Vinland

by George Mackay Brown

Genres: General Fiction; Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

In his fourth novel, George Mackay Brown takes us to an Orkney torn between its Viking past and its Christian future. Set in the early 11th Century, it tells the story of Ranald Sigmundson, who turns his back on a successful life of political intrigues and battles to design a ship to take him on a journey even greater than the first great voyage of his life, the one to Vinland.

Release date: March 27, 2014

Publisher: John Murray

Print pages: 256

Sample

There was a boy who lived in a hamlet in Orkney called Hamnavoe. The boy’s name was Ranald. Ranald’s father had a small ship called Snowgoose. Ranald’s father – his name was Sigmund Firemouth – did not like the land or anything to do with it, such as ploughs or horses or barns. Sigmund Firemouth was only happy when he was at sea, adjusting his sail to the wind, going from one port to another with a cargo, and, sometimes, passengers.

Ranald’s father had been given the name Firemouth because of his violent language when anyone or anything crossed or displeased him. Then he would fly into a sudden rage, and shout and strike the table with his fist. Even his wife Thora was afraid to say a wrong word to him.

The boy Ranald went white in the face, and trembled, whenever his father was in an ill-humour – for example, when his cargo was safely stowed on board and he could not put to sea because the wind was contrary.

Sometimes Snowgoose ventured to a Scottish port, like Leith or Berwick, with a cargo of salted fish or smoked fowls. Once she had even gone as far as Grimsby.

But mostly her voyages were eastward, to Norway or Denmark, and then she would return with a great cargo of wood, for wood was scarce in Orkney, there being no trees to speak of. Men in the islands liked to build their houses of wood rather than stone.

One day in early summer Sigmund Firemouth returned from the bay where his ship was anchored. He was well pleased. The loading of the cargo had gone well; the sailors were eager to be off. The wind was in the right quarter.

‘We leave with the next tide,’ said Sigmund to his wife. ‘We’re going to a place I’ve never been to before, Greenland, with a cargo of grain and Scottish timber.’

‘Greenland,’ said Ranald’s mother, ‘that sounds like a nice place.’

‘It’s called Greenland’, said Sigmund, ‘because it’s the most fertile and delightful place in the world. Greenland has only recently been settled. Families are flocking there from all over the north. Especially the Icelanders. Well, what do you expect – the Icelanders live among glaciers and gales all the time. I’m looking forward to this Greenland voyage.’

‘If it’s so fertile and green’, said Thora, ‘why do they need a cargo of grain and timber?’

Sigmund’s face flushed and he struck the board with his fist. ‘What do you know about it, woman?’ he shouted. ‘Mind your own affairs!’

As always, his rage quickly died down. By the time he had supped his bowl of porridge and ale, he was in a mild mood again.

He went to the door and licked his forefinger and held it up. Yes: the light south wind was still blowing. And he could tell by the look of the clouds that presently the wind would freshen. They might well have a fair wind, with a touch of east in it, all the way to Greenland.

To his son he said, ‘Now boy, how old are you?’

‘Nearly twelve,’ said Ranald.

‘Then you’ll soon have to make up your mind what to do. You can’t sit with the other boys at that monk’s bench learning to read and write forever.’

Ranald said nothing. He was afraid to open his mouth. He disliked the sea. Even in a small row-boat he felt uneasy and squeamish.

His mother was kneading dough at the table. There would be new loaves for supper. His mother paused. She looked anxiously from father to son.

Sigmund went on, ‘Of course reading and writing, and learning to count, will be a great help once you take over Snowgoose. I won’t last forever. I had rheumatism bad last winter, from all that sailing in rain and gales. In three or four years maybe, you’ll be taking over command of Snowgoose, boy.’

‘That he won’t,’ said his wife quietly, setting lumps of dough on the griddle.

‘Did you say something, woman?’ said the skipper. ‘Or was it the whisper of peat ash in the fire?’

