Read Ebook: Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates (Vol. 2 of 2) with scientific elucidations by Humboldt Alexander Von Sabine Elizabeth Juliana Translator

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"'Tis well to be wise but not too wise, 'Tis well that to-morrow is hid from our eyes, For in forward-looking forebodings rise,"

she added quaintly. "I have heard her say that it is colder in Greenland than it is here."

"Has she been in Greenland?"

"Her father and mother were on the way there when she was little, and the ship was wrecked somewhere on the coast. The Skroelings found her and took her to live in their country. That is how she learned so much about trees and herbs, and how to make bows and arrows and moccasins."

"Moccasins?"

"The little shoes she made for Ellida. And she made a little boat for Peder, like their skiffs."

This was interesting. For a private reason, Thorolf held Greenland to be the most fascinating of all places.

"Can she speak their language?"

"Of course. I asked her to teach me, and she said that perhaps she would some day. The songs that she sings to the little ones are some that the Skroeling woman who adopted her used to sing to her when she cried for her own mother. One of them begins like this:

"'Piche Klooskap pechian Machieswi menikok.'"

"What does it mean?"

"'Long ago Klooskap came to the island of the partridges.' Klooskap was like Odin, or Thor. The priests in Greenland told her he was a devil and wouldn't let her talk about him, but the Skroelings had runes for everything just like the people in the sagas,--runes for war, and healing, and the sea."

"How did she ever get away?"

"Some men came from Westbyrg to cut wood in the forest, and when they saw that she was not really a Skroeling they bought her for an iron pot and one of them married her. But he was drowned a long time ago."

"I wish I knew the Skroelings' language. Some day I mean to go to Greenland."

"Perhaps Mother Elle will teach you. I'll ask her."

The Wind-wife was rather chary of information about the country of the Skroelings until Nikolina's coaxing and Thorolf's silent but intense interest had taken effect. The country, she said, was rather like Norway, with mountains and great forests, lakes and streams, but far colder. There were no fiords, and no cities. The people lived in tents made of poles covered with bark, or hides. They dressed in the hides of wild animals and lived by hunting and fishing. They had no reindeer, horses, cattle, sheep or goats, no fowls, no pigs. They could not work iron, nor did they spin or weave. The man and woman who had adopted her treated her just like their own child.

The stories she had learned from these people were intensely interesting to her listeners. There was one about a battle between the wasps and the squirrels, and another about the beaver who wanted wings. One was about a girl who was married to the Spirit of the Mountain and had a son beautiful and straight and like any other boy except that he had stone eyebrows. Then there was the tale about Klooskap tying up the White Eagle of the Wind so that he could not flap his wings. After a short time everything was so dirty and ill-smelling and unhealthy that Klooskap had to go back and untie one wing, and let the wind blow to clear the air and make the earth once more wholesome.

Wild apples fell, grain ripened, nights lengthened. Long ago the twin-flower, violet, wild pansy, forget-me-not and yellow anemone had left their fairy haunts, and there remained only the curving fantastic fronds of the fern,--the dragon-grass. Then had come brilliant spots and splashes of color on the summer slopes--purple butterwort, golden ragweed, aconite, buttercup, deep crimson mossy patches of saxifrage, rosy heather, catchfly, wild geranium, cinnamon rose. These also finished their triumphal procession and went to their Valhalla. Then one September morning the children woke to hear the wind screaming as if the White Eagle had escaped his prison, and the rain pelting the world.

All summer they had been out, rain or shine, like water-ouzels, but now they were glad to sit about the fire with the shutters all closed, and the smoke now and then driven down into the room by the storm. Before evening the little ones were begging for stories.

"I wish I could remember a saga I heard last Yule," Nikolina said at last. "It was about a voyage the Vikings made to a country where the people had never seen cattle. When they heard the cattle bellowing they all ran away and left the furs they had come to sell."

"Tell all you remember and make up the rest," suggested Karen, but Nikolina shook her head.

"One should never do that with a saga."

"Years afterward returned Bjarni to Iceland, and in his telling of that voyage it came to the ears of Leif Ericsson, who asked him many questions about the land he had seen. There grew no trees in Iceland or Greenland, fit for house-timber, and Leif was minded to find out this place of great forests. Thus it came that Leif sailed from Brattahlid in Greenland with five and thirty men in a long ship upon a journey of discovery.

"First came they to a barren land covered with big flat stones, and this Leif named Helluland, the slate land. Southward sailed he for many days until he saw a coast covered with wooded hills, and there he landed, calling it Markland, the land of woods. Then southward again they bore and came to a place where a river flowed out of a lake and fell into the sea. The country was pleasant, with good fishing. Leif said that they would spend the winter there, and they built wooden cabins well-made and warm.

"Then at the season when the leaves are blood-red and bright gold came in from the woods Thorkel the German, smacking his lips and making strange faces and jabbering in his own language. When they asked what ailed him he said that he had found vines loaded with grapes, and having seen none since he left his own country, which was a land of vineyards, he was out of his senses with delight. Therefore was that country named Vinland the Fair. In the spring went Leif home, well pleased, with a cargo of timber, but his father being dead he voyaged no more to Vinland, but remained to be head of his house.

"Next went Thorvald, Leif's brother, to Vinland and stayed two winters in the booths that Leif built, until he was slain in a fight with the men of that land. His men buried him there and returned sorrowfully to their own land.

"Next went Thorestein, Leif's second brother, forth, with Gudrid his wife, to get the body of Thorvald but he died on the voyage and his widow returned to Brattahlid.

