Read Online The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley - Free Book Online

demons.” And now Nicholas came again, with Osmund, and they said that the ship was ready. Osmund walked off a little to the side with Hauk, and he said, “The voyage to the Northsetur is little like a voyage to Markland, for the winds are usually favorable, and there is no lack of provisions. Are there not sheep and goats still in the pastures of the western settlement? Indeed, my friend,” said Osmund, “you are strangely unwilling, when you yourself have often gone off to the north any time of the year, and stayed there.” Now Asgeir came up to them, and he had been talking with Nicholas, and he said, “My brother, will not the sailors be Greenlanders, all except for Nicholas himself? Greenlanders know something about the ways of the ice. And a few walrus tusks and narwhal horns might ease the difficulty of the tithe. It is seven cows we lost last winter, and the sheep cast fewer lambs than they have been doing.” And so Hauk Gunnarsson was persuaded to take ship with the Englishman, and guide it north so that Nicholas could have a look at things.
    Seven days after leaving Gardar, the ship’s crew put in to Lysufjord in the western settlement and rowed to the Sandnes church, where they drew the boat up onto the strand and looked about for a place to rest for a day. The farmsteads were deserted and many roofs and walls had fallen in. The hay in the fields was sometimes thick, but in other places, sand had drifted in. The sheep and goats that the Greenlanders had hoped to find were dead, or had wandered away, but there were many cod in the fjord, and voyagers ate well and bedded down in a large farmstead of many rooms. One man found a spindle whorl and a loom weight where he was sleeping, and he kept them, although many said such abandoned things were ill-omened and would bring misfortune to the journey. In the night, Hauk Gunnarsson, who had said little since leaving Gardar, woke up shouting with an evil dream. In it, he said, a giantess with the face of a walrus was found on a piece of ice, dismembering and eating a little boy, although the boy was still alive. At the telling of this dream, many of the Greenlanders declared that the wisest course would be to end their journey and return to the eastern settlement, but the Monk Nicholas scoffed at their fears, saying that not all dreams were visions, and that many dreams were the result of the previous day’s activities, or of something the dreamer chanced to eat. In fact, he said, the coming of the dream in the early part of the night showed that it could not be a vision, for the old books all said that visions could come only toward morning. Nicholas was a man of great learning, and Hauk Gunnarsson declared that he was perfectly willing to go on, and so after another day in the settlement, they rowed out of Lysufjord and began their journey north, away from the settlements and the homes of men.
    They coasted north for some days, frequently harpooning seals or snaring birds or sighting polar bears and reindeer. The Monk Nicholas charted the height of the sun using a peculiar instrument that none of the Greenlanders were allowed to touch, for it was rare and very costly, said Nicholas, and was called an astrolabe. From time to time they sighted the skin boats of skraelings at a distance, but they could not come close enough to the little boats for Nicholas to satisfy his curiosity about these beings.
    Now they came to a walrus island that some of the older men had visited before, and they saw that many walrus were hauled out on this island, piled high on top of one another, males, females, and half grown calves, scores upon scores. It seemed to the Greenlanders that this was what they had come north for, to make a walrus kill, and they began talking among themselves about how to go about this hunt. The case was that only Hauk Gunnarsson, Sigurd Sighvatsson, and Eindridi Gudmundsson had knowledge of walrus hunting, but the others were even more eager to try their