This 2nd of January I went to the neighbours here on the island and spent the night there in one of the dwellings. The Greenlanders who had taken to the waters to hunt returned home in the evening and, like all other days, had caught nothing, wherefore the state of health among them was already poor on account of lack of nourishment and livelihood. On this occasion I reminded them of their great ingratitude and disdain of God, for never did they thank God for their nourishment, nor did they appeal to him thereof, yet lived as before, in the manner of unthinking beasts, which behaviour had provoked God to revoke his blessing of them and allow them to suffer.
FROM HANS EGEDE’S JOURNAL, 1726
I’ve never sailed north of the Hebrides. I’ve ploughed the shallow and unruly waters of the Baltic, pendulated with the packet service between Christiania and Copenhagen, and paddled my way up the slurping rivers of Africa, in places so narrow it was like passing through a sliver of monkey cries, bird screams and chirping cicadas, and I’ve even been caught in the crossfire between two warships in the English Channel; I’ve lost my mast at Helgoland and my rudder at the mouth of the Neva, I’ve plied the routes with trading ships between the western ports of Europe, seen more dodgy dockland alehouses than my memory can or will contain, and drunk even more kinds of spirits, but I’ve never tasted the cold waters, not the ones with salt and ice cubes in them, and neither have my crew, nor the passengers for that matter, and what a peculiar lot they are; I can’t stand passengers, the sea’s for seamen, anyone else ought to stay at home. My name is Didrik Mühlenfort, I’m the captain of this ship, the good ship Morian, a frigate, for frigates normally do have men’s names, she’s armed and equipped, and reinforced at all ends. We’re on our way to Greenland. But what Greenland is, no one’s been able to tell me.
I’ve seen the woman, the young girl, they dragged her on board like she was a drunken delinquent on her way to the gallows, she dropped down on the street, they said, fell down feeling unwell, a housekeeper, they said, for that gold-braided gentleman with the cocked hat and the miserable face, a Major Pors who’s to be governor up there, and he had an old manservant with him too, but the girl, she was so young, and I wondered what might be wrong with her, but then they carried her into the major’s cabin and for a long time I never heard a peep from her, much less saw anything of her.
I don’t want sickness on my ship, I told the major so. But it’s not his ship, he jeered at me, it’s the King’s. But it’s me who’s in command, I told him, and sick people should stay ashore where they belong, where they can be buried under six feet of soil if needs be, for the sea bed’s littered with dead who ought to have stayed at home and had words spoken to them by a priest, only then, with a conjuror’s flourish he produced a document with the royal seal on it, monogram and the whole works, and asked me to read it out loud, let me hear the words, he said with pointed sarcasm, and a fine handwriting it was, but illegible all the same, though after a moment I managed to pick my way through as much as to read ‘that he convey the Governor Pors and his people etc. to Greenland and abide by his instructions and decisions etc.’, and this, clearly, was no good, meaning as it did that this major, or governor, could contend for precedence with me as captain of the Morian, and if there’s one thing that can cause mischief on a ship and among its crew, it’s having two masters rather than one, for a ship has only one rudder and ought rightly to have but one hand to set the course, and that hand sits as yet firmly on my right arm.
A minor convulsion, said Johan Struff, the ship’s surgeon, after I sent him in to the young woman, she’s improving now, certainly there’s nothing mortally wrong with the girl, merely an unrest in the soul, a consternation, I believe; I’ve cupped her, he said, and her blood is pure and fresh, whereupon he licked his lips as if he had tasted this maiden’s blood himself, only then he spat his brown tobacco sauce over the gunwale. Well, let’s see what amusement we can contrive from this business, I said. A ship full of horses and women, said Struff, would seem a temptation indeed to our Lord, or rather the Devil, and this indeed was as true as was said, I replied, but the King has resolved it so, and we’d be served to make the best of it.
Indeed, twelve horses in all, good riding horses, girthed up beneath the deck; one of them, a white mare, they said was a gift from the King to the Governor Pors, who clearly must have enjoyed certain royal privileges for there weren’t much governor about him, he looked more like a farmer, and the horses, they were already looking poorly, and I guessed we’d be eating horsemeat before we got there, and I was right too.
And the women, a score of them in all; besides the Major’s housekeeper, various servants and officers’ madams, twelve tarts we had from the women’s gaol, the Spinning House as they call it, coupled with twelve spineless scoundrels from Bremerholm, all a part of His Majesty’s designs, making the voyage to be the backbone of his planned colony, only the lot of them were looking as poorly as the horses, so no doubt we’d have our troubles with them too, I thought to myself as we came out into the open sea and it began to show its teeth.
I’ve reached my fortieth year, still a bachelor, married to the sea, I suppose you could say, and a difficult marriage it is too, seeing as I don’t care much for sailing at all, but I can’t pack it in now, it’s what I do, and when the ship was ready to set sail I felt myself gripped as always by a raging impatience to leave, the way I always have.
