With such fine weather as ended the old year, so began also the new, which continued until the 18th day of this month. But from then such a sharp frost has set in that even the beasts in the stables are near perished with cold, and a calf almost a year old was found dead in the stall.
FROM HANS EGEDE’S JOURNAL, JANUARY 1733
I am Aappaluttoq. I am in the colony. I wait for winter. In the winter it will happen. It is neither fate nor God who has decided it will be so. I have decided. I am Aappaluttoq.
///
Matthias Jochumsen is my name. In the good year of our Lord 1680, when a great comet appeared to a terrified rabble in Rotterdam and then until the following spring allowed its ominous flaming body and tail to be seen in the sky, foreboding all kinds of calamity, though in the final end merely leaving in its wake the usual wars, sicknesses and other ills which have always descended upon the lands of Europe, I was born in the town of Frederikshald. My father, Jochum Matthiasen, whose name was the inversion of his father’s, as mine is of his, in the way that has been the custom through many generations, a chain-dance of Matthiases and Jochums back to the darkest times of the plague, was a merchant, one of the wealthiest men of the town, held in esteem by high and low alike, confident that, as he himself was the son of a merchant, he too would beget generations of merchants, among them me, destined to follow in his father’s footsteps and add to the family’s wealth, but this was not to be the case. Declining times, war and strife befell us. Such is war, some rise up, others sink. It drove him into death and me to the furthest corners of the realm, the Danish king’s poorest provinces.
At first I embarked upon writing and published a small monograph, a pamphlet entitled De Longitudine in which seafarers might find instruction in the art of plotting a given position west or east of a meridian line. I knew nothing about navigation. I had heard about, though never seen or held in my hands, Professor Newton’s octant, to say nothing of more modern instruments such as the sextant or the chronometer, but among my father’s many books I had fallen upon a very old manuscript in Latin which must have been several centuries old, written by the hand of a Catholic monk and bearing the title Registrum secretum domini abbatis. It concerned the art of navigating at sea and I proceeded to translate it into Danish, embellishing here and there along the way, adding my own common-sense considerations and eventually having it printed by a printer at Frederikshald, a process which cost me the remainder of my meagre means and would yield me nothing in money since only twenty-three copies were sold.
Yet His Majesty had somehow taken a shine to me and when it came to his ear that I had dedicated my small publication to him, he showed me the grace of sending me to Iceland to conduct studies of an economic nature in order that the poor, mad Icelanders might get the better of their poverty and falling numbers. I remained there for three years, travelling far and wide over the great island on horseback and visiting even the smallest fishing communities along the coast as well as the inland farms where the population primarily supported themselves by means of sheep-keeping, though also from a small amount of agriculture as practised since the times of the old Norsemen. To the scattered harbours of this island came but seldom a ship, however once when I was in the eastern part of the country a royal frigate came by the name of the Morian, on its way to the new colony in Greenland and calling at Iceland to replenish its stocks of fresh drinking water, fuel and hay for the livestock on board. The captain of this ship told me of the King’s new enterprise of which there were high hopes indeed. I asked him if the name Greenland was not to be considered a witticism or perhaps an embellishment with the purpose of attracting Danes to its shores, much like a sign outside a shop, for I had heard that the land was covered by ice, yet he replied that while there indeed was ice in abundance in the country’s interior there was also a broad belt at the coasts which was without, in some places more than fifteen Danish miles in width, with deeply cut fjords, lush and of great natural beauty, and where also various relics could be found after the Icelanders and Norsemen who had once lived there. With his descriptions he ignited a fantasy in my mind of a virginal land with good prospects and opportunity for enterprising and industrious men.
On completion of my duties in Iceland I returned to Denmark and compiled there a report of my observations, including suggestions as to what could be done for the poor Icelandic people, adjoining to my report a prospectus as to how such initiatives might beneficially to the royal household be coordinated with the new colony in the west – the throne held now, following the death of King Frederik, by his son Christian the Sixth. In this I took the liberty of proposing that a number of Icelandic families be selected to comprise the core of a new population of settlers. Moreover, I drew up a plan for the traversing of the great ice-cap which divides the western tracts of the country from the eastern, a feat which both the missionary Egede and the country’s governor Pors had previously endeavoured without success, though my own proposal involved the use of skis and sledges drawn by captured and tamed reindeer. The young king saw no less kindly upon me than his father, and no sooner than in the spring of 1732, in my fifty-first year, I boarded the good ship the Jomfru Cornelia together with my younger brother Just and my son Knud, then twenty-five years of age and yet unmarried. Though my flesh was weak, my spirit was more willing than ever before. I thought of Greenland as the land of the future, the land of opportunity, a new world which would allow the King to resurrect the ailing finances of the realm and I my family’s name and honour.
