Authors: Margaret Elphinstone
Directions can be so simple, and in clear weather life is that simple too, and yet at any moment the weather may change and snap the taut thread you’ve dared to hang your life upon. Later men found that in some years it’s impossible to get through to Vinland, but we sailed across the strait that now marks the boundary of the inhabited world, and for us the doors to the empty lands stood wide open. And so two wooden ships containing forty-nine men, five women, six cows and a bull, a dozen sheep, six horses and a coop of chickens sailed blithely out of the world we know into the sixth day of creation. Only of course it was not like that; we carried our own past with us like an unburied corpse. We saw everything, just as Leif had described it, and a week after the two ships met at the rendezvous in Lysufjord, we made our first landfall on Bjarney, having sailed all the way without parting company.
The water was deep, and we found the one place where we could bring the ships alongside a flat rock. Bird cliffs towered over us,
making our voices echo. There’s a wonderful harvest to be had from the Bjarney cliffs every spring, and even more from the eider who nest on top of the island. Karlsefni found the way up, and while they were going up the cliff I climbed over the gunwale into the other ship, to talk to the four women who’d sailed with Bjarni’s crew. They were all peasants, respectful to me, but not subservient like thralls. Helga was married to a smith from Snorri’s estate at Dyrnes. I liked her; she was young, but she seemed tough and sensible. The swell rocked us gently, and the sealskin fenders squeaked each time they were crushed against the rock. Birds screamed over us, and sometimes their droppings splashed around us. The cliff seemed to be leaning over us as we lay in its shadow. The sea was quiet and black as ink.
‘I’ve been waiting to speak to you,’ I said, after we’d chatted for a bit. ‘Have you ever delivered a baby?’
Her eyes opened wider and fell to my waist. ‘I know what to do,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen some born. When will it be?’
‘Yule, I think.’
‘Yule. Where do you think we’ll be by then?’
‘At Leif’s houses, I hope.’
‘I hope so too,’ she said, and then, ‘Do you suppose anyone was ever born in this country before?’
‘I don’t know,’ I told her, ‘But Thorvald died here.’
When Karlsefni’s party came down off the island they said that the shores of Vinland were visible to the south, and the land we’d left behind that morning was disappearing into a grey line of cloud, and they could feel the cold breeze coming before the change of weather. After that there was an orderly haste on both ships, and in a few minutes we were hoisting our sails again, this time for Vinland.
We travelled together very well, Karlsefni and I. When I remember those early days I see them as a long journey, never knowing where we might be next. For four years we travelled, and then we settled at Glaum. I’ve been mistress of a big estate for more than half my life, wife and widow of one of the most respected men in Iceland. I know I’ve been lucky, but sometimes I’ve struggled with a dreadful hollowness inside. It doesn’t usually last long. It often comes in the autumn, and for a few days I have to fight it. I’ve never told
anybody. The worst is when it strikes after Yule. If it comes then it gets a stronger hold, and I carry it for months.
I’m nervous telling you this. I feel shivery, and if I hold my hand up now I think it trembles – see? Am I talking about possession? A hollowness inside, I said. There are worms that get into men’s guts and eat them slowly from within. You can catch them if you eat herbs from land where sheep have grazed. Horrible. But this comes from somewhere else. A kind of soul worm, perhaps. It eats away under my ribs, and I have nothing inside to face the world with, only an emptiness that at all costs I must hide. I know now it’ll always go away again, so I can bear it, knowing that when the light comes back the thing will melt away, for a while at least.
I was free of that particular demon in Vinland; indeed I never experienced its hold until we were safe, living at Glaum with everything in life that one could wish for. The Vinland journeys were often frightening, dangerous and uncomfortable, but I was content inside myself. I never felt that I needed more in life than what was happening. I knew some painful things, but not disappointment.
