Odinn's Child by Tim Severin Read Free Book Online Page B

evil-tempered troublemaker who, as it turned out, was to play a gruesome part in my story, though at the time she seemed to be no more than a quarrelsome and vindictive young woman always quarrelling with her relations. As Gyda did not want another cuckoo in her house, she arranged to have me fostered out, a real fostering this time. And this is how I came to spend my childhood not with my father but with Gudrid, who lived nearby. Gudrid, I suppose, felt responsible for me as she had brought me to Greenland in the first place. Also, I believe, she was a little lonely because soon after her arrival in Greenland she lost her husband, Thorir. He was in Eriksfjord for only a few weeks after his rescue before he went down with a severe fever. The illness must have arrived with his ship because Thorir and most of his crew were the first to begin coughing, spitting blood, and having bouts of dizziness. By the time the illness had run its course, eighteen people had
    died, among them Thorir and - finally - that old warhorse, my grandfather Erik the Red.

    The gossips said that Gudrid took me in as a substitute for the child her body had failed to give her when she was Thorir's woman. I suspect these critics were jealous and only looking for a flaw to compensate for Gudrid's astonishing good looks — she possessed a loveliness of the type that endures throughout a woman's life. I remember her as having a pale translucent skin, long blonde hair, and grey eyes in a face of perfect, gentle symmetry with a well-defined nose over a delicious-looking mouth and a chin that had just the suggestion of a dimple exactly in the middle of it. At any rate I am sure that the young widow Gudrid would have taken me in even if she had children of her own. She was one of the kindest women imaginable. She was always ready to give help, whether bringing food to a sick neighbour, loaning out kitchen utensils to someone planning a feast and then doing half the cooking herself, or scolding children who were behaving as bullies and comforting their victims. Everyone in Brattahlid had a high opinion of her and I worshipped her. Never having known my real mother, I accepted Gudrid in that vital role as entirely normal, and I suspect that Gudrid made a far better job of it than gruff Thorgunna would have done. Gudrid seemed to have endless patience when it came to dealing with children. I and the other dozen or so youngsters of the same age made Gudrid's house the centre of our universe. When we played in the meadows or scrambled along the beach looking for fish and skipping stones on the cold water of the fjord, we usually finished by saying, 'Race you to Gudrid's!' and would go pelting across the rough ground like hares, bursting in through the side door which led to the kitchen, and arriving in a great clatter. Gudrid would wait till the last of us had arrived, then haul down a great pitcher of sour milk and pour out our drinks as we perched on the tall wooden benches.
    Brattahlid was, for a child, an idyllic spot. The settlement lies at the head of a long fjord reaching deep inland. Erik had chosen the site on his first visit and chosen shrewdly. The length of the fjord offers protection from the cold foggy weather outside, and it is the most sheltered and fertile place to set up a farm in the area, if not the whole of Greenland. The anchorage is safe and the beach rises to low, undulating meadowland dotted with clumps of dwarf willow and birch. Here Erik and his followers built their turf-roofed houses on the drier hillocks, fenced in the home paddocks, and generally established replicas of their former farms in Iceland. There are no more than three or four hundred Greenlanders, and so there is plenty of room for all those who are hardy enough to settle there. Life is even simpler than in Iceland. At the onset of winter we brought the cattle in from the meadowland and kept them indoors, feeding them the hay we had prepared in the summer. We ourselves