///
Matthias Jochumsen endures the many hardships of the voyage, the heaving deck, the mouldy legumes and the green-tainted meat, the indecencies of the crew, their bodily stenches and their altercations, and arrives at the colony of Godthåb on 21 June. Egede receives him kindly and puts him up with his brother and son on the first floor of the colony house. He sleeps for a long time. Two days later, when he has recovered, they slaughter one of the sheep in order to celebrate a successful journey. The three newcomers spend their evenings downstairs in the priest’s parlour, a fire crackling in the stove as rain lashes the panes. They talk at length with Egede about the country, asking him this and that. They find him to be a friendly sort, rather quiet though with an occasional harshness to his gaze, particularly when the subject turns to the Mission, which it seems is not as successful as one might have hoped. The words of the Gospel fall like rain into the sea here, he says with bitterness.
The men puff on clay pipes. Matthias has brought a plentiful supply of tobacco with him from Denmark, a good, moist and syrupy tobacco whose aroma seems to them like a concentrate of long tropical summers dispersing into the low-ceilinged parlour, and the women as well as the men are all but swooning over it. The two Egede girls sit reading Luther’s sermons at their father’s behest. Matthias listens to their brittle voices as they read through the German text, which in parts is highly vulgar in its language, with words such as piss and shit and arse, though which the girls read without pause. The great wall-clock ticks haltingly and strikes, and outside they hear the fire-watch shout out the hour. The smoke from the stove and the pipes collects densely beneath the beams.
The priest tells of his expeditions into the district and of the attempts made, firstly by himself and later by the newly departed Governor Pors, to cross over to the eastern side of the land where it is thought there still must live descendants of the Norsemen either in papist infidelity or else regressed into the heathenism of old, which perhaps would be preferable, for as he says, heathenism is but superstition, whereas Catholicism is the very shite that sprays from the arse of the Devil. Egede puffs vigorously on his pipe and gazes up at the ceiling. He sits with his legs stretched out in front of him, the red glow of his tobacco pulsating. No, the heathens are by no means the worst, he says. They are like demented children. It is the false Christians who damage the Christian message the most.
Matthias asks him about the three years of the colony. Was it as bad a time as he has heard?
Worse, says Madame Egede from her chair in the corner, waving her needle and thread dismissively. Best not to speak of it.
Yes, it was a strain, Egede says with a smile. But one should not be envious of the godless who live a life of pleasure, for they are as swine fattening for the slaughter.
He tells them of the disastrous winter of 1728–29 when half the crew perished, of the Dutchmen and their regular plunderings along the coast, their destruction of the northern colony station at Nipisane, all matters leading to the abandonment of the colony project and the calling home of the Governor along with most of those who were still left.
Now only a small handful of us remain, says the priest. It can scarcely be called a colony at all any more. But we have started afresh and hope for His Majesty’s continued favour and kindness. He is clearly disappointed that the ship has brought with it no word from the King as to what his plans might be for the colony, yet is relieved nonetheless to receive substantial provisions, which would seem to indicate that the King wishes to wait and see and has not forgotten them completely.
Matthias tells of his idea to have some Icelandic families settle in tracts of the country where it is possible to cultivate the land, and of the King having expressed interest in the matter. Egede becomes animated. He relates his experiences sowing grain and vegetables, endeavours which to a certain extent have shown to be promising. And there is good pasture land, he says. Like Iceland, the country is mostly suited to grazing. Agriculture must come second, but with systematic cultivation and conscientious tending of the crops, there would be every chance of becoming self-sufficient.
Matthias listens attentively, making mental notes for the reports he is to write. His son Knud is good company for the two young Egede girls, who remove themselves from Luther and walk with him on the peninsula, returning home with ruddy cheeks. The priest’s son, Niels, teaches him to paddle a kayak. Just, Matthias’s brother, spends most of his time with the natives, conducting his studies. Matthias barely sees him.
In early July they embark on a preliminary expedition into the Ameralik Fjord, the young native man with the impressively royal name of Frederik Christian accompanying them as pilot. The land, the high fells edging the fjord in silence, bears down on them. They are alone.
They paddle up the tributary fjords and inlets, put up their tents and wander in the wide valleys. Matthias gathers rock samples. He notes the horizontally grooved rock high up on the fellsides and asks himself if the sea has sunk or the land risen, and wonders what forces might make such a thing possible. If it is God’s work, he thinks to himself, then he must have some plan for the world which extends far beyond man’s six-thousand-year existence. He compiles tables detailing the deviations of the compass, he directs his son and brother to their different peaks so that he may triangulate, and draws up maps with precise topographical indications of height; he makes lists of tidal variations in the various phases of the moon, he collects, dries and registers countless plants that will become part of the great work he will publish on his return to Denmark, and he investigates the different manifestations of the ice – fjord-ice, glacier-ice, icebergs, black ice, white ice – its viscosity, colour, smoothness and porosity, and he observes the animal species of the sea and land, even capturing specimens he then freezes for the later purpose of taxidermy. Just is an excellent illustrator. He produces sketches of everything living and dead. Matthias’s son sits and gazes dreamily across the fjord. He seems strangely content. The native lad, Frederik Christian, sits beside him. They appear to have become friends.