We landed at Leif’s houses at dusk: there is dusk there, even in June. The bank of cloud had engulfed Bjarney, so the route we had come by had melted into nothing, but in front of us was solid land. We found the two offshore islands which we were to know so well, and almost at once we saw the cairns Leif’s men had built on the ridge behind them. Sure enough the bay was tucked in between the islands and the ridge, shelving so gently that our boats beached a hundred yards or more from the shore. As soon as the ships grounded, warmth wrapped us round, smelling of trees. There were no waves, so it was quiet. We could see soft green shores, and a grey beach. The animals smelt the land and began to push against their wooden partitions; the sheep began bleating, and then the cows mooed, and the bull let out a bellow and kicked wildly against his stall and tried to toss his head. A rope snapped. Someone shouted, ‘He’s going berserk!’, and the ponies in the next stall squealed and tried to rear against their halters. We had no choice but to get the ramps out fast: animals at sea are usually so miserable, cold and hungry, that they give little trouble. Maybe we’d kept ours in too good condition, as the voyage had been
easy, but I’ve never known such a landing. As soon as that bull was out, he flung away the men who held him with one toss of his head, and lumbered off towards the nearest shore. The cows bellowed and tugged, and their droppings splashed into the sea. One of the ponies was plunging and screaming, terrified by the white water he’d stirred up around himself, as if it were a monster trying to drag him down.
By the time we’d got ourselves and the animals ashore, and the lead cow and the ponies hobbled, we were soaked and sweating. The bull had vanished, but he’d come back to his cows soon enough no doubt. The ships, moored in knee-deep water, looked far away and dangerously small. We were standing on a curved beach facing east. We climbed up the dunes, where marram grass stung my legs – and something else. I looked at the ripening ears in awe. Wild wheat, Leif had said. I’d never seen grain growing in my life before. Now I’ve seen the fields in Europe I know our wheat in Vinland wasn’t the same, but it seemed wealth enough to us. Ears of budding grain brushed my skirt, and I thought of Halldis and the smell of fresh hot loaves, and with that promise of comfort I looked for the first time at Leif’s houses.
They were set on a grassy plain, with a river running through marshes behind them. To our right was the low ridge with the cairns outlined on its spine. Trees covered gently sloping land, except in the cleared space before us where the three houses were built in a curve that followed the line of the beach: low green familiar shapes, just like the homes we’d left behind, but alien in their emptiness. I’d never seen a deserted settlement before, for all I’d seen so many new ones spring out of the wilderness. I’d never in my life approached an uninhabited house. I was scared; they seemed so secret and withdrawn. There were no doors. Karlsefni walked round the middle house and I followed him. There were doors, of course, but they faced west, away from the sea. Before the others came I saw him quickly cross himself before he raised the latch. The door swung open on darkness. We hadn’t thought of that, and we had neither lamp nor fire with us. Karlsefni stepped in, and I followed. It took a little while to get used to the dark, and then I saw the cold hearth full of ashes from the fire Thorvald’s men left burning here five years ago.
Karlsefni found the rope and tried to open the chimney hole, only the boards were nailed shut against the weather. The benches were bare, but the walls were hung with ropes and baskets and tools, just as they’d been left. The cooking-pit was choked with dead embers, and pots were piled on top. I felt in the darkness of the water barrel, but if they’d left it full, the water had evaporated long ago. Five winters had left the place damp and earthy, like being underground, but it wasn’t cold. I was the first woman who’d ever entered this house, and I looked again at the cooking pots and thought of the men who’d wintered here. I’d never seen a free man cook a meal in my life, and in the nature of things I never will. But there were the pots, the pit, the flat stones and the hearth, telling me a story that I would never be a part of. Does that seem foolish to you, Agnar? I’ve never thought of saying all this to anyone before.
The place never felt like that again. We lit the fires and moved in, and within a day it was our own. Karlsefni and I took Leif’s own house, the southernmost one next to the river. We had our own room at the river end, and our ship’s company were in the hall next to us. Snorri and his folk had the other two houses, which had to serve as workshops as well. We were quite cramped the first winter, so the following spring we built more sheds: one by the shore for boat-building, and two for other work, alongside the storehouse Leif had left. We got the smithy going the first spring, just across the river from our house. We had our smith, and bog iron was available from the marshes round, just as Leif had said, but in spite of all the work that went into it we never got the iron we hoped for. It was one frustration after another, that smithy. Snorri lost his temper with it, and wouldn’t have any more to do with it, but Karlsefni still persevered. But that’s all later.
