The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley Page B

Hrafn, burst out laughing. Birgitta looked up, her eyes full of curiosity, and Margret looked at her. Now she sent Olaf and Maria from the steading, and gazed upon her brother and the child who was his wife. Birgitta’s headdress, the prerogative of a married woman, sat heavily on her small head, and slightly askew. Margret turned to Gunnar. “My own bedcloset,” she said, “is the largest. I will make a place for her there.” And she got up and showed Birgitta the bedcloset, with its carvings of angelica leaves and its little shelf that ran all around the head, for putting down a seal oil lamp or such other things as the sleeper might care to have near him during the night.
    On this shelf Birgitta set about arranging her wedding gifts in a row, the silver comb, a necklace of glass beads, an ivory spindle weight carved to look like a seal with its head up and the thread coming out of its mouth, a small knife with a beaten iron handle, and two or three woven colored bands to be worn with her headdress, as well as the little ship. Next to these she stacked her folded undergarments and stockings, and beside these she set her new shoes, then, after saying her prayers, she lay down and pulled her new gray cloak up to her chin, turned her face toward her new things and fell asleep.
    Of all those living in the house, Olaf was the most like Asgeir had been. He got up early each morning and took his meal of dried reindeer meat and sourmilk into the fields and began to work at whatever there was to be done. In the spring, it was he and Hrafn who carried the cows into the homefield. It was he who hitched up the horses to the cart and carried manure out. It was Olaf who dragged the birch sapling over the manure to break it up and mix it with the soil, then Olaf who repaired the fences to keep the cows from eating the new shoots of grass. At sheep shearing time, he found Hrafn in the hills with the sheep, helped him with the shearing, then dragged home the bundles of wool for Maria and Gudrun to wash and comb. He also helped with the milking and the making of cheeses and butter. At the end of summer, he scythed the grass and Maria and Gudrun raked it, then he bundled the hay and piled it in front of the cowbyre.
    One day a man called Audun came from Gardar to Gunnars Stead with a message that the bishop wished to see Olaf, and wished him to return to Gardar at once with the messenger. Olaf sent the messenger into the farmstead for some refreshment, then lingered over his work until it was almost dark and too late to begin the journey.
    This Audun was a fellow from the south, and throughout the evening he complained jokingly about having to spend the night in such a poor place, sleeping on the floor with only a single reindeer hide to wrap himself up in, his head under the table and his feet nearly out the door. Gardar, he said, was quite magnificent now that the bishop was in residence. “Indeed,” he said, “many of the boys do no farm work at all anymore, but spend their days making parchment from the hides of calves and learning to copy manuscripts, and making bearberry ink. There are boys who spend their time singing, three boys, and it seems to me their voices sound angelically sweet. Sira Jon is the master of this, and when he sings a bit, to show these boys what they must do, all the copyists and parchment makers stop what they are doing, for the sake of hearing it. The bishop himself watches over the copyists, and Sira Pall Hallvardsson goes in and out, and Sira Petur, too, although these priests are most often away at Brattahlid, or Isafjord.” As Audun was rattling on, Olaf put his few things in a bundle, his ashwood spoon, his books, the cup Asgeir had given him, and his newest stockings, breeches, and shoes. When the time came in the morning for the two men to go around the hill to Undir Hofdi church, Olaf said to Gunnar, “It seems to me that I would rather have my feet out the door than have my head full of