Matthias keeps an eye on his son. For several years now he has suffered from increasing apathy, has always been introverted and indolent, and now moreover dishonest. He lies inexplicably about matters of no concern, as if he simply is fond of the lie itself. Matthias had previously attributed it to a lively imagination carried over from childhood and assumed he would grow out of it. But he has not. On the contrary, his lies have become ever more serious, and he has begun also to steal. On the occasions they have discovered him lying or thieving and have confronted him with the matter, he has in each case become so enraged as to make his mother afraid of him, and for that reason they have let it drop. He ought to take him to task, Matthias thinks, shake him up a bit. But he feels a strange awkwardness in the face of such shameless duplicity. It paralyses him. His son exploits this, of course. He has been like a dead weight this past time. He does what is asked of him, indeed, though in a half-hearted, slovenly fashion which can only prompt admonishment, in which instance he will hunch his back and mumble incoherently or else flare up in anger and slam the door. His mother has despaired of him. Yet now it seems as if he has emerged from his shell. Perhaps it is the presence of the two girls, Matthias thinks to himself. Perhaps he will begin courting at long last. Perhaps it is the country here and the adventure into which he has been thrown. He prays for this improvement to last.
The summer and autumn are one long expedition with short stopovers in the colony. They go out into the skerries and visit settlements where without exception the natives receive them warmly. Just is becoming quite naturalized, and Matthias’s son clearly seems to be emulating him. They practise with their bows and arrows, they paddle their kayaks and speak together in the native language. Matthias wonders if his son might remain here. Perhaps he might be taken on as an assistant by the trading company and then work his way up. Naturally it would in all likelihood mean never seeing him again, and his mother too would be quite distraught. Yet he cannot help but feel drawn by the thought of being able to leave the lad here in Greenland with good conscience.
Knud himself spends increasing time with Frederik Christian. Matthias sees them walking together engrossed in conversation. They are more or less the same age. Often they do not come home in the evenings, but return only the next day, and when Matthias asks where he has been he says out in the fells.
With your Greenlandic friend?
Knud nods. Is there anything wrong in that?
No, there is nothing wrong in it, my boy.
And yet there is. Egede comes to see him. I don’t know who’s leading who astray, he says, but they drink and carouse with the crew.
I see, Matthias says. But surely they are allowed a measure of fun?
The crew are filthy swine, the priest replies. I have previously forbidden him to drink with them. But now he’s with your own son and no doubt he feels beyond reproach.
He brings the matter up tentatively.
We weren’t drinking, Knud tells him, though he reeks of alcohol and is bleary-eyed the morning after. Anyway, it’s got nothing to do with me what’s between Egede and his foster-son.
What do the men get up to when they drink? he asks.
Oh, all sorts, Knud says, and can scarcely conceal a smile. It’s quite astonishing the things they can think of. They drag native women into the house and fornicate with them while everyone watches.
And you find it amusing?
It’s not something I take part in.
But watching what they do to those poor women makes you a part of it.
It’s only what I’ve heard, says Knud. It doesn’t interest me.
He lets the matter drop. He knows from experience that he will not get to the bottom of things by speaking to the lad. Lies, concealment of the truth, evasion, is all a part of his constitution, and perhaps he is even unaware that he is lying at all.
One evening he goes over to the crew house. The carpenter has invited him to join a game of cards. He enters the room. The floor is new and the walls partially clad with timber planks. Previously the floor was stamped earth and the peat walls were bare, but now the place is being fixed. He has heard much about this house. Here it was that so many of them perished that first year. Young people became old, wasted away and were gone within months. The few who survived returned home. None of the present crew were here then. But all are familiar with the harrowing tales that are told of ‘the Death House’ and all know it to be haunted. It is the dead women in particular who show themselves. Several of the men say they have seen them in the night with long wooden poles as if they were raking hay, their white shifts tucked up, their hair hanging loose in front of their faces. The whores of the Spinning House. But they are friendly ghosts, they say with a smile. The poor wenches, they would surely have preferred their bones to be laid to rest in Danish soil.
The house is quite cosy now, well lit by lamps which hang from the ceiling and a great fireplace which heats the entire room in which there is both sleeping space and a communal area furnished with a long table. Matthias sits down with them and is given a cup of ale. As far as he can see there is neither drunkenness nor the slightest approach to indecency, and he remains there until into the night, losing a few marks in the card game but enjoying himself nevertheless. Most of the men are his countrymen, which is to say Norwegians. He feels at home. And to his relief Knud is elsewhere.
Walking back to the colony house he notices a light in the stable. He peers in through the window, pressing his face to the pane and cupping his hands around his eyes, but at the same moment the light is extinguished. There is a rustling from within, a scuttle of goats, and he calls out, receiving what seems to him an oddly good-humoured bleat in reply. Knud? he calls again. Again the same peculiar bleat. He feels certain Knud is there. But what is he doing?