The boats were going back and forth between the inner harbour and the roadsteads with latecomers and all the paraphernalia they’d suddenly decided at the last minute that they couldn’t be without, as well as the hay bales for the livestock, and the hours passed, it was as if the ship were gripped by the same fever as myself as the hour of departure approached, but at the same time as this activity rose to a veritable frenzy, a languor descended, as if the ship, like a woman to the altar, couldn’t make up its mind and was stalled by all manner of doubts and kept on finding new things that had to be done so as to put off those fateful words: Let go the moorings! A ship is never ready, one must make short work of it, and early in the afternoon I gave the command, and the last of the passengers almost tumbled aboard with their various cargo, chests and sacks and packages bundled up from the boats to clutter the deck, but it all could be put away later, now we were setting sail, for otherwise we never would. I signalled to the pilot, and he signalled in turn to the tugs, and the boatsmen shouted to the oarsmen, and the oarsmen leaned their backs into it, the ropes tightened and the Morian slid creaking and sighing from the snarl of ships at anchor, the sails were set, snapping and flapping as they filled, the first lurch shuddering through the hull; we were on our way up through the Øresund and I took a deep breath of air and let it out again, released.
My mind was for the sea from an early age, the first ship I steered was the crayer the Hope, and later I stood on the quarterdeck of several frigates, this was what I put in my application for this berth, I didn’t mention that I hated sailing, but I may as well have done, because the very next day there came a message from the palace informing me I was appointed captain of the frigate the Morian; clearly they were in need of someone and needed him right away, the letter of my employment was more like a royal command, and I did have my doubts, for while a sea voyage might not look like much on paper, the fact of the matter is a different thing entirely, a knife-edge balance between life and death over an abyss of water eager to swallow a man up, but it was too late for second thoughts, in principle I could have betrothed myself to someone in all haste and used it for an excuse, but that wouldn’t have been like me at all, I’m a bachelor and that’s the way I’m staying, otherwise it’d feel like having two wives.
I hail from Kristiansund, my father, Christopher Mühlenfort, was a customs officer there, my mother, Elisabeth Munthe, came from a good family in Trondheim where her brother was principal of the Latin school, but they’re dead now, all three, they departed this life whilst I was out at sea, that’s what sailing’s like, everything seems to stand still while you’re at sea, but when you come ashore events have jumped ahead and whole lives, whole worlds are gone forever.
We steered towards Elsinore, feasting on the first mouthfuls of fresh sea air, and now I loved it, it’s only on land that I hate to sail, the sky was clear, streaked only with lines of white here and there, the air was mild, it was spring, the date was 21 May, the wind was south-westerly, a gentle breeze nudging the Morian’s sails, propelling us forward at good speed, so all in all it couldn’t have been better, from land we were saluted, first a few white puffs of smoke, then the muffled thunder of the cannon, to which we replied with the six-pounders we’d been armed with, hurrahs were shouted, so the formalities were met and I could enjoy a leisurely jaunt to Elsinore.
At starboard aft we had the one consort, the galliot the West-Vlieland, at port the other, the light brigantine the Fortuna, all three ships manned by Norwegians like myself, apart from the odd Dane, three foaming fans in our wake we spread, the merchant flag flapped and fluttered, my uniform was freshly laundered, and I thought to myself things don’t get better than this, as I stared at the wakes of the three ships mingling into one and vanishing again, indeed, this is what sailing is, I thought to myself, you draw a line on a canvas of water and immediately it’s erased again.
I took a few rounds of inspection to make sure the stowage was by the board, spoke with the men I hardly knew, but they were countrymen as mentioned, most of them, and I spoke with some of the passengers too, in particular a clergyman from Frederikshald on his way to teach the savages the Lord’s Prayer, we looked at the cannon that had come aboard, light ones of iron, and the muskets in their crates, packed with straw, and I said they looked second-rate, but there was certainly plenty of them, was the King thinking of declaring war on someone, I asked, for there was more than a hundred barrels of pitch and enough black powder and lead to stock a whole garrison with bullets, no, His Majesty wished to tread carefully, said the priest, lifting the corner of a tarpaulin and asking what kind of timber is this, an enormous amount of short planks, coffins, I said, they’ve made provisions for death, the gentlemen of power, indeed, he said, paling visibly, indeed, let us hope there won’t be need for them all, but I was more concerned about all that gunpowder, if a fire breaks out, I said, we’ll be blown to kingdom come, and what a bang it would be, Major Pors said, now having joined us, he seemed to think it funny.
Over on the Fortuna it was even worse, she too was laden with building materials up to the yard, and Captain Reinecke, who I’d met earlier that morning, had spoken of displacement, if we encountered a high sea, he said, we’d risk having to ditch half of it over the side so as not to capsize, and as if that wasn’t enough I’ve got a whole Noah’s Ark of goats and sheep and cows on board, they’ve taken up the entire between-deck with their braying and lowing, their stamping and their smelling of wool, and the crew are laughing their heads off, those of the other two ships, that is, for mine are cursing it, they say we’ll be dragging the stench of the stables after us all through the North Atlantic.
We ourselves were more fortunate, for the fine gentlemen, among them the soon-to-be Governor Pors, naturally required a certain degree of comfort, though I felt certain we would see our share of bother, and even if the voyage did proceed without a hitch, we’d always have the two dozen convicts to shake things up, a wretched flock of drunkards and lascivious tarts, a good number of them never having stood on a ship’s deck before and already hanging over the gunwale, feeding the Øresund fish with what was still left of their last meal, and as yet there was hardly a ripple on the sea, so it was going to be a long voyage the sorry fools had ahead of them, but for landlubbers the very sight of a ship can be enough to make them dizzy.