‘Ranald will not be going to sea,’ said Thora. ‘Our son Ranald is going at plough-time next spring to work on his grandfather’s farm. His grandfather had no son, only five daughters, and I’m the oldest of them. The old man looks to Ranald to work the land of Breckness after him. Everything at Breckness will be Ranald’s. So, to Breckness the boy will go when the oxen are yoked. And that way, beginning at plough-time, he’ll learn every stage of farming through the year, right round to the reaping of the corn and harvest home.’

Normally Thora was a quiet woman. She had spoken in a torrent of words, knowing that it had to be said, and quickly, before the tempest broke.

But Sigmund the skipper when he spoke at last, said quietly, ‘Boy, get ready to sail in the morning …’

First day out of Orkney, between Fair Isle and Sumburgh in Shetland, Ranald was wretched with seasickness.

But then, beyond Unst, he found that he was enjoying the ship and the sea.

The five seamen thought it good to have a boy on board.

Sigmund his father said nothing. He sat at the helm in sun and rain, occasionally shading his eyes northwards.

At night they stretched out for sleep under a canvas awning, except for two men who kept watch always, taking turns.

Three days and nights passed, of gray sea and empty horizon.

A dense clot of fog lay to westward one morning, with round summits piercing through.

‘That’s Faroe,’ said Lund the seaman, splitting some fish they had caught and washing them in a wave that surged cold and green against the hull. Lund hung the fish on a spit over a little fire amidships.

The smell of the cooking mackerel made Ranald very hungry. He had hardly eaten since Snowgoose had sailed.

Now he ate heartily with the crew.

Over the meal, Sigmund the skipper accused one of the sailors of falling asleep on watch. Before the sailor, called Krak, could say a word in reply, Sigmund struck him a violent blow in the face, so that Krak’s nose gushed blood.

The rest of the meal was eaten in silence.

It seemed Sigmund was in an ill-temper because the strong south wind had blown them off course somewhat.

Then Sigmund said to his son, ‘You, boy, have been idle long enough. I notice that you can eat your share of fish. Tomorrow you’ll do some work, cast a line for fish or help Grigor with the sail.’

Krak managed to suck the fish-bones clean though blood from his nose was still flowing.

That night Krak kept watch beside another sailor called Hwal who sat at the helm.

Ranald, on the verge of sleep, heard Krak say, ‘I could kill the skipper for hitting me without a cause.’

‘That would be bad luck for the ship and the crew,’ said Hwal. ‘Sigmund is a hard man, but a good skipper.’

‘I would kill him with pleasure’, said Krak, ‘but that his son Ranald is a joy to us all. I think my nose is broken.’

‘It seems more crooked than it was, indeed,’ said Hwal.

Then Ranald slept.

He woke to hear a cry from Hwal. ‘Land ahoy! A snow mountain! Iceland!’

For most of a day they were busy unloading part of Snowgoose’s cargo at the port of Reykjavik.

Merchants came down to bargain with Sigmund. They argued long and urgently. At last Ranald got tired of their narrow calculating eyes and their fingers touching sacks and money-bags, and he wandered past barking dogs, and a group or two of inquisitive women, and children who pointed at him and jeered.

On he wandered, amazed at the burning mountain and the ice-covered mountain and cornless fields. Iceland was very different from the green low islands of Orkney.

Down at a bay he saw quite a big ship being got ready for sea. The sailors were being ordered about their tasks by a tall handsome man, who didn’t need to shout like his own father to get things done. Instead, the sailors went about their work with great cheerfulness, stowing sails and provisions. A few of them even sang.

The ship was called West Seeker.

The skipper of West Seeker noticed the boy above the shore, and gave him a pleasant greeting. ‘You’re a stranger in Iceland,’ he said. ‘Welcome, boy. My name is Leif Ericson, from Greenland. We have bought this big ship here in Iceland. What we want to do is sail west as far as we can. We leave at sunrise.’