The bed chamber upstairs in the Egede house is indeed empty. Knud’s bunk is still made. He retires to bed and sleeps immediately. When he wakes the next morning, Knud has returned.
Where were you last night? he asks.
We were out walking, that’s all, the lad replies.
We?
Me and Frederik Christian.
Were you in the stable? I saw a light there.
The stable? No. What would we be doing in the stable?
Indeed, that’s what I wondered.
But we weren’t in the stable.
Indeed not, so you’ve said.
Unsurprisingly, the lad is annoyed by this exchange. He does not speak to his father the whole day and turns away whenever he approaches. Damn the surly boy, Matthias thinks.
When winter comes, they hibernate in the colony. The weather becomes windy and cold, and darkness shrouds the peninsula and the colony’s scattered structures. As the days grow shorter, the circles in which they move grow smaller. Eventually they come to a standstill. Matthias reads the priest’s books, mostly religious works, but also some philosophy, and of course Egede’s own Perlustration, published some years ago, but which the author himself now contends is full of errors, and a new and much revised version is apparently on its way. Moreover, Matthias works on his grand description of the country, his own Greenlandic relation, and the systematisation of his investigations during the summer and autumn. All is well. Apart from the forever gnawing anxiety he feels when he thinks of his son.
///
I am Aappaluttoq. Call me Abraham.
I wrench the boy’s chin upwards and to the side with one hand and brandish the knife with the other, and he whimpers, he wriggles and squirms and tries to come free. I whisper to him, easy now, it will be done in a second, and my hand describes a flattened arc with the blade as I slice a smile into his throat and release him slowly. He kicks a bit, only then to become heavy and still and sink into the snow which at once absorbs his blood, and he is dead.
Dear to us is but that which we have lost.
No, no, what have I done!
But now he rises, the snow is sucked up into the sky, the river runs into the fells, the clocks tick backwards and I embrace him, I hold him tightly to my chest, the knife springs into my hand, I brandish the blade, though in the other direction, making what is done undone, and the blade closes the wound in his throat as a painting brush rectifies a mistake on a canvas, and the blood is drawn back into him, and he glides from my grasp.
Now he goes between shimmering clouds in the scribbled blur of the snowstorm, away from me. He has sheathed the knife in his belt. I see my own shadow break into an angle against the outside wall and vanish, and he knows I am there, but he does not know it is me, and now he calls for me:
Father?
He stands obliquely, a supporting arm against the wall in front of him, pissing against the warehouse building, the jet of his urine spraying in the wind. A sheep brays in the stable. He has called out his name, but only a sheep replies. His breeches are filled with excrement. Even in the whipping snow which launders the whole world clean, which consigns all human detritus to darkness, I sense the smell. My poor, miserable, humiliated and shamed boy.
I am Aappaluttoq. Murderer and father, I believe in Jesus Christ the Lord. Dear to us is but that which we have lost.
He could not open the stable door to go inside. That was what he wanted. To go inside to the animals. Inside to his loved one. But his loved one was not there, or at least did not reply when he called. He battered on the door and called out again:
Knud!
Before this he came staggering from the crew house, its windows beaming yellow with the warmth of what binds the Danes together when outside are darkness and storms. He struggled with the door, the gusting winds tugged it this way and that in his hands, and they shouted after him:
Close that door, you fell-monkey, before the weather gets in!
He only went out to piss, but shat himself instead and thus could not go back inside. He fought to close the door behind him, but the wind was too strong, until at last a heavy gust, violent as a sudden kick, slammed it shut for him.
Since the new year the colony has been locked in an ice-cold, silent exchange of light and darkness. But this morning, the day of Epiphany, the ropes which are stretched tight across the rooftops began to whistle, a quiet yet shrill melody, and the flag in front of the colony house began as if to shiver with cold, and above the Saddle Fell appeared a legume-shaped cloud which seemed almost to stare from the heavens so ominously, and then the storm was upon us and filled the air with prickling snow of the kind that sweeps straight through a person and out the other side. The snow in itself is light, and white as paper, though illuminates nothing but itself. God roars and staggers about like a giant who is drunk or gone mad, most seemingly both. And with him staggers the boy. I follow him like a shadow.
Close that door, you fell-monkey, before the weather gets in!
He dropped down on all fours and vomited, the snow accepting it all, the salt-cured pork-meat and pease porridge of his dinner, the aquavit with which they had plied him, the woman they had coaxed him into lying with. And now it all came back the other way. He had lost control of his body, his body had usurped him and its will was not his. Groaning with loathing and grief, he stared at the mash of food and alcohol as it was consumed by the snow. Moreover he had now soiled himself. He could not go back inside. He turned his face to the storm which lashed his skin.
Lord Jesus, save me!
Yes, my boy. I am here. Come to me.