I waylaid the Major Pors on deck, he had a scowling, self-important look on his face, strutting about as if he had a plank down his back, and I predicted there’d be trouble with him, former navy, so I understood. Morning, Your Excellency, I said, a bit of deference to soften him up, and he smiled and nodded, his mouth as puckered as pleated fabric, I thought he was about to snarl at me, but all he said was Kronborg Castle already, and pointed in towards the land. We’ve a good wind today, I said, a south-westerly. Indeed, he said, I’d noticed, though mark me, it’ll be a different matter altogether once we’re out in the Skagerrak. Let’s hope for the best, I said. Certainly, he said in that snide way of his, out of the corner of his mouth, one can always hope. Has he sailed in Greenland before, he asked. No, I said, has Your Excellency? Of course not, he snapped. This is my first voyage there too, I said, endeavouring to lighten the mood. And then I asked him: How’s the Governor’s jomfru shaping up? I’ve not seen her since we came aboard. She’s sleeping, he told me. I shook my head and said how terrifying it must be for a young girl to embark on such a voyage as this, with no one really knowing what we’ll find there. But she’s here of her own accord, he said, she wasn’t prospering at home. Really, I said, and where does she come from? Køge, he said, the Apothecary family there, Fuchs is the name, relations of mine, albeit distant. Not that she spent much time there, she grew up in a nunnery in Germany, though fled the nuns and ended up with her father’s brother, the Apothecary Fuchs. And now she’s running away again, I said, to Greenland. Indeed, he said, when a person gets going after a standstill, it can be hard to stop again. Anyway, let’s hope the jomfru has a good voyage, I said, and wished him a pleasant day.
We had by then reached Elsinore and I sent a boat ashore with the last of our escorts, the pilot, a priest from the Missionskollegium and a pair of His Majesty’s representatives, whereupon salutes were exchanged again and the Governor ordered his manservant, a white-haired fellow as decrepit as his housekeeper is young and fair, to fetch a bottle and some glasses from the cabin, and so we stood there on the deck and toasted, Jørgen Landorph, commandant over the military contingent, joined us too at this point. Salutes were exchanged again from both sides, and Pors commented that we’d soon better get a move on before the Swedes began to bombard us. Weigh anchor! he bellowed, and the men all looked from him to me, and after a moment I told them, you heard what the gentleman said, weigh anchor!
Open sea, the spray and the wind; the rigging sang, and the ropes beat their tattoo as Sjælland dwindled away behind the billowing sails of the West-Vlieland and the Fortuna. When evening came I dined with the officers and Pors, a number of bottles were drunk, all were in rather high spirits and the Commandant Landorph was somewhat unfortunate with a couple of remarks concerning Pors and his jomfru, at which point the Major got to his feet, leaned over the table and delivered him a stinging flat-hander that sent his wig into the pea soup and Landorph himself to the floor, from where he had to be helped up by the other men, dabbing blood from his nose with a handkerchief. It’s only the drink, I told myself, such things happen, it’ll all be forgotten by morning, but of course it wasn’t.
///
The wind is kind to us. After three days at sea we sight the Norwegian coastline and I plot the course due west towards the Shetland Islands at which we arrive a week later, though the wind is now more contrary. We put into Lerwick, seat of the former Danish crown colony, and remain there a couple of days, letting the livestock ashore so they can stretch their legs and munch some fresh grass. The Major rides off inland on his mare, which seems to have coped well with the voyage, he spoils her with oats and hunks of bread, but the other horses are ailing, they’ve got diarrhoea from the mouldy hay and lack of exercise, girthed up as they are, the lower deck is a mire of filth and must be hosed meticulously.
Now Pors’s young housekeeper shows herself on deck for the first time since her embarkment, she stands at the gunwale one day, this after our setting sail from Lerwick and we’re out on the open sea again; her dress flutters in the wind, the same as her dark hair, yet there is something oddly imperturbable about her gaze. Does she spy anything interesting, I ask, whereupon she gives a start, and says that she’s never been to sea before, and how deep is it? Some hundred fathoms, I reply, and I see the perspiration beading on her upper lip and forehead. Is the sea-sickness bad, jomfru? It’s like a thing alive, she says, her stare still fixed on a point far in the distance, it swells and nauseates, she says, and glances up at me, a fleeting smile passes over her face like moonlight in between clouds. But what is down there? Fish, I say. Whales, and the creatures of the deep, a teeming life, my girl. But ships too, she says. Indeed, shipwrecks too, I tell her, and no small number either. Dead seaman, she continues. Thousands, I say it’s like one can almost hear them. They sing, can you not hear? I’ve dreamt of them, they wander about at the bottom, upright they sway this way and that, and there is a forest there, everything takes place slowly and all is silent, for it is the bottom of the sea; they look up at us, I don’t know if they want to return here or if they want us to join them down there, but they are dead, I say, they have no thoughts of us and we ought not to give them any either. Yet she smiles as if she knew something, and her smile feels like a chill in my neck, and she looks at me sideways and mumbles something in a foreign language, nunnery-speak I shouldn’t wonder. You shouldn’t be afraid of the sea, I tell her, I shall make sure you come safely ashore. Are you master of the sea? she asks. No, but I am master of this ship, I reply, and wish her a pleasant day, I’ve matters to attend to, if the jomfru will excuse me, but after I leave her she remains for a long time looking out over the waves. No, women and horses have no place at sea, but belong to the land.