Ranald said his father Sigmund Firemouth had a ship too, and they were on a voyage to Greenland, but they had been blown somewhat off course and here in Iceland his father was doing some buying and selling and bartering. The Snowgoose and her crew would rest for a day or two before sailing on west.

‘We will see what ship will get to Greenland first,’ said Leif Ericson, ‘Snowgoose or West Seeker.’

Now the seamen of West Seeker were carrying on board barrels of ale and boxes of salted whalemeat and bread still warm from the ovens.

Ranald heard a distant shout. He knew his father’s voice. He ran back to the quayside.

His father’s face was like a furnace with anger. The Iceland merchants were packing their goods on to small shaggy horses. The sailors of Snowgoose stood in the stern, all looking away, and their faces were white.

Ranald went up to his father.

And his father struck him, again and again, first on one side of the head and then on the other, till the boy’s skull was seething and singing like a hive of burning bees. But Sigmund hit him with the open palm, not with the clenched fist that had broken Krak’s nose.

‘Who told you to wander away out of sight!’ cried Sigmund. ‘Don’t you know, this island is full of thieves and scoundrels? What would I say to your mother back in Orkney if the Icelanders did you harm? Answer me. I wanted you here, at the quayside, to see how business is done as between shipowner and merchant. Or rather – as today – to see at first hand what scoundrels some merchants are …’

He threw the boy from him. He turned to the ship. ‘What are you standing there for, idle!’ he shouted. ‘Put all those grain sacks back in the hold. We’re going to Greenland at once.’

The group of sailors in the stern broke up. They went about the reloading slowly and silently. They growled among themselves. One or other turned from time to time to look furtively at their smouldering skipper, who stood alone at the head of the jetty, his fists trembling.

The sun went down. The first star glittered.

The sailors of Snowgoose, one after the other, crept under their blankets. There was no banter and singing that night.

Leif Ericson’s West Seeker stood out for sea, at first light.

As soon as Iceland could no longer be seen, Leif gave the summons for breakfast.

As Wolf the cook was tilting an ale barrel to fill a pitcher, he heard a stir and a cough. There, among the ale barrels, shivering and blue in the face with cold, he found the boy Ranald Sigmundson, a stowaway.

Leif Ericson took it as a good omen that a boy should be on his ship.

‘We all have beards, black or red or gold, it will not be too long till those beards become thin and gray, and then death is not far away. This lad from Orkney is a token that our voyage will have a happy and light-hearted outcome …’

Leif welcomed Ranald among the sailors, and they all took to him, and saw to it that he lacked for nothing in the way of food and comfort.

Ranald thought that West Seeker was a happier ship than Snowgoose. The men liked Leif Ericson and respected him. They brought their differences to him – a dispute over dice throwing, perhaps, or the name of a passing bird, the exact lineage of the kings of Norway – and they always accepted Leif’s verdict.

At night they sang after supper, round the fire. Always, before sleep, they would discuss what they would find at the world’s end, further west than any ship had sailed before.

‘I think’, said Trod the carpenter, ‘we will strike the flank of Stoor-worm, and Stoor-worm will be angry and he’ll turn on us and devour us at one gulp.’

The sailors laughed at that, and Trod was angry.

‘You won’t laugh so loud’, said Trod, ‘when you’re stuck in Stoorworm’s throat, ship and all.’

‘What’s Stoor-worm?’ said Ranald.

Trod said seriously to Ranald, but in a whisper, for now the sailors were throwing a dice and one, a bit drunk, was singing loudly, that Stoor-worm was the great dragon that girdled the whole world and held earth and sea together.

Leif Ericson, at the helm, said nothing.

The next morning they ran into heavy seas, with driving rain and flying spume. And then Ranald found that he was enjoying the great waves, and being flung from side to side of the ship, wielding a bailing pan, emptying the sea back into the sea.

In the afternoon the gale moderated, and the cook, a man called Wolf, got the fire lit and made a meal, but the sailors complained that the broth and the meat were too salty, and the sailor called Swale who had the keeping of the sails and cordage, was so displeased that he threw his half-gnawed meat bone at Wolf.