And he rose unsteadily to his feet, he pulled the three-cornered hat down over his ears and stood teetering, supporting himself against the iron six-pounder gun which was bolted fast to its carriage, staring back with eyes filled with both abhorrence and longing towards the illuminated windows behind which were laughter and human warmth, music, the card game, aquavit and oblivion. Outside, where he was now, were only darkness and cold, and God’s deafening silence, amid the stench of his human excrement. But I was there too.
A hesitation told me his thoughts: I must go home. But where is home? ‘Home is where Jesus is’, as Mother Gertrud always said. But no, he could not go home to them and step inside the priest’s righteous parlour stinking like a pigsty.
He reeled his way down to the colony harbour, buffeted this way and that by the wind, stumbling to the ground several times, cursing, muttering to himself, spitting out the words of the Apostles’ Creed: I renounce the Devil and all his works and all his ways.
Perhaps I can go to the savages? he thinks. They will not turn me away. They are my own people, after all. I could read for the children as I normally do, tell them about the Saviour, they like that. But the savages too are averse to the smell of human excrement, even though they wash themselves in the contents of their own night pots.
I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
He wears the clothing of an officer now dead, a worn-out coat with buttons of bone, woollen breeches with patches at the knees, white knee-stockings, high-leg boots and a cocked hat long since wearied to hang limply at each of its three corners, though now fluttering madly in the wind. And these fine clothes of which he is so proud, and which have distinguished him so obviously from the savages, are now soiled by his own filth.
He wants into the stable. To the animals who lie and breathe so warmly, to their comfort and forgiveness. They care not if he smells of dung. And in the stable it is that he frolics with his loved one. Now he wants only to sleep in a bed of living wool. If only he could open the door.
Born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried, he descended to the dead.
The Apostles’ Creed is like an annoying song he cannot banish from his mind. It was Egede, his foster-father, who ground it into his head, yielding not until he knew it by heart. And now it is stuck.
He pushes and pulls at the stable door, and kicks it repeatedly. It too is stuck.
Knud! Are you there?
A sheep brays a reply. The coming together of warmth from the animals inside and the cold outside has caused the door to perspire an impeding bank of ice. If only he had an axe or a crowbar. The only thing he has is a small flensing knife. He begins to hack and scrape at the ice. But his efforts are to no avail. His bare hands are stiff with cold. He blows on them. He feels the wetness of his breeches freezing into ice. Abruptly he wheels around. A gust of wind removes his hat and sends it tumbling away into the darkness.
Who’s there?
Dear to us is but that which we have lost.
I am standing looking at him. He ought to see me. But he does not.
He pisses against the warehouse wall. The wind howls, whistling around the buildings. It is dark, though not completely.
Is anyone there?
He stands unsteadily with his breeches around his ankles and glimpses a fleeting shadow break into an angle against a wall and hasten away. A lamp somewhere. But he cannot see it, only the shadow it casts.
Who’s there? Come out!
He is not alone. Of this he is certain, the boy, though whoever would be lurking about in such a storm he cannot imagine. Perhaps just the fire-watch. Nothing to be afraid of, he tells himself.
On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He shakes his member before pulling up his breeches, sensing again the unpleasantness of his involuntary evacuation.
And he will come to judge the living and the dead.
Oh! he blurts in fright. Was that my own voice? Or someone else’s?
Now again he sees a shadow, it passes quickly over the snow, flutters against the end wall, lengthening and then shortening again before vanishing from sight, and he narrows his eyes and peers.
Hello?
He staggers, fingers fumbling with his buttons, mouth still murmuring the Apostles’ Creed as if to chase away all things bad, whoever or whatever is tramping about here in the darkness now, as well as the badness inside his mind.
I believe in the Holy Spirit.
In the storm he stands, stiff-legged, clutching the flap of his breeches, listening like an animal.
I know you’re there! Come out. Make yourself known!
And when he hears the voice which replies he is startled: The holy catholic church, the communion of saints.
Father? he says hesitantly, and turns.
Dear to us is but that which we have lost.
But then comes the hand. It covers his mouth and twists his head to the side, wrenching the chin upwards, exposing the throat, and he loses his footing, his legs kicking in thin air, arms thrashing, gasping, shrieking, his cries break up and disperse in the air like scraps of paper in the gale; he struggles for breath and fumbles for his knife, but the knife is gone, someone has taken it, and now he sees its glinting steel, we see it both, for we are together in this, terrified we see the blade describe its flat and lunging arc, and the boy clutches at the air to repel the attack, no, my knife, no, please, what, is it you? But I am too quick for him, I slice a smile into his throat and he drops limply into the snow and is dead.
No! Tell me it isn’t so! What have I done?
Now he rises up again, as if by the aid of an invisible hand, everything runs backwards, or else time is run into a stagnant pool, whirling its little vortex, and he comes to life, trembling anew, whimpering in terror, his living, warm stench of excrement; I hear the wound slobber the blood into its mouth and see the blade repeat its arc, though in the opposite direction, closing the wound as if by a stroke of a painting brush, and not so much as a drop of sanguine red remains; I release him and he staggers backwards into the alabaster-white darkness, to the colony house and over the threshold, only then to appear before me once more, struggling with the door in the wind.
