The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley

and the sailors began carrying things to the ship. The children stood staring, and the adults soon did, too, asking each other who would have thought Greenland to have such wealth. A hundred and twenty-four pairs of walrus tusks wrapped in fine wadmal of a reddish brown color went in first, for they were ivory, and extremely valuable, said Ivar Bardarson, and formed the greater part of the tithe owed by the Gardar bishopric to the pope for the last ten years. Amongst these went forty-nine twisted narwhal tusks, and then, on top of these, cushioning and protecting them, went the two polar bear hides of Lavrans Kollgrimsson and Osmund Thordarson, and three more that men had gotten in the days before the end of the western settlement. These, too, were very valuable, and would probably go to the archbishop in Nidaros or even to the pope himself. On top of these, from one side of the ship to the other and almost from end to end, were laid coils of walrus hide rope, and on top of these, rolls and rolls of woven wadmal, in many shades. Gunnar pointed out to Margret the distinct Gunnars Stead shade, a deep brownish purple, exactly similar to the color of the clothes they were wearing, and Margret said that some of these lengths had certainly been woven by Helga Ingvadottir and gone as Asgeir’s tithe to the bishopric. Now the roomy hull of the ship was nearly full, so the sailors laid the planking of the deck over the goods. On top of the planking went piles of reindeer hides and sealskins, blue and white fox furs, a cage containing six white falcons, leather bags full of seal blubber and vats of whale oil, leather bags of dried sealmeat, some butter and sourmilk for the return voyage, and wheels of cheeses for the archbishop of Nidaros from the farms at Gardar. In a special place was a large package wrapped in yellowish wadmal that contained, people said, the furs Thorleif brought from Markland that could not be found in Greenland, and finally, the bear was brought with his cage, where he would spend his time on the journey, although he had been largely tamed by one of Ivar Bardarson’s serving youths, who was going along. In addition, a Greenlander from Herjolfsnes was going to learn to be a sailor, and Odd, the brother of Thord from Siglufjord, thought that a fortune might be made with Thorleif. Gunnar asked Hauk if he, too, was going, for Asgeir kept saying that a single man without children would do well to see the world, but Hauk thought little of the world he had heard about, although he said that he would surely go if he could be certain that Thorleif’s ship would be blown off course to Vinland. Thorleif was only three sailors short of a full crew (for in addition to Lavrans and the lookout, two sailors had died of a fever). Skuli and another boy had filled out considerably in Greenland, and so he had few worries. They set out, and many people said good riddance. Ingrid said that in her grandmother’s youth two and three ships would come to the Greenlanders every season, but Asgeir said this could not have been even in those days, when, everyone knew, Greenland was on the shores of Paradise.
    In the summer that Thorleif’s ship went back to Bergen, Margret Asgeirsdottir went with Kristin the wife of Thord Magnusson to Siglufjord, and Hauk Gunnarsson declared that it was high time his nephew Gunnar learned to come upon birds and snare them, for even the bones of birds were useful around the farm for needles and hooks, not to mention their meat, feathers, and down. Hauk sat across the table from Gunnar, looking at him. “The birds about the farmstead are wary enough, not like birds in the Northsetur or in Markland, who come to perch on your arms and head if you sit still long enough. But they can still be caught, with a little care.” Gunnar nodded, but it seemed to him a tedious thing, to walk about, far up into the hills. Not even the dogs accompanied them, for Hauk preferred to hunt without dogs, as skraelings