///
The wind has picked up and the passengers, in particular the convicts, are seasick and lie vomiting in their bunks. Clearly they bring with them numerous ailments from the land, consumption and poor health altogether, they haven’t the strength to drag themselves onto deck or to the latrine hole to empty themselves, and can only let go when they must, and the Governor is mostly three sheets to the wind, he staggers about on deck with a bottle in one hand and his sword in the other, as if it were a walking cane, where’s that bloody Commandant! he growls, let me poke a hole in him, and then his manservant comes, an Icelander they say, and drags him back to his bed, though presently to appear again, the Icelander, standing at the gunwale all through the pale night, looking like he’s staring a hole in the sky, his long white hair fluttering in the wind as he stares at the dull silver of the firmament, the gulls as they plunge to scoop something up in their beaks, then arrow upwards again, hugging the sails, frolicking in the turbulence they create, then new diagonals in the air, and it seems he will never tire of watching them. I go up to him and ask about the jomfru, is she quite of her right mind, I enquire, but he simply looks at me, a silent, unfathomable gaze beneath his frost-white eyebrows, smoke curling from his pipe, so one can tell he at least breathes like the rest of us who are still among the living, for not a word does he utter, what is he, idiot or sage?
One night I am awakened by a piercing scream. I roll out of the bunk and go out onto the deck, for I always sleep fully clothed and am used to being shaken awake at all hours, yet this scream is like a nightmare, a scream from Hell itself, and I am already on deck before my senses are returned, standing there blinking into the wind, with people all around me in bewilderment, what was that, did someone scream?
It’s light as day, though a stormy day of lashing rain, sea and sky as one, and then a new scream sounds through the weather, a sudden tumult and men’s voices and I descend to the Major’s cabin, snatch open the door and see two men bent over a bunk, the Major and his manservant gripping the jomfru as if in the business of strangling her, she for her part kicking and thrashing, and then another scream that rips through the air and propels me several steps backwards by its sheer might, but then I get a grip, I leap forward and grab the Major by the nightshirt, roaring at him, what in the Devil’s name are you doing to the girl? and surely he is aware then of my presence, yet he takes no notice, the cabin is thick with the most unpleasant smells and a sticky dampness, and a moment later the Major clambers onto the bunk, which creaks under his weight, he lies on top of the girl with the whole volume of his frame, the manservant assisting, holding the girl by the legs, his long white hair hanging before his eyes, and while I keep trying to pull the Major away, yelling at him to stop, the manservant turns his furrowed face towards me behind its curtain of hair and says quite coldly and with the rusty voice of the old that the Master Struff has been summoned.
The girl arches her back, she rolls her eyes so only the whites can be seen, the orbs like marbles in her skull and foaming at the mouth, and then she screams once more; ah, I see now, I mutter, and release the Major, stepping back to make room for the ship’s surgeon, Johan Struff, who enters now accompanied by a pair of officers and Miltzov the clergyman, elbowing his way to the jomfru and assuming command, ordering the men to hold her steady while he examines her, closing her eyelids, slapping her face and shouting her name, Jomfru Titius! Yet the spasms will not relent.
A convulsion, Struff opines, straightening into the upright again. Is she often afflicted like this? Never before, says Pors, his grip on the girl now released, delivering her into the hands of the officers. Not in such a way. He wipes a blood-trickling scratch on his cheek and studies the red now smeared on his sleeve. She’s normally so quiet. Has she been at the aquavit? Struff asks. Not a drop, say Pors.
Now it seems the jomfru has settled, and she gulps in air. Only then her body arches upwards again, new waves of convulsions from the chest down. She wrestles a leg free and kicks one of the officers in the chest; he emits a groan, a laugh of surprise quickly supplanted by a wincing grimace as he clutches his ribs; another officer takes her leg and presses it down into the bedding straw. Hold her tight, Struff instructs, the convulsions make her as strong as a horse, I shall let her blood, he says, and takes out the equipment, unpacking it calmly before making a swift incision at the girl’s elbow, her blood instantly leaking into the bedding. He asks the manservant to wring a cloth in cold water and then tears open her nightshirt from the throat down, placing an ear to her chest. A number of bystanders have gathered now, half a dozen men at the bunk, watching the naked girl quiver and tremble, calmer now, and yet her body stiffens several times again in small aftershocks, and she groans, long moaning sighs like a calving cow, her eyes, which formerly rolled in their sockets, become still, and she stares up at the ceiling, but then we hear a cry from the crow’s nest and our attentions are turned, several times the call is heard, land ahoy! I dash to the deck, the Icelander following me like an unsettled dog, and together we stand and stare out into the leaden air where a shadow looms and waves crash at a shore. Your fatherland, most like, I say to the Icelander, but when I turn he is gone.
