The Ice-Shirt by William T Vollmann

Author:William T Vollmann
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Discoveries in geography, Northmen
Publisher: New York : Viking
Published: 1990-10-12T05:00:00+00:00

The Norse Ship-Baths 1987

On diat happiest summer of my life we walked along the cobbled beach, the real Greenlanders and I; and there were three rectangular berths for Viking ships, grass-grown now, each widi its rolUng Up of silt and sand; but die

Greenlanders said you could still bring a ship in at high tide in the spring. Nearby was a stone trap for foxes, made by Greenlanders. On a bushy rise stood the remains of a many-roomed stone house where Tunersuit had lived. - "There are more houses over there, where the grass is green," said Jonar. But we did not look at them, because at that season the bushes were full of black spiders whose gluey webs stuck to your mouth.

The Greenlanders ran up a rounded tundra ridge, exclaiming in delight whenever they saw a reindeer. The ridge was soft and wide. There were bright green shrubs; there was white lichen to cushion our steps. Ahead, beyond a grey pass, was a Mountain of ice.

We found a stand of the kayak plant. A hundred years ago, reindeer hunters ate them to be strong. We chewed them; they tasted a little more astringent than wintergreen. - "Look!" cried the beautiful girls, picking yellow flowers. "It smell like licorice!" - We ran through a dwarf poplar jungle, and the girls leaped across a rushing stream, carrying the flowers in their mouths ...

The Voyage to Viniand

ca. 1007

No man becomes master while he stays at home, nor finds a teacher behind the stove.

Paracelsus, ca. 1590

We were fain to grabble in the darke (as it were), like a blind man for his way.

Edward Pellham, 1631

T

Xh

he Greenlanders, then, having decided to explore new^ countries, put out to sea from Eiriks^ord. For w^eeks they watched the weaves rise and fall and rise again unexhausted. Sometimes the w^ave-crests were spotted with the foam, so that they resembled marble. The ocean curled and foamed and drenched them vsdth its cold scum. Few icebergs pursued them south, for the colony was in its sunny early days, but even so the sea resembled curled ice, and the froth of it blew in their bearded faces as powdered snow wall fly when driven by the wind. Sometimes the ships were Hfted on the waves taller than mountains, so that the timbers creaked, and the voyagers could see a black hint of coastline far ofi*, or a dullish green wall of ice. They sailed through the stormy and excessive cold of the spring. After a squall the sea became insidiously smooth. They sometimes saw birds flying around their ship at these times. Some landed in the rigging to rest, and were killed by Freydis's crew. Others circled round and round in the mist until they were spent. Then they fell into the sea and were drowned. Their white bodies bobbed for awhile on the waves, which were sometimes green and sometimes as black as smoked glass.

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