Wolf growled deep in his throat and would have gone for Swale.

But Leif said the food was over-salted because of the spindrift that had sifted into the ship from the crests of the big waves.

That night they began to discuss once more what they would find at the end of the voyage.

‘What we will find is this’, said Fiord, an elderly Norwegian, ‘a mighty torrent into which the ocean empties forever, one vast thunderous cataract, and this end-of-the-world waterfall will take West Seeker and hurl us all into eternity.’

Trod’s eyes bulged and his mouth opened.

‘It’s nothing to dread,’ said Fiord. ‘Nothing in this to make your face so gray, Trod. Better that than withering away in a shut-bed, an old toothless man. Why else do you think I’ve come on this voyage?’

Swale the sail-maker laughed sarcastically. ‘If that is so’, said he, ‘if the ocean empties itself in mighty surgings and torrents over the last ledges in the west, why is the sea not empty? Where does all the water come from?’

Fiord could not answer that. First he looked confused, then he tried to look wise and patient, then he shook his silver-streaked beard and was silent.

There was a sailor who had been taken on the cruise not so much because of his sea-wit as because he was a good singer and reciter of ancient verses. His name was Ard. It was thought that in the end Ard might become a passable poet. He got drunk nearly every night over supper, though on the whole he tilted fewer ale horns than the other sailors.

Now, on the verge of tipsiness, Ard began to improvise a chant about the mystery of water, that comes in many beautiful shapes, raindrop, pool, stream, well, river, lake, enchanted prisoner in a snowflake, dew, marsh-water, ocean …

At that point Ard the poet’s tongue thickened and the ale horn clattered out of his hand and he fell forward. He would have nose-dived into the fire if the sailors hadn’t dragged him out and laid him under his sea blanket.

Leif Ericson said he didn’t know what they might find at the end of the voyage.

‘But first’, said Leif, ‘we must call at Greenland, at my father’s farm there, with this cargo of Norwegian timber and tar. There is a great shortage of wood for building boats and houses in Greenland. We will get a good welcome from my kinsmen in Greenland.’

Ranald thought this strange. Had not his own father said that Greenland was a fertile well forested place?

Then it was time for the crew to turn in, all but helmsman and watchman.

Ranald was awakened at first light by a shout from Swale, who was the watchman that night. One by one the sailors stirred and yawned and shook themselves free of their blankets.

They saw, in the first glimmer of morning, boards floating on the sea, and a mast tangled in a sail, and a barrel and a broken oar.

‘It seems’, said Leif Ericson, ‘that some ship came to grief in that storm, Greenland-bound.’

As he said this, Leif did not look at Ranald.

A broken curve of wood drifted past, and Ranald saw a snowgoose carved on it. It was a part of the prow.

The men on West Seeker gathered up the fragments of wood from the broken ship, but they allowed the piece with the carving on it to float past.

Then Ranald knew that his father and the sailors on Snowgoose were all drowned.

He felt such a stirring of the sources of sorrow inside him that his hands and his mouth shook.

‘You should weep,’ said Ard the poet. ‘Then you’d feel better. It’s a good thing to weep sometimes.’

‘No,’ said Ranald. ‘Only women weep, and children. Now I’m a man and a seafarer.’

After Leif Ericson had settled all his affairs in Greenland, and given orders about his farm and fishing boats, and loaded West Seeker with the best provisions, he bade his friends and family farewell.

Ranald was given many presents by the Greenlanders. They were much taken by his eastern words and accent. Many of them thought that such a young lad should not venture so far into the unknown.

Ranald would have liked well to have stayed with those kind people. But Leif said, ‘The salt is in his blood now, there will be little rest for him.’

So West Seeker, after careening and a coat of tar, was launched. With a fair southeast wind she stretched a westward wing.

One night the watchman heard mighty crashing and thundering. ‘Rocks ahead!’ he cried. All the crew woke up. The noise increased, ahead of them – a chaos of shaken water.