We drop anchor in an inlet. I send the first officer, Peder Dan, ashore in the boat. He returns early next evening and has found a fishing village further north. East Iceland, he says, it seems we’ve been blown off course.
We sail north to the village and anchor in a natural harbour, and in the time we are there the weather improves, though still a layer of cloud presses down on it all, a score of stone dwellings and a church, and beyond this a dark, open flatland and a row of fells in the west whose peaks are hidden to us. But here we bring the horses ashore and wait for some days for our fellow ships to appear, which they do not; we attend service in the little stone church and the inhabitants are friendly, albeit mute. Pors orders two of the horses slaughtered, for they are badly the worse for wear; the carcasses are hoisted up to the yard, where they hang and drip, and all is peaceful enough, the jomfru remains in her cabin, Miltzov the clergyman is with her.
I go to Pors to speak to him about his housekeeper, but all he says is I can kiss his arse. What the Major does with his staff is his own affair, I tell him, but I’d ask him to do it ashore, because I don’t want no lechery on this ship. The captain can shove it, he says, he can mind his own business, then I’ll mind mine. Everything that happens on the voyage is written down in the log, I remind him, and it doesn’t look good, this business with the jomfru. My dear Captain Mühlenfart, he then says, what exactly does he think he’s going to put in his log? Everything that concerns the voyage, I tell him, cold as ice, for I’ve heard his insult. And what events has Mühlenfart witnessed until now, I wonder, which concern the voyage sufficiently to be written down in his log? That he is turning His Majesty’s ship into a den of iniquity, I reply. Ah, a lecher I may well be, he says then, but my jomfru has nothing to do with it, he can ask his Master Struff to examine her, if he wants it confirmed. Then why does she suffer these attacks, I say, something must surely have brought them on? Ask Struff, he says, I’m not a physician.
It’s about the jomfru, I say to Struff later on when I approach him on the deck, and he walks back and forth with his hands behind his back and says these convulsions are seen often in girls that age, it’s their liquid balance got out of hand, it’ll even out again once we’re ashore. Has the Major harmed her in any way? I enquire. How should I know? Struff replies. You could examine her, I say, but he scoffs dismissively, I’m not putting my fingers up such a young girl, he says, I’m no beast, and anyway what business is it of ours what the fine gentlemen get up to with their servants? A man’s a man, and this voyage is long indeed. It’s my business, I tell him, I won’t have it going on aboard my ship, the Major can have his fun with the tarts below deck, if he wants, I’m not going to intervene in that, they’re already spoiled, but an innocent girl in his care, he can keep his hands off, otherwise I’ll go to his superiors as soon as I’m home again. I honestly couldn’t care less, he says and yawns in my face, I’m just a physician, and the girls down there aren’t exactly mouth-watering, who would want anything to do with them?
So I go to the clergyman Miltzov, though all I get out of him is pious prattle about the trials and tribulations of our earthly life, the grace of our good Lord etc., and besides, he’s forbidden to divulge anything told to him by a person in distress who has need of his comfort.
Then to Jørgen Landorph, the Commandant, and this is indeed grist to his mill; the dirty old man, he exclaims, and married too, someone ought to teach him to keep his cock inside his pants, I’ve half a mind to do so myself, speak to him, I mean, but we’ve got to work together, so perhaps it’s best to stay on his good side, Landorph says with a sigh.
But among the officers there is now regular animosity towards the Major, they believe him to have committed an offence against the girl, this being what has made her ill, and there is much indignant talk around the dinner table, where Pors, galloping about the foggy country on his royal mare, now seldom appears.
The crew, however, seem of a different opinion, some mutter that she is possessed by the Devil, for they’ve heard she grew up in a nunnery, papist at that, says Jens Smith, she’ll have lain with sin itself, it stands to reason; to this some of the men who have sailed in the south say no, the Catholics are Christian people like ourselves, only with more pictures in their churches, they speak the Bible’s own language when they pray, there’s nothing wrong with them; but Jens Smith says he doesn’t trust them, that the jomfru will end up sending the whole ship, man and mouse, to the bottom of the sea, and then Miltzov comes to me.
I can’t find the jomfru anywhere, he says. Is she not in her cabin? No, that’s what I’m saying, he says, her bunk is empty, I’ve searched high and low, she can’t be just gone, and yet it seems she is, he says, for aboard the ship she is not. And so I go around asking if anyone’s seen the girl row ashore, or maybe she swam, says a boatsman, it’s only a few ship’s lengths to the shore; jumped in the drink, says Jens Smith, good riddance, the Draug’s taken her, and now they’re getting married in Latin at the bottom of the sea.
But the same day as the jomfru is reported missing, the whereabouts of Pors’s manservant Skård are likewise questioned, no one has seen him on board, some claim to have seen him ashore; no doubt he’s jumped ship to be with his own people, Jens Smith reckons, and now he’ll be sitting chewing sheep’s eyes with the rest of them, and he’ll be welcome, but then Pors returns from one of his sojourns into the country.