Close that door, you fell-monkey, before the weather gets in!
But each time he returns. Dear to us is but that which we have lost. And each time it ends up the same. For this is how it must be. He ends in my embrace, and I hold him tightly to my chest, O heaven, will this curse never stop! The blade glints in the dark and a slobbering laughter issues from the smile I have sliced into his throat. I put him down carefully in the snow, or I let him drop like a rag doll, for there is room for variation in this eternal treadmill, and I toss the knife, I run away, into my own damnation, to guilt and anger and hatred; now I bend over him and he is lifted up, sucked into my arms, he pulls away, staggers backwards, his strides feeble and precarious from drink; he emerges from the colony house – Close that door, you fell-monkey, before the weather gets in – he lurches about in the gale, an eternal pendulum swinging between life and death; he batters and kicks at the stable door, the sheep brays, the blade glints, again and again, and there he lies, a blood-red flourish in the snow, the great seeping gash in his throat, and I bend down, to my sacrificial lamb, I kiss him and whisper in his ear: Dear to us is but that which we have lost.
///
6 January. A storm has lasted all day. Matthias sits downstairs in the Egede house, puffing on his pipe and conversing with Madame Rasch. Just has gone up the fjord with Egede’s son Niels. Doubtless they are biding their time in some savage’s dwelling until the weather improves, wishing they had never left home, says the Madame. Matthias is oddly fond of the occasional storm, finding they allow him a very particular kind of peace in which to work. He has plenty to occupy him here at home with his studies and his notes. He has sent Knud down to the little shed they have built, in which they keep their collection of specimens from their summer and autumn expeditions. There is some considerable value there, several thousands of rigsdaler according to Egede’s assessment, and he has impressed upon his son how to secure the shed with ropes and make sure there is nothing for the wind to take hold of. He knows he ought to supervise Knud and satisfy himself that the lad does as he is instructed, but at the same time he wishes to demonstrate to him that he trusts him.
The two girls sit immersed in their reading at the high table, the usual Luther he assumes. The murmur of their voices, the warmth from the stove and the creaking of the floorboards above the ceiling, the physician, Kieding, pacing restlessly about upstairs, tormented by his demons, have a soporific effect on him.
The gale makes the house groan in its joints and causes the shutters to rattle. Now and then, a gust whistles down the chimney and black clouds of smoke fill the parlour. A native girl wafts them away with a towel. The Egede couple’s foster-children, presently four small ones and two older girls being prepared for baptism and confirmation respectively, live their quiet and undemanding lives at the far end of the parlour where they play with some wooden blocks previously belonging to the Egede children proper. They draw little attention to themselves apart from suffering from disconcertingly chesty coughs and constant sniffling colds.
Abruptly Knud comes in and is on his way upstairs when Matthias stops him.
Where have you been?
The crew house. Knud ascends the first pair of steps.
Are they carousing there?
They are drinking, yes.
What have you done with your friend?
Who?
Your friend, Frederik Christian?
I don’t know where he is.
Did you see anything of Hans? the Madame enquires.
No, I haven’t seen him.
Have you done as I told you and secured the shed in the storm? Matthias asks.
I checked a short while ago and tightened the ropes. They can withstand anything now.
Good boy. Upstairs with you, by all means.
He sits listening to the gale as it gathers force, the way it sings, rising and falling in tone as it rounds the corners of the house, the way it makes the fire in the stove flare up and roar.
Madame Egede is highly knowledgeable about the country and in particular the natives. She tells him about their faith. In her opinion it is not a proper religion, merely a way in which they relate themselves to the severeness of nature here and the rigours of an unpredictable climate.
I imagine, she says, that they would easily be able to acquire the Christian faith without giving up their own. After all, they have survived here for centuries. And they show a natural fondness for Jesus. They are always interested to hear about Him.
But these shamans, Madame Egede, says Matthias. They seem to have the upper hand on the savages. Are they not a hindrance to the spread of Christianity?
She is darning a sock. Her hand bobs a rhythm. Certainly there are hindrances, she replies. But they too must be cautiously approached. It’s no use being heavy-handed about it.
Some would perhaps not quite be in agreement, he says with a smile.
No, Hans can be rather stubborn. He becomes fiery if someone should go against him. It has always been his way, even at home in Vågan. It makes enemies for him of people who ought properly to be his allies.
I’ve heard of an angakkok they call the Red One. The crew say he has cast a curse upon the colony?
From the corner of his eye he notices the Egede girls halt in their reading, lift their heads and exchange glances.
The Madame puts down her darning and looks up. Her hands settle in her lap. The first winter was bad. More than half the crew perished. Certainly it was a curse, but a curse precipitated by poor planning and even poorer implementation. Sorcery was not required. She turns to her daughters and tells them to continue their reading. When your father gets home you need to have learned it by heart. You know how despondent he becomes otherwise. They hunch over their books once more.
