The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley Page A

warmed up, rather than look for driftwood. If he was hungry, he would wait until Ingrid called out for food, and then eat whatever she left. Whenever anything was lost, no matter how valuable, he would declare that it would turn up sometime. He wore whatever shirts and stockings no one else seemed to want, although he knew well how to stitch these things himself. He said that Yule would soon come around, or Easter, or the first day of winter, or some other occasion for the giving of gifts, and then he would get a new shirt from someone, and he could easily wait until then. The result was that the servants began to emulate him, and little work got done on the farm. Fences fell down, turves fell from their places, buildings began to crumble. The storehouses emptied and were not filled again, the bath house fell into disuse, the cows and horses were sent out to look for food when the fields were covered with ice. Neither Gunnar nor Olaf went on the spring seal hunt or the autumn seal hunt. All of Olaf’s efforts could not lift the curse of Gunnar’s laziness, although he himself had become a skilled farmer and was like Asgeir had been in his energy. Things went like this for more than a year after the death of Asgeir, and the neighbors declared that soon Gunnar and Margret would have to go out as servants, for they could hardly keep themselves in this way for another summer, much less another winter.
    Now the time came around for the Thing, and Gunnar declared that he was nineteen years old and ready to journey to Gardar and find out what it was necessary for men to do. He stitched himself a new shirt and new stockings, and took one of the servingmen with him, and, to tell briefly what happened, he returned home seven days later with the news that he had agreed to take a wife, Birgitta Lavransdottir, of Hvalsey Fjord, who was fourteen years old, and who brought as her marriage portion two sheep and a roll of red silk.
    Folk said that it was obvious that Lavrans Kollgrimsson hadn’t been to Gunnars Stead in many a year, or else he did not care much for his daughter. Others declared, though, that Lavrans himself was a poor man, although he farmed good Hvalsey land, and getting old, so that any marriage would be a good one for a child as headstrong as Birgitta Lavransdottir.
    Birgitta Lavransdottir was considered quite fair among the Greenlanders, red-cheeked and well fed, blond like Gunnar, but of low stature, so that she came up only to the middle of his breast, and only as high as Margret’s shoulder. The marriage was held at the new church in Hvalsey Fjord and the marriage feast at Lavrans Stead, which sat above the water of the inner arm of Hvalsey Fjord, directly across from the church, which was called after St. Birgitta, and had been built by the Hvalsey Fjord folk in the reign of King Sverri. Gunnar presented Birgitta with many fine gifts, including a silver comb his grandfather Gunnar had gotten in Ireland and the boat with its sailors carved from birchwood that Skuli Gudmundsson had given him when he was a boy. Birgitta seemed especially pleased with this toy, and with the thick gray cloak Margret sewed for her. They came to Vatna Hverfi with their sheep and their bolt of silk in Lavrans’ boat, rowing slowly up Einars Fjord on a day in late summer when the fjord was as still and bright, people said, as water in a goblet. The bellowing of the two sheep carried across the water into every farmstead, and even the dip of Gunnar’s oars could be heard in an eerie way, so that many families spoke of the passing of this little boat as they sat down that evening to their meat.
    Now it was the case that the Gunnars Stead folk had a pleasant feast in honor of the coming of Birgitta Lavransdottir, and when all were sitting contented at their trenchers after eating their fill, Gunnar said to Margret, “Where is it that Birgitta Lavransdottir will be sleeping now that she is living here?” At this Olaf and Maria, the wife of