The Major is distraught to hear that both his servants have made themselves scarce and wishes to depart again immediately to search for them, so I borrow one of the horses to ride with him, but after only an hour my arse feels like chopped meat, I’m no practised horseman, and the horses don’t much care either for the uneven, stony land, the lava stone, says the Major, expelled hundreds of years before by a volcano, and rushing rivers too that we must cross, with green, ice-cold meltwater that washes over the horses’ flanks, soaking us to the skin; but then we encounter some shepherds and ask if they have seen a young girl wandering about, and indeed they have, they found her in the field, quite distressed, crawling on all fours, and brought her to a farm, and they point over towards the fell where the ground rises upwards and where stand a cluster of weatherworn buildings, and there we find her.
It is a poor man’s holding, held together by ends of wood, peat and stone, and here lies the jomfru in a bed and is soundly asleep. The people of the farm are alarmed by this guest and wish to be rid of her as soon as possible, so Pors must give them a bottle of aquavit from his inexhaustible reserves; he lifts her up in his arms and will carry her out to the horse, but the girl wishes not to go, she kicks and screams and wrenches herself away, hurling at us cups and plates and other effects of the household, babbling strings of Latin, evoking the Devil, I believe, her countenance is by any account diabolical, and she manages to smash the tiny place to pieces by the time we get her tied up with a length of rope and laid across Pors’s horse, all this with the aid of the farmer and his two sons, and then we ride back to the Morian with her, and she howls the entire way, and only when the clergyman Miltzov closes the cabin door behind the two of them does she settle.
I’ve always believed priests to be an impractical lot, says Pors, but sometimes it may indeed be useful to have one nearby.
Now Landorph begins to speak of proceedings, and the officers agree with him that something should be done to help the jomfru in her distress, but all this comes to nothing, for I give the order to cast off and then we all have other things to think about than the demented jomfru; she for her part gives no sign of life, the priest is with her, Pors wanders the deck as befuddled as before, his manservant no longer there to help him into his bed, and often I find him curled up and snoring inside a coil of rope, and otherwise he goes about calling for his valet, Skård! Skård? like a lost child calling for its mother, he’s been with the family as long as I recall, he tells me mournfully, he’s like a father or a big brother to me, but the general opinion is that the Icelander had had enough of the Major’s antics and chose to be reunited with his countrymen, and it serves him right, says Landorph, the man’s a lech and a tyrant.
But then one night when I go up onto the deck to have the wind drive away a bad dream I find him standing there, the Icelander, puffing on his pipe and gazing out at the sea as before; he near frightens the life out of me, one of the men says he just appeared all of a sudden and has been standing there an hour at that point, so I go up to him and ask him where on earth he’s been all this time, your gentleman’s been searching high and low for you, but all he does is look at me with a little smile to curl the corner of his mouth.
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The sea becomes more troubled, great waves come rolling from the north-west, especially so after we leave Iceland’s lee, and it’s the horses that come off worst, for horses don’t belong on the sea, they’re no more comfortable there than ladies and tarts, their legs are too long and thin, they can’t find the proper purchase, and what’s more, the hay is rotten and the floor down there where they’re girthed up is awash with their thin shit and must be hosed and swept several times daily; three horses must be put down, Jens Smith does the job, a swift blow to the forehead with his hammer and their legs splay immediately, eyes rolling in their skulls, and then they are hung up from the yard and the cook slices them open and slings the insides over the gunwale, leaving the carcasses to swing with the swell, spreading sticky fans of blood upon the deck, not a pleasant sight by any means, but horsemeat is at least a welcome change from salted pork, only now we’ve got problems with the convicts too.
I have them sent up onto deck a few hours every day so they can be freshened up a bit by the sea air, which to me is one of the joys of this world, but I can barely stand to look at the wretched loons, the way they fall over and can only remain lying where they fell, without the strength to lean over the gunwale to empty themselves, though the women seem to do better at this than the men, even if their mouths are as filthy as the rest of them, yelling and bickering the way they do, and fighting too in that peculiar way women have of fighting, pulling each other by the hair, and one of their number, Cellar-Katrine they call her, stands on the bridge and raises her arms like a mad prophet, cackling and cursing diabolically, wishing the ship and its crew to be sent to the bottom of the sea, and indeed I must concede there is much pith in her curses, and quite some humour too, though of course I am obliged to punish her, for no one can go unpunished for cursing a ship; Landorph however believes this to be his jurisdiction, he wants her hanged, but I’ll have no hangings on my ship, I tell him, it’s quite enough we’ve got the four horses dangling there from the yard already, and so we argue the matter for some time while the hag herself, the object of our disagreement, stands there gaping at us in turn, looking like she can see both sides of it, but eventually I order that she be tied to the mast, her clothes torn from her back and twenty strokes administered of the ferule, these then delivered with cheerful aplomb by Jens Smith, the rest of the rabble looking on, though without seeming much deterred by the sight, and indeed her spouse, Peter Hageman, mocks and taunts her as she’s punished, the others too scoffing and jeering. When eventually the ropes are loosened and two seamen make to help the ragged, half-naked shrew back below, she tears herself away, spits on the deck and expels a new shower of curses, arguably worse even than those for which she was punished in the first place. I am awed indeed by such resolve, yet have no option but to order her tied once more and another twenty strokes administered, these happily shutting her up, and this time when the ropes are untied she flops forward onto the deck, and the men pick her up and bundle her back down the hatch with much commotion.