Sometimes I don’t know who is worse when it comes to letting their imaginations run away with them, the Greenlanders or the Danes. Superstition is in us all.
Madame Egede would no doubt make a fine missionary, he says. Perhaps even she could convert a die-hard shaman.
She holds him in her grey, matronly gaze. Indeed I could.
Heavy footsteps sound in the passage, the door is flung open and the smith enters. He has removed his cap, not for the sake of politeness, but to wipe away the snow from his face. The warehouse, he blurts breathlessly. The gale’s got a hold of it. We need help.
Matthias shouts up the stairs for Knud, but his son does not reply. Let him sleep, he tells himself. Kieding, however, has heard him and comes hurrying.
They put on overcoats and follow the smith outside. The air is thick with great globs of snow. Matthias sees objects hurled by the wind and recognizes parts of his collection. By the time they reach the warehouse they are too late. The building is flattened, its contents dispersed or destroyed. My collection, he exclaims. But the smith grips him and he is forced to go with him and help secure the other structures, nailing the shutters tight and drawing the ropes taut over the roofs. The men appear from the crew house. Several are reeling drunk, but do what they can to assist. Afterwards they go up to the colony house and the smith even climbs onto the roof to nail down some planks he finds to be in danger of being torn away.
They sit down in Egede’s parlour over an aquavit and feel the warmth return to their bodies. Neither Egede nor Frederik Christian is anywhere to be seen. The men last saw them earlier in the evening, though cannot say where they went. Madame Gertrud is worried as to what might have happened to them. But then almost at once Egede appears, clad in his cassock. They stare at him in disbelief. Where have you been in this weather? his wife asks. And in your vestments too!
In the mission room, he says. I have been immersed in prayer and only realized a few moments ago there was a storm.
He has not seen his foster-son.
Matthias goes upstairs. He stands for a while watching his son who seems to be sleeping. The lad reeks of alcohol. Matthias feels an urge to strike him, no, to beat and torment him. But he goes to bed and lies there for a long time, shaking with rage before falling asleep.
The next day the weather is still. He goes about salvaging whatever items of his collection he can find in the snow. Hardly any of it seems to be of use to him any more and he ends up discarding everything, bitter and enraged. He imagines beating his son, shaking the daylights out of him, screaming into his face. But then he is overcome by pangs of guilt and his anger is superseded by sympathy. Now I must start again, he thinks resignedly. Fortunately, his rock specimens and geodetic sketch maps, along with his brother’s drawings and his own notes, are safely stored in his room. That’s something, at least.
Later in the day the body of Frederik Christian is discovered by the carpenter. He almost falls over him down by the blubber house where he lies half-buried in the snow with his throat cut and his breeches around his ankles. Kieding examines him and notes that the incision to the throat is clean and deep, almost to the cervical vertebrae. He can say nothing of what kind of knife might have been used.
The crew are interrogated. The boy’s movements are charted hour by hour. He was drinking in the crew house, but then he left and after that no one saw him. Every man in the colony is made to declare solemnly on his honour and in the presence of sworn witnesses his movements throughout the evening and night. Egede himself conducts these interviews and writes down the answers he is given. No evidence is forthcoming as to who might have killed the boy.
The funeral takes place five days later. Egede speaks at the grave. He takes as his point of departure Genesis chapter twenty-two, the story of Abraham and Isaac. His voice trembles with grief. Madame Gertrud weeps loudly. Matthias’s son Knud is absent. He has descended into a state of torpor and lies in his bed from morning till night.
///
January, February, March. The days become lighter, but also colder. Because of the tidal currents the fjord does not freeze over, and on particularly cold days an icy mist rises from the sea to settle as white fur on all surfaces, ripping at every human lung. The days are spent in Egede’s parlour with legs outstretched to the warming stove, boot-socks steaming. Reading and needlework.
Renewed hope. Egede has taken Knud under his wing. Matthias sees them going about the colony immersed in conversation. He wonders what the priest might have to talk to his son about, yet feels a faint guilt-tinged joy at the prospect of the Egede family taking the lad off his hands and perhaps getting him started in a position with the Trade in this furthest corner of the realm. Knud has been mute and withdrawn following the murder of his friend. But during the spring he comes rather more to life. When Matthias speaks with him he hears echoes of his talks with Egede. The priest has now offered him a place as assistant in the Trade and Knud tentatively enquires with his father as to what his mother will say if he should accept. She will be proud of you, Matthias tells him, knowing full well that his wife will be enraged and heartbroken if he should return home without him.
Then I will do it, says the lad. I like it here. It feels as if this land has simply been waiting for me.
The light returns, dazzling and relentless. The weather becomes milder.