"Next came to Brattahlid Thorfin Karlsefne, the Viking from Iceland, who loved and married Gudrid and from her heard the story of Vinland, and desired it for his own. In good time went he forth in a long ship with his wife, and there went with him three other valiant ships. They had altogether one hundred and sixty men and five women, with cattle, grain and all things fit for a settlement. This was seven years after Leif Ericsson found Vinland. Among the stores for trading was scarlet cloth, which the Skroelings greatly covet, insomuch that one small strip of scarlet would buy many rich furs. But when they came to trade, hearing a bull bellow, with a great squalling they all ran away and left their packs on the ground, nor did they show their faces again for three weeks. Snorre, the son of Thorfin Karlsefne, born in Vinland, was three years old when the Northmen left that land. They had found the winter hard and cold, and in a fight with the Skroelings many had been killed, so that they took ship and returned to Iceland.

"They had gone but a little way when one of the ships, which was commanded by Bjarni Grimulfsson, lagged so far behind that it lost sight of the others. The men then discovered that shipworms had bored the hull so that it was about to sink. None could hope to be saved but in the stern boat, and that would not hold half of them.

"Then stood Bjarni Grimulfsson forth, and said to his men that in this matter there should be no advantage of rank, but they would draw lots, who should go in the boat and who remain in the ship. When this had been done it was Bjarni's lot to go in the boat. After all had gone down into the boat who had the right, an Icelander who had been Bjarni's companion made outcry dolefully saying, 'Bjarni, Bjarni, do you leave me here to die in the sea? It was not so you promised me when I left my father's house.' Then said Bjarni, for the lot was fairly cast, 'What else can be done?' Then said the Icelander, 'I think that you should come up into the ship and let me go down into the boat.' And indeed no other way might be found for him to live. Then answered Bjarni making light of the matter, 'Let it be so, since I see that you are so anxious to live and so afraid of death; I will return to the ship.' This was done, and the men rowing away looked back and saw the ship go down in a great swirl of waves with Bjarni and those who remained.

"This tale my grandmother heard from her father, and he from his, and so on until the time of that Thorolf Erlandsson who sailed with Bjarni Grimulfsson and went down into the sea by his side singing, for he feared nothing but to be a coward."

Thorolf's eyes were as proud and his head as high as were his Viking forefather's when the worm-riddled galley went to her grave with more than half her crew, three hundred and forty years before. In the little silence which followed the fire crackled and whistled, the gusty rain-drenched wind beat upon the little hut. And then Nils repeated musingly the ancient saying from the Runes of Odin,

"'Cattle die, Kings die, Kindred die, we also die,-- One thing never dies, The fair fame of the valiant.'"

Some one knocked at the door. A real Viking in winged helmet and scale-armor would hardly have surprised them just then. But it was only a tall man in a traveler's cloak and hat, and they made quickly room for him to dry himself by the fire, and brought food and drink for him to refresh himself.

"I thought that I knew the way to the old place," he said, looking about, "but in this tempest I nearly lost myself. Which of you is Thorolf Erlandsson?"

The stranger was Syvert Thorolfson, a merchant of Iceland, Thorolf's uncle. He brought messages from Nikolina's grandmother in Stavanger, and from the Bishop, who was ready to see that all the children who had no relatives should be taken care of in Bergen. Within three days Asgard the Beautiful was left to the lemming and the raven. Yet the long bright summer lived always in the hearts of the children. Years after Thorolf remembered the words of the Wind-wife,--

"Make friends with the Skroelings--make friends. Friendship is a rock to stand on; hatred is a rock to split on. In the land of Klooskap shall you be Klooskap's guest."

NOTES

In old Norse families names alternated from father to son. For example, Thorolf Erlandsson would name his son after his own father, and the boy would be known as Erland Thorolfsson. A daughter was known by her given name and her father's, as Sigrid Erlandsdatter. In the case of the farm being of sufficient importance for a surname the name might be added, as "Elsie Tharaldsdatter Ormgrass."

Northern sailors regard the Finns as wizards.

Fladbrod is the coarse peasant-bread of Norway, made from an unfermented dough of barley and oatmeal rolled out into large thin cakes and baked. It will keep a long time.

The teredo or shipworm was a serious peril in the days before the sheathing of ships. Even tar sheathing was not used until the sixteenth century.

THE VIKING'S SECRET

In the days of jarl and hersir, while yet the world was young, And sagas of gods and heroes the grim-lipped minstrel sung, With the beak of his open galley in the sunset's scarlet flame, Over the wild Atlantic the Norseland Viking came.

Life was a thing to play with,--oh, then the world was wide, With room for man and mammoth, and a goblin life beside. Now we have slain the mammoths, and we have driven the ghosts away, And we read the saga of Vinland in the light of a new-born day.

We have harnessed the deadly lightnings; we have ridden the restless wave. We have chased the brood of the werewolf back to their noisome cave. But far in the icy Northland, with weird witch-lights aglow, Locked in the Greenland glaciers, is a tale we do not know.

Out of Brattahlid's portal, southward from Herjulfsness, They came to their new-found kingdom, their Vinland to possess. Armored with careless laughter, strong with a stubborn will, The Vikings found it and lost it--it is undiscovered still!

Where did they beach their galleys? How were their cabins planned? Who were the fearful Skroelings? What was the F?rd?rstrand? What were the grapes of Tyrker? For all that is written or said, The Rune Stones hold the secret of the days of Eric the Red!

THE RUNES OF THE WIND-WIFE

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