Pors is his miserable old self, he’s left the aquavit on the shelf and begins now to put his nose into my work, we must ahead, directly into it, he says as I stand one day with the old moth-eaten chart and am plotting the course; no, I tell him, we must circumvent the land, and I draw in a circle on the chart. But you don’t know where the land is, he says, where it begins and where it ends, so what is it you wish to circumvent? No, ahead, Mühlenfart, and we shall encounter it soon enough. But inshore the storms will be the worse, I tell him, we must keep a distance. To where then will you sail, he says, America perhaps, and be barbered by the redskins? You’ve already led us astray once, now sail due west, end of argument! And with that he produces the King’s instruction from his pocket and waves it under my nose, whereby I’ve no choice than to plot the course according to his wish.
The ship heels over, I’m worried stiff the cargo’s going to shift, so I send some men down below to secure the bulkier items and redistribute the weight, but once there’s a displacement it’s hard to rectify and you can only hope things don’t get worse, the strangest things happen to cargoes, they live their own lives, something comes loose and slides about and it’ll soon take other items with it and before you know it you’ve got a list on your hands and the ship goes down. It’s that Cellar-Katrine and her cursing, the men reckon, you should have hanged her from the yard like the Commandant said.
I go down into the shared quarters where the convicts are, and a hideous stench hits me in the face like a blow from a wet towel, their evacuations swill about the floor, following the movements of the ship this way and that, the inmates lie in their hammocks, swaying back and forth beneath a swinging lamp, the ropes by which they are secured creaking like some kind of echo to mock the groans of their sick incumbents who lie cocooned and whimpering, vomiting and cursing; some speak the Lord’s Prayer, others, as if to defy all belief, enjoy each other’s flesh in this dreadful, squelching squalor, their hammocks shudder and swell like larvae struggling to free themselves; it’s the first time since I was a boy that I’ve felt a hint of the sea-sickness, and then a man comes staggering towards me from his bed, latrine fluids sloshing around his ankles, he grips the door frame, luminous with the sea-sickness’s green lustre, and I can see it’s the aforementioned Peter Hageman, spouse of the hag who cursed the ship, and he asks me when do we arrive, Captain? In a week’s time things will be better, I tell him. A week? My wife will barely survive the next hour. Sea-sickness always feels worse than it is, I tell him, I’ve never heard of anyone die of it. But still I am relieved to return to the deck and breathe in the fresh air.
All progressing splendidly, Mühlenfart, Pors exclaims, persisting in his use of the insulting perversion of my name, a most splendid passage indeed; the Major is unafflicted by the sea-sickness, and now we shall soon see land, he says. Yes, not many days yet, I reply. He fills himself with the salted pork and pease porridge and drinks wine; I myself drink ale. The Governor will be looking forward to stepping ashore and embarking upon the colonization, I suggest to him. Indeed, he says, ’tis His Majesty’s wish to recover the lost land that has lain abandoned these several hundred years, but for me it is a calling, I feel my whole life has been but preparation for this; Denmark will once more be a great nation after the losses we have suffered, the colonization of Greenland will be only the beginning, the foundation stone of the new empire that has shaped itself in the mind of our king, and if the good Lord lets me live long enough I hope to call myself governor of a province in this empire, for after Greenland we shall take back Sweden, and then it will be Germany’s turn, that great confusion of princedoms just waiting to be subsumed under the Danish crown, and who knows what it might lead to. You make it sound like the Roman Empire, I said, but Pors declines to take this as a joke, he looks at me sternly and says, Imperium Daniae, we’re making Denmark mighty again, Denmark will be the Roman Empire of our age. Bene tibi, I say. Bene tibi to you too, Mühlenfart, he says back, and on that we toast. Skål.
The air is fresher and cleaner tasting, though the weather is very changeable; the light has changed too, and I know it means that we are approaching land. The Major seems to have been right in plotting due west, for the winds are not as fierce as I’d feared and the passengers may now emerge onto the deck again, their hammocks strung up between the masts, and there they hang and sway among the equine carcasses, the ship heeling and lurching, throwing the people into involuntary dance on the deck, or a game of tag, the way they reach out and grab each other so as not to be swept overboard; and clouds drag their rain showers along with them, glittering silver in the sunlight, the light playing its tricks, shimmering mirages in the air, the strangest visions to behold; the ship groans in the heavy waves, and we are well into a southerly current, but I am unable to chart our position, the sun being the only heavenly body to be seen, the sky too light now even at midnight to see a single star; only now there is a coastline in view, emerging and vanishing quite as quickly again; we encounter a belt of drift ice and sail alongside it, making gentle headway, though the ship reels in the current, and the sea foams about the bow, the rudder hardly any use at all. I told you so, Pors boasts. Due west. Had we sailed according to your own half-baked reckonings, we’d have been halfway to America by now, and I can only agree with him. The man in the mast spies a flock of seals on the ice, and shortly afterwards a fox slinking over the floes; the passengers are jubilant, some men of the crew volunteer to go out onto the ice, they are armed with muskets and return with a pair of seals which are then cooked for dinner.
