Free B0046ZREEU EBOK by Margaret Elphinstone Page B

the people die. Their names have no meaning any more. There is nothing to do, or think, but to keep still and hold on. The body of Orm is flung overboard; the body of Halldis is thrown after it. There is neither light nor dark, only the thirst of hell. To die is to drink at last, to stay alive is to have no water. There is no change, no mercy. The ship is out of the world now, out of time, and there is no pity here .
    When we reached the open sea the fair wind failed us. We ran into bad storms, and made little headway all that summer. We had hardly any water, and disease broke out among us. It was colder than I can even begin to imagine now. Half our company died. Orm died. Halldis died. The sea grew worse. We suffered terribly from thirst and exposure. I have scars on my hands still, look. Those were open sores. But at last, when we had gone far beyond hope, the sea spat us out. We made landfall at last at Herjolfsnes in the Green Land, right at the beginning of winter.

July 11th
    I’m sorry about yesterday. I’m quite ready to go on now. But I must apologise. I have no right to inflict my feelings on you.
    The nights had begun to grow dark, and when we saw the sun again at last we realised we were too far south. We turned north as much as the wind would let us, knowing that the land we sought was nearly as far north as Reykjanes. We had no idea if we were west or east of it; my father was even wondering if we would raise Iceland. But as we went on the sea grew far colder than our seas at home, and soon lumps of ice began to appear in it, small and white at first, and then larger and sometimes turquoise or azure, all drifting south past us as we struggled on against the growing current. An intense chill off the water wrapped us round, and each berg blew its cold breath over us as it passed us, like a sigh from the dead.
    The land we finally saw was much grimmer than the one we had left, and we could see nowhere where it was possible to make a settlement. The rising sun twinkled against a huge glacier. Great lumps of ice had broken away from it, and threatened our little ship as we drew closer. The mountains were bare rock and snow, with a whiteness behind them that might have been ice or cloud. All that land gave us, when we risked our ship to reach it, was melt water running under a huge twisted crust of ice, but it was fresh, and it saved our lives. The coast tended north-east; my father said that was wrong: Eirik’s sailing directions indicated a coast with many fjords, tending north-west. When we put about to follow the land south-west the crew almost rebelled. Winter wascoming on, and they just wanted to go home to Iceland after all that we had gone through.
    Uneasily we followed that fierce coast. My father reminded us that the settlements were far up the fjords, invisible from the open sea. We passed what could have been islands or promontories, all sheer rock and ice. Long inlets thrust inland. There was no knowing which we should follow. It grew warmer, and with the end of numbness came something like despair. I have more experience of sailing directions than any other woman in the world, and I have learned one thing: like icebergs, directions never show a fraction of what is there. Yet men have gone far into the unknown relying on these fragile words, that never begin to describe the awful nature of the place itself. It never surprises me that so many ships get lost; on the contrary, I have never ceased to be amazed whenever one actually arrives.
    I’ll tell you one thing, though. I would rather suffer the whole journey, and risk my life every time, than wait safely at home for news of the man I love. I’ve never allowed that to happen to me, and yet I admire the women who bear it, year after year.
    There was a man called Herjolf, the father of Bjarni who first saw Vinland, who chose to build his farm in Greenland on a ness facing south-east into the open sea. Every other farmer in Greenland sought the shelter