///
20 April 1733.
The weather is gentle and sunny. Matthias, Just and Knud embark on a great expedition to the south, in two boats manned by a nine-man crew and rigged with spritsail and jib. They make swift progress, sailing in the sheltered waters of the skerries, punting through the narrow sounds, sleeping under the open sky when the weather permits, or else in the tents, boiling legumes and meat, freshly caught fish and birds over fires kindled with heather. The breeze is light, though it comes from the sea and blows gently into the sails, tilting the boats into a speed of some five knots. Once a day they put into an inlet and replenish their water from a stream or river. Matthias makes notes and is reconstructing his collection of specimens. Just sketches the profiles of the land and draws up the beginnings of maps he compares with those already completed the year before. Knud often goes off into the fells, returning ruddy-cheeked and with a bashful smile on his face. The further south and the further away from the colony they travel, the lighter their mood becomes. They make no mention of any event of the winter past. The blue sky, the fells and the pure air make all that has happened disappear.
After two weeks they cross the sixty-first latitude. Here they find a fjord which spits out so much ice that they must drag the boats onto an ice-floe, take down the rigging and bide their time. The current sucks them up the fjord. Great frozen sheets break apart with loud reports, buffeting and mounting each other. They labour to haul the boats over the ice and bring them ashore, but it is an impossible task and they must submit themselves to fate as the land glides slowly by.
Matthias cannot bear this idleness and incapacity on the drifting ice. To make use of his time he decides he will attempt to reach the land, taking with him a flintlock and a rucksack. His son accompanies him. For the better part of the day they skip and leap from floe to floe, icy islets that wobble underfoot, and several times come perilously close to falling in, though eventually they manage to step ashore onto a spit of land. Here they erect a cairn so that the crew might find them again once the fjord-ice disintegrates into slush and the waters become open. They spend the night in sleeping bags under a starry firmament, and the next day proceed into the luxuriant valley.
There is snow where the sun has yet to penetrate, in dales and gorges, but the ridges and spits are covered in dry mosses and grass with small flourishing eruptions of rosebay, orchids and bluebells. The flora is far richer here than up at the colony only three degrees further north. Moreover there is creeping willow, which he has also seen in the Godthåbsfjord, though somewhat taller here, in places almost like woodland, and great clusters of dwarf birch and wormwood, as well as whole hillsides of crowberry. He picks a handful of berries and chews on them. They have lain under the snow all winter and have lost their sweetness, but he can sense how filled with nutrition they still are.
This fjord is so full of sunshine and life, so far from the dismal colony and all its bleakness. They talk about it. His son says: Why did they not set up the colony down here? This place is far better.
I’m sure people will settle here one day, says Matthias. I think only accident decided the colony should be where it is today.
The Danes ruin everything, says Knud. If they placed a colony here, it would be just as abominable as the other in a couple of years.
But you are a Dane yourself, my lad.
Am I? We are Norwegian.
Like Egede. We are all of us of the same sour-dough.
I don’t feel Danish, his son says.
What do you feel, then?
The lad shrugs.
You’re young, says Matthias. You’re still developing. There will be many changes in your life. I found out on my journey through Europe when I was young. I wasn’t the same when I came home.
Do people not change when they get old? Knud asks, smiling at his father. An unusually genuine smile.
It gets harder the older you get. It’s as if we stiffen. We old people prepare ourselves for death, you understand, as the priests keep reminding us we must. I suppose the reality of the matter is that we are simply afraid.
What is there to be afraid of?
To lose oneself, perhaps. The older you get the more cautious you become. Most likely it’s a sign of fear.
I don’t regret what happened, the lad says all of a sudden.
What do you mean?
In the winter.
But what happened? Matthias asks.
He was my best friend, and then he died. In a way it was only right.
They sit and eat in silence.
Knud says: I’m going for a walk. Can I take the musket with me?
He gets to his feet and trudges off with the firearm over his shoulder.
Goodbye, Father.
Matthias watches him as he goes, the figure of his son gradually diminishing, consumed into the landscape’s canvas of rising fells, sky, snow and lush hillsides, until at last he is an invisible element in a picture. When evening comes he has failed to return, and does not come back the next day either. Matthias lets go of him. He has known all along it would happen. And he has wished it.
One of the two boats appears in the bay, and the crew embark into the valley, as far inland as they can without being consumed themselves. One of them finds bootprints in the snow, but on the stretches of heather they are lost.
Where is the other boat? Matthias asks.
Crushed by ice, they tell him. The men only just saved themselves.
And my specimens?
At the bottom of the fjord.
On 6 June they return to the colony, where the good ship the Caritas is already arrived from Denmark laden with heavy timber and provisions and bearing with it the glad tidings that King Christian has resolved that the Greenlandic colony be consolidated and expanded. Matthias Jochumsen writes in his journal:
‘Having realized now that I can do nothing of use in my service to the King, I hereby conclude my Greenlandic adventure.
Dum spiro, spero!
Matthias Jochumsen
Aboard the good ship the Caritas,
This twentieth day of June, 1733.’
///
I feel so light. The land inclines slightly upwards, but it is as if I have been given wings