In the early summer of 1358, with the breaking up of the ice, there came
to Brattahlid, in Greenland, a merchant-ship from Norway, with
provisions for the Christian settlements on the coast. The master's
name was Snorri Gamlason, and it happened that as he sailed into
Eric's Fiord and warped alongside the quay, word was brought to him that
the Bishop of Garda had arrived that day in Brattahlid, to hold a
confirmation. Whereupon this Snorri went ashore at once, and, getting
audience of the Bishop, gave him a little book, with an account of how
he had come by it.
The book was written in Danish, and Snorri could not understand a word
of it, being indeed unable to read or to write; but he told this
tale:--
His ship, about three weeks before, had run into a calm, which lasted
for three days and two nights, and with a northerly drift she fell away,
little by little, towards a range of icebergs which stretched across and
ahead of them in a solid chain. But about noon of the third day the
colour of the sky warned him of a worse peril, and soon there came up
from the westward a bank of fog, with snow in it, and a wind that
increased until they began to hear the ice grinding and breaking up--
as it seemed--all around them. Snorri steered at first for the
southward, where had been open water; but by and by found that even here
were drifting bergs. He therefore put his helm down and felt his way
through the weather by short boards, and so, with the most of his men
stationed forward to keep a look-out, fenced, as it were, with the
danger, steering and tacking, until by God's grace the fog lifted, and
the wind blew gently once more.
And now in the clear sunshine he saw that the storm had been more
violent than any had supposed; since the wall of ice, which before had
been solid, was now burst and riven in many places, and in particular to
the eastward, where a broad path of water lay before them almost like a
canal, but winding here and there. Towards this Snorri steered, and
entered it with a fair breeze.
They had come, he said, but to the second bend of this waterway, when a
seaman, who had climbed the mast on the chance of spying an outlet,
called out in surprise that there was a ship ahead of them, but two
miles off, and running down the channel before the wind, even as they.
At first he found no credit for this tale, and even when those on deck
spied her mast and yard overtopping a gap between two bergs, they could
only set it down for a mirage or cheat of eyesight in the clear weather.
But by and by, said Snorri, they could not doubt they were in chase of a
ship, and, further, that they were fast overtaking her. For she steered
with no method, and shook with every slant of wind, and anon went off
before it like a helpless thing, until in the end she was fetched up by
the jutting foot of a berg, and there shook her sail, flapping with such
noise that Snorri's men heard it, though yet a mile away.
They bore down upon her, and now took note that this sail of hers was
ragged and frozen, so that it flapped like a jointed board, and that her
rigging hung in all ways and untended, but stiff with rime; and drawing
yet nearer, they saw an ice-line about her hull, so deep that her
timbers seemed bitten through, and a great pile of frozen snow upon her
poop, banked even above her tiller; but no helmsman, and no living soul
upon her.
Then Snorri let lower his boat, and was rowed towards her; and, coming
alongside, gave a hail, which was unanswered. But from the frozen pile
by the tiller there stuck out a man's arm, ghastly to see.
Snorri climbed on board by the waist, where her sides were low and a
well reached aft from the mast to the poop. There was a cabin beneath
the poop, and another and larger room under the deck forward, between
the step of the mast and the bows. Into each of these he broke with
axes and bars, and in the one found nothing but some cooking-pots and
bedding; but in the other--that is, the after-cabin--the door, as he
burst it in, almost fell against a young man seated by a bed.
So life-like was he that Snorri called aloud in the doorway, but anon,
peering into the gloomy place, perceived the body to be frozen upright
and stiff, and that on the bed lay another body, of a lady slight and
young, and very fair. She, too, was dead and frozen; yet her cheeks,
albeit white as the pillow against which they rested, had not lost their
roundness. Snorri took note also of her dress and of the coverlet
reaching from the bed's foot to her waist, that they were of silk for
the most part, and richly embroidered, and her shift and the bed-sheets
about her of fine linen. The man's dress was poor and coarse by
comparison; yet he carried a sword, and was plainly of gentle nurture.
The sword Snorri drew from its sheath and brought away; also he took a
small box of jewels; but little else could he find on the ship, and no
food of any kind.
His design was to leave the ship as he found it, carrying away only
these tokens that his story, when he arrived at Brattahlid, might be
received with faith; and to direct where the ship might be sought for.
But as he quitted the cabin some of his men shouted from the deck, where
they had discovered yet another body frozen in a drift. This was an old
man seated with crossed legs and leaning against the mast, having an
ink-horn slung about his neck, and almost hidden by his grey beard, and
on his knee a book, which he held with a thumb frozen between two pages.
This was the book which Snorri had brought to Brattahlid, and which the
Bishop of Garda read aloud to him that same afternoon, translating as he
went; the ink being fresh, the writing clerkly, and scarcely a page
damaged by the weather. It bore no title; but the Bishop, who
afterwards caused his secretary to take a copy of the tale, gave it a
very long one, beginning: "God's mercy shown in a Miracle upon certain
castaways from Jutland, at the Feast of the Nativity of His Blessed Son,
our Lord, in the year MCCCLVII., whereby He made dead trees to put forth
in leaf, and comforted desperate men with summer in the midst of the
Frozen Sea" . . . with much beside. But all this appears in the tale,
which I will head only with the name of the writer.