Our first winter should have been much better than it was. We had three months of the hunting season left, but although Leif had found caribou not far away, our hunting parties were unlucky. They found old trails, but for some reason the caribou hadn’t come as far north that year. We’d missed the birding season, though we were in time for the salmon and the cod. The berries were wonderful, more kinds than I’d ever seen, though we picked mostly squashberries, partridge
berries and cloudberries. Half a day’s sail down the coast we found blueberries, and they seemed the right colour for the wine that Tyrker had made. Karlsefni said they looked like grapes though he’d never seen fresh ones himself, only dried. We were short of red meat, having no cattle to spare for slaughter, and by the time the seals were coming ashore in the autumn the year was already turning. Karlsefni had a couple of fairly successful days seal hunting in the islands, but when Snorri went along the coast he came back almost empty handed. The first blizzard came early in October, withering the last berries on the stalks, and killing off the last of the dreadful biting insects that plagued us through every Vinland summer. The cold came with it, and never went. Our cattle gave less milk every day. Leif had said that winter wouldn’t start until just before Yule, and though we were never as fortunate as that in our three winters in Vinland, certainly the first winter we had was much the worst. But that’s fate for you, never generous except when you’re not relying on it.
By mid-November the snow was beginning to lie, and I was haunted by the ghosts lurking in our half-filled stores. All of us had known bad winters, but perhaps I had the most reason to dread the want and isolation ahead. I prayed, as we all did, but God seemed far away in this land where no prayer had ever been said before. I was aware of my baby inside me growing strong and active – once he started to move he hardly seemed to rest – and I couldn’t bear the thought that he should be born into hunger and grow weak, and know all the fears that I had known. So I climbed to the cairns one day to make a spell. It wasn’t far, but it was hard work toiling up there in my pregnant state, carrying a pot of embers from the fire. The ground was hard and white. The autumn blanket of reds and yellows had turned brittle and threadbare, and skeleton branches scratched me as I passed. I scrambled between rocks and juniper and stood on a rocky plateau patched with lichens. Below me smoke rose from our roofs, and I could see Helga and the other women turning the cod that was spread on the beach to dry. There were no men about; good weather was too rare now to waste, and they had all gone hunting. It was a clear day, and Bjarney was visible as a thin line on the horizon.
I made a fire spell, using twigs of bog myrtle and juniper so the smoke smelled sweet, and I conjured warmth and wealth and plenty out of the wintry air. I wasn’t sure if I’d been heard. The land seemed so empty, not threatening, because there was nothing there to fear, but not sustaining either. If God created this world, he left it on the sixth day with nothing human in it. I don’t think there can be any road to hel or heaven from Vinland, and I wonder sometimes if Thjodhild was right, and Thorvald’s body should have been brought home. Perhaps we should have brought Thorbrand back. His death seemed so wrong: a youth wasted. A few years after we’d gone, Freydis left behind the bodies of the men she killed at Leif’s houses, and no one will ever avenge them. There are ghosts in Vinland now, I imagine, and none could be more troubled than they have cause to be. But no one died when we were there, and I’d like to think we left the place as empty as we found it. I’m not sure, though. When I made that spell I may have been too careless, because the place seemed innocent, but of course we were changing it all the time.
That same evening we noticed Thorhall the Hunter wasn’t around. Each of the hunting parties had assumed he’d gone with one of the others, but when they all came back, blown into the shelter of Leif’s houses by the beginnings of the next gale, he wasn’t there. For three days we huddled in our houses while the storm flung itself against our walls, and everyone thought Thorhall must have perished. On the third night I dreamed I saw him, lying on a cliff top staring at the sky, his eyes and mouth and nostrils wide open. He was pinching himself and mumbling. Then Karlsefni was there too and he asked Thorhall what he was doing, and Thorhall said, ‘Mind your own business. I’m not a child, and I don’t need nursing. Leave me alone!’
I woke in the black dark, and heard the wind battering at the house, vibrating in the platform under me. I woke Karlsefni and told him what I’d dreamed. He said it sounded so typical of Thorhall he was inclined to think the augury was true. I shivered, and he asked me why. ‘If Thorhall’s safe,’ he said, ‘that’s good news. I don’t fancy telling Eirik that I’ve lost the man, and what’s more he’s useful to us. You should be glad.’