. Certainly the direct link with Norway changed people’s lives in the Green Land. It served us far better than trade through Iceland, for Iceland’s needs and goods were much the same as ours, which meant that we paid twice for everything. We couldn’t send a ship of our own, you see. We were chronically short of wood, and therefore boats, and those we had were used for the northern hunt, without which we’d starve. We needed all our men for the farms and the hunting, so Karlsefni was on to a good thing, and he knew it.
He never meant to go further than Brattahlid, but two things happened that winter to suggest other possibilities. The first was that it wasn’t long before Leif was talking to him about Vinland. Leif had been frustrated in his plans for Vinland for years, for the same reason as we didn’t trade directly with Norway ourselves: lack of resources. Karlsefni arrived with the biggest ship that had yet been seen in Greenland, and a full crew, all in good health. Karlsefni husbanded his men, like all his capital, with particular care.
The first snow had fallen before we found out what had put Greenland into Karlsefni’s mind. He mentioned that he’d called at Dyrnes on his way to Brattahlid, to visit Snorri Thorbrandsson.
‘You know him well?’ asked Leif.
‘I’ve known him for years. I saw him and Thorleif set out for here, just before I left for Norway.’
‘And you talked about visiting him in Greenland?’
‘We saw it as a possibility.’
Soon after that we had a fall of good crisp snow, and Leif and Karlsefni went south to Dyrnes. I stood at the milking ring with Thjodhild and watched them ski away, two dark figures like moving holes cut out of the whiteness of the frozen fjord. They were gone two weeks, and when they came back the talk was all of Vinland. I didn’t know, of course, exactly what Snorri and Leif had told Karlsefni, and
Karlsefni himself was quiet as usual, and gave away nothing of his state of mind, at least, not about that.
I mentioned two things. The other matter that led Karlsefni on was, in fact, myself.
As Eirik’s daughter, I was a good proposition. I owned Stokkanes, conveniently close to Brattahlid, which Thorstein the Black managed for me, and a big estate at Sandnes. I brought with me kinship with the most powerful chieftain in Greenland. Nothing could do more to enhance Karlsefni’s prospects in the West. But I flatter myself – no, I know – it wasn’t just that. Karlsefni had no plans to marry when he came. He used to look at me, not hungrily, as Thorvald and Thorstein once did, but speculatively, and never for more than a moment. The day after he got back from Dyrnes he started to talk to me. I was startled. I wasn’t working in the women’s room, as it happened, because I was cutting some of the new linen cloth into a tunic for myself, and, as the men were all out, I was using one of the big tables in the hall to spread the cloth right out. When Karlsefni came in, I began to gather up my things and leave him the room, but he stopped me.