There is great unrest among the inmates, they argue and fight, the women pull tufts of hair from each other’s scalps and the Major cheers them on, plying them with aquavit, and knives appear too, flashes of steel, and several are gashed in the arm or leg; in short, their health seems restored. Pors arranges wrestling contests so that they may exhaust themselves without killing each other, and people sit in the rigging and up on the yard cheering on the contestants, wagering money on their favourites, though in truth they are sorry contests indeed, for the combatants are as meagre and feeble as old men, even if at best they are something and twenty; however, with our gentle headway they’re looking healthier by the day.
In the mess there is much talk about Pors, some believe him to be a madman, the Paymaster Fleischer, known as ‘Fox’ on account of his red hair and sly-looking gaze, speaks of delusions of grandeur; the man’s a peasant, opines the Trader, Jürgen Kopper, called ‘Horse’ because of his long face, for all have had their clashes with the Major Pors, and now it all comes pouring out like dregs out of a wine skin, insults, effronteries and the harshest of words, the Governor’s drunkenness, the way he treats his poor jomfru; they whisper and mumble, and above their heads the planks creak, for it is the very subject of their talk, the Major Pors, who paces the floor of his cabin.
Is he of noble descent? someone wants to know. I believe so, replies Commandant Landorph, who is familiar with the Major from times previous, but his family fell into debt and the manor was sold off. Pors’s own beginnings were more humble, he started out as a non-commissioned officer and worked his way up, though of course not without rubbing just about everyone up the wrong way. Indeed, says ‘Fox’ Fleischer, to the colonies with him, that’s how we get rid of mad dogs of his ilk, but however did he get to be governor, ‘Horse’ Kopper wonders. You may well ask, says Landorph, but I dare say he cultivates some ally at the court, perhaps even the King himself. And thus goes the talk.
///
The jomfru emerges again. No one has seen so much as her shadow for weeks, now she goes arm in arm with the Major, and behind them lumbers the manservant Skård beclouded by the smoke of the pipe that would seem to be fastened permanently to the corner of his mouth. Pale and sickly she looks, the jomfru, her face contorts into the oddest grimaces, and she halts and stares emptily towards the land, which now is in sight the whole time. Pors points and says something to her, and she looks up at him, that great big gaze of hers, and he in turn looks down at her, and quite as demented as each other they seem, perhaps they are even a good match, I think to myself, two lunatics to help each other along, I’m sure there’s a saying in that, but anyway sooner or later they’ll both end up in the ditch, and that’ll be their problem, for now the passage is soon complete and I have abided by His Majesty’s instruction and can deliver them to their own sorry fates, as well as to the contempt and disdain of Landorph and the other officers.
We reach the sixty-fourth latitude, the weather clears up, and I can again chart our position. I sail the ship through skerries and here we encounter a French whaler; visits are exchanged, we toast and salute, first a French toast, salut, then a salute with the cannon, and then, only a couple of days later, we are met by a boat from the West-Vlieland sent out to look for us, and they pilot us in to the Hope Isle, where the Pastor Egede resides; there we anchor alongside the galliot and the Fortuna, much to the relief of those on board the other vessels, who had feared the worst for us; they themselves have suffered a couple of deaths along the way, though otherwise theirs has been a gentler passage than the Morian’s.
I shake the hand of Egede himself, he lives with his family and some colony folk in a small dwelling-house, sixteen souls in all in such a little box. The land is dark and sparsely vegetated, and the storm batters in from the sea. So this is where the pastor and his family have lived for seven years, it almost defies belief!
Presently the jomfru comes ashore, arm in arm with Pors, who from now on is to be addressed as ‘Governor’ or ‘Your Grace’; she looks pale and unwell, yet curtsies daintily for the Pastor, the Madame and their two daughters. And then there is enquiry and proceedings against those who in one way or another have offended during the passage, though not Pors, for he is himself lay-judge, and to his credit may be said that he is lenient towards the accused and would preferably give them amnesty one and all and thereby start with a clean sheet now that we are all safely ashore, but Landorph is for punishment, for flogging, Landorph is for the branding iron, the whipping post, the rack, the gallows. Landorph is enraged and vindictive, but I know full well who it is he wishes to punish, yet he knows he cannot touch him and therefore his rage must be taken out on others, for Pors has his royal order, his appointment to governor, and now the two men must work together in the years to come. I don’t know if I’m relieved to be leaving again soon, or disappointed at not having the chance to see how things pan out with these two cockerels.
I go about on the land. The earth makes me heavy as lead, pulling me down. How tired and old I feel! But so it is always. The sea makes me old, but I feel it first on land. I hate sailing. I wish I could walk the whole way back home again, but I fear the distance would be too far for my boots to withstand, and there’s that damned sea in between. And, of course, the ship must be sailed, and the hand that steadies the rudder is as yet attached to my right arm.
The next day sees punishment of the convicted men. I write this passage in my journal: ‘These floggings and other forms of corporal punishment are thus our, His Majesty’s emissaries’, first official actions on Greenlandic soil.’
Didrik Mühlenfort, Captain