The old Norwegian Fiord said they were approaching the torrent at the world’s end.

Trod the carpenter shook so much that his teeth chattered. ‘The Stoor-worm is getting ready to have us for his breakfast.’

Then the sea thunders diminished. Leif Ericson said there was nothing to be afraid of: it was a company of whales trekking north.

Sure enough, by first light they saw frail fountains on the horizon northwards. The whales were seeking pastures among the ice floes.

The wind swung round into the west for three days and the ship made slow progress.

‘Now we will see’, said Leif, ‘if the raven will be a help to us.’

On board West Seeker they kept a raven in a wicker cage and they gave him little food. The bird glared out at them from the bars of the cage.

Now Leif opened the door of the cage and the raven, after trying to snatch Leif’s finger off, flew out and up over the mast. It climbed higher and higher, pausing now and again to swing its eye round the always growing horizon, then it went up another gray step of air. When it was so high that all Ranald could see was a fluttering dot, it seemed to linger there for a longer pause. Then suddenly it leaned westward like an arrow, and at last was lost in a cloud.

‘That’, said Leif Ericson, ‘is a good sign. The bird is smelling worms and berries in the west.’

That put heart into the sailors.

Now the wind had dropped, and they were lingering becalmed in a stretch of blue sea.

The men unsheathed the oars and rowed westward eagerly, singing as they bent and stretched rhythmically on the rowing-benches.

‘Crows sing better,’ said Ard the poet. ‘Besides, it’s a bad ballad. On the far shore, if we get that far, I will make a proper poem, one fit to be recited in the king’s court in Bergen.’

Wolf the cook made soup in an iron pot over the fire. From time to time two rowers would ship oars and sup a bowl of fish broth beside the fire.

Still the calm brooded on the sea, as if the northern ice had enchanted the whole universe.

They had never seen such brightness in the star-wheel as on those still nights.

One morning, just at sunrise, when the sailors, sleepy and grumbling, were fitting oars into rowlocks, Leif Ericson said, ‘Be quiet, all of you! Listen!’

The ship fell silent. All they could hear was the light slap of sea against the hull.

Then, as often happens at dawn, there came a stir or two of wind, then sea and air were becalmed once more.

‘There’s land ahead,’ said the skipper.

The heads of the rowers swung westward. The horizon was empty.

Now the oarsmen began to grumble. Their shoulders were sore! They had cramps in their calf-muscles! They were free sailors, friends of sail and wind, not bondmen who were doomed to grunt their lives away at this salt mill!

But old Fiord from Norway told them not to be fools. Leif Ericson had ears as keen as a wolf.

Later that morning, Ranald, sitting on the stern thwart, saw a flurry of seabirds ahead, squabbling over a hidden shoal. Then, after that tumult subsided, he heard a sighing, a thin shredding murmurous thread, far in the west.

An hour later, at noon, Leif Ericson suddenly strode from his station at the prow of West Seeker to the stern. He took the steering oar from the languid hand of Trod, who was helmsman that watch. He pointed ahead with his free forefinger.

Once more the sullen oarsmen swung their heads westward.

There, along the horizon, loomed a low headland.

The men cheered. They fell on the oars as if the sea was a great harp. West Seeker surged on.

Late that afternoon, the keel touched sand. Leif Ericson vaulted ashore first. He went on his knees and kissed the new land.

Then, one by one, the sailors waded ashore, laughing.

Ranald came last.

First the sailors secured the ship. Then they lit a great fire among the rocks, and Wolf the cook hung chunks of whalemeat on a spit, and he put salted rabbit and mutton in the iron pot to make soup.

Instead of tapping the ale barrel, Swale tore the top off with famished hands. ‘For’, said Swale, ‘I’ve drunk nothing but salt for the last month, I think.’

So the sailors ate and drank heartily on the grass-links above the sand, and most of them were soon drunk.

‘Now’, said Wolf, ‘it’s time for Ard to recite a poem about the voyage.’

