The Greenlanders Part 24

Epilogue.

After the destruction of Gardar and of most of the steadings that looked upon the fjords of the south, news between the districts was slow, and every district turned in upon itself. Cattle and sheep that had been few enough were fewer still, and the same was true of men and boats. Some things were said: that women and children in Hvalsey Fjord had been left without men entirely, and had gone off with the skraelings; that the conflicts in Brattahlid district intensified after the visitation of the Bristol men, and all the families were in a turmoil of accusations and retaliations; that if the coming winter was a hard one, few households would get through it, but indeed, this was said every year, and no man could judge in advance whether it would be true or not.

Margret Asgeirsdottir was buried with as much of a ceremony as Jon Andres and Gunnar between them could remember, next to Helga Gunnarsdottir in the lee of Undir Hofdi church, though no services had been held there in six or eight winters. Jon Andres and Johanna and their children and servingfolk reclaimed such belongings as they could from Ketils Stead, and moved to Gunnars Stead. Folk no longer considered it lucky to live in view of the fjord, in case the Bristol men should return. Gunnars Stead prospered well enough. The fields were wide, still, and well watered, though folk were on their own now, without support from Gardar, and without many neighbors. Inside, there was the rubbing of elbows that many people on one steading have with one another. Gunnar was not sanguine. One winter or another, he thought, would surely kill them all. Onto his parchment he wrote such sentences as occurred to him.

In the winter, as always in Greenland, every day was much the same, and every night. About the eaves, the snowy wind howled, but was m.u.f.fled by the turfing. Snow mounded against the door, pressing it closed so that two men, or three, must press it open in the morning. The children sat in the bedcloset, by the light of a seal oil lamp, and played or slept. Jon Andres and Johanna sat over the chessboard, for folk may not contemplate their fates all the time, and must play as well as work. The great loom, upon which Margret Asgeirsdottir had woven her lengths of wadmal, and before her Helga Ingvadottir, and before her Maria Steinsdottir, and before her Asta Palssdottir, and many generations of wives before them, cast its black shadow across the wall. In front of Gunnar, on the table, the small seal oil lamp that he used flickered and burned for a moment more dimly and for a moment more brightly. He thought of going to his bedcloset and huddling under the old bearskin that his uncle Hauk Gunnarsson had left him, but then Johanna looked up from the game, with her cool and serious countenance, and said, "My father, it is very silent, except for the wind. You might enliven us with a tale." And the children peeped out of the bedcloset, and Gunnar told his tale.