The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley Page B

less about his flock, for it had now been twenty years since the death of the last bishop, and many who didn’t care to be were surely in a state of mortal sin without knowing it, and a monk could come from England out of mere curiosity, but a bishop could not come to do God’s work.
    Nevertheless, the Monk Nicholas was a charming man with many stories to tell about the Church, and about life in England since the Great Death and in other places, such as France and among the Dutch, for he was a well-traveled man. Some said that his stories were not those of most monks, for he also knew what the women were wearing and how rich men were furnishing their houses. He asked many questions of the Greenlanders, and encouraged Ivar Bardarson not only to tell him everything he had learned about the eastern settlement and the western settlement, but was eager for him to write it down, as he had spoken of, for, Nicholas said, the people of Europe hardly believed that Greenland existed anymore. And this was the beginning of Ivar Bardarson’s project, which lasted the following winter.
    Now it happened one day that the Monk Nicholas appeared at Gunnars Stead, and sought out Hauk Gunnarsson, who was snaring rabbits in the hills, and he was full of questions: How many days’ sail was it to the Northsetur? What was the sailing weather like at this time of the year? Was it true that Ivar Bardarson and some men had rowed a boat to the western settlement in six days? How far to the north had Hauk ever gone? What sort of folk were the skraelings there? Did they speak their prayers backward and recoil at the sign of the cross? Was it their clothing that was furry, or were they themselves covered with fur, like beasts? Where was it that the ice turned to fire in the north, as it must according to old books? And all Hauk said to any of these questions about the northern regions was “I know not. The hunting is good there.” Later, after Nicholas went back to Gardar, Hauk said, “This fellow seems a fool to me. Any man may hunt in the northern regions, and prosper, but these notions of his have no purpose.”
    “You may say,” Asgeir returned, “that the English are often thus: they talk merely to talk, and go idly on great journeys merely to see the sights.”
    Some days after this, Nicholas appeared again, and he found Hauk at his morning meat, and he sat down with him at once, and leaned forward and pushed his trencher aside, although Hauk had just been eating from it, and he said, “Hauk Gunnarsson, it is my fixed intention to sail north this summer, and I desire your guidance.” Hauk laughed, and said that it was too late in the summer for such a journey.
    “But,” said Nicholas, “it is my fixed intention to find the Greenland bottoms, and to see such skraelings as may be found, for that is why I have come to Greenland.”
    Hauk laughed again, and said that he must put off his intention, for it was no one else’s intention to comply.
    And Nicholas returned a few days later, and he said that he had found a crew of Greenlanders who wished to hunt in the old hunting grounds, and the most prominent of these was Osmund Thordarson, of Brattahlid. Eindridi Gudmundsson and Sigurd Sighvatsson were also eager to go, for they had prospered in the north before. Indeed, many folk remembered the prosperity of the old days, when men went north every year and brought back quantities of walrus hide and narwhal horn, and the settlement was rich in items that the archbishop of Nidaros and the merchants of Bergen cared for. Thorleif had carried away what was stored in the bishop’s storehouse, and now folk were hard pressed to pay in sheepskins, cheeses, and wadmal what they had once paid in hides and ropes and horns. Hauk said to Asgeir that Nicholas was like a madman with this project. “The bottoms will be full of drift ice, and soon, anyway, there will be little to see in the dark, whether of ice turning to fire, or skraelings turning to