But Ard was lying drunk on the tide-mark, and a seal was looking at him gravely.

‘Pull the poet higher up the sand’, said Fiord, ‘before the flood tide stops his mouth for ever …’

Leif Ericson did not eat or drink much. He sat against a big rock and made marks with charcoal on a piece of parchment, making a rough map of the coast.

From time to time Leif got to his feet and walked to a low hillock and his eye wandered slowly over the landscape.

Ranald, who was afraid of drunk men, kept close to Leif the skipper.

‘Good,’ said Leif. ‘There are springs of fresh water. Abundant woodlands. We will not lack for fish or fowl or deer. There, and there, and there, we can build the houses.’

Then he said, ‘Those fools won’t be fit for much work in the morning.’

Leif said to Ranald, ‘We must sail back to Greenland in the spring. We can’t make a settlement here without women and horses and sheep … It seems to me that this new-found-land is a far more promising place than Greenland … Our people will live here and prosper, I think, for many generations.’

Then Leif returned to the fires and ordered the men back to the ship for the night.

‘I do not think’, said Leif, ‘that any people live in this place at all. I have seen none. But they may be forest dwellers. It is better for us to sleep on shipboard, till we know for sure.’

The sailors grumbled but one after the other they heaved on to their feet and went staggering down the sand and splashing through the shallow sea, and somehow or other they heaved themselves, or were hauled, into the ship.

Two men lifted Ard the poet aboard.

‘Now, boy’, said Leif to Ranald, ‘it’s time for sleep.’

Ranald was long in sleeping. He shuttled over and over in his mind the events of that day. What would they call this land? Would he ever see Orkney again? Would the raven forgive them and fly back to them?

He could not sleep. It was hot in his sleeping bag. All around him were drunken snores. Leif Ericson was asleep, stretched out along the steering-bench.

Ranald was the only watchman that night.

He walked to the prow and looked out to the darkling shore. The sun had been down for an hour.

Ranald saw a movement on the shore. Was it an animal? His eye quickly accustomed to the darkness. It was too tall for a dog or a wild pig. It was a boy!

The boy stood for a long time looking at the ship.

It was likely that he saw Ranald outlined against the stars.

The boy raised his hand, palm spread outwards: a greeting.

Ranald put both hands out to greet the boy across the narrow fringe of sea.

Then the boy fluttered his hand like a bird, and turned, and was lost among the rocks and dunes.

When Ranald woke next morning, he saw that all the crew were leaning over the side of West Seeker, gazing shoreward.

Ranald got up and looked too.

There were about twenty men on the shore, and among them the boy who had greeted him last night.

Now there was a prolonged discussion on shipboard about how things would turn out.

Some of the men on the beach were armed with spears and bows.

They had black lank hair and eyes like black stones, and most of them had faces painted yellow and red and white, and the man who seemed to be their chief had feathers stuck in his hair.

‘That man’s grandmother must have been a bird,’ said Wolf.

But nobody laughed at that.

Swale thought the seamen should go ashore, armed and shouting, ‘Because’, said he, ‘our axes and swords are superior to their wooden weapons, and we would make a quick end of them.’

But Leif Ericson said they should wait awhile yet. What good would it do, if they killed all those people? There must, said Leif, be settlements in the forests, and all they would gain would be the enmity of the forest tribes.

Soon after Leif had said that, the chief of the shore dwellers made a sign to his men, and those who had spears and arrows laid them down among the rocks.

‘I take this for a good sign,’ said Leif.

Then the chief threw back his head and gave a long ululating call like a great bird. The call went on echoing between the dunes and the sea.

‘That was a sound of great beauty,’ said Ard.

‘It was a summons to his cut-throats to come with their knives,’ said Wolf. ‘Hold on to your weapons.’

In a short while other men appeared on the shore with painted faces and noses like hawks and eyes like coal, and they were carrying loaded baskets.

Leif, who had a sharp eye, saw that the baskets contained salmon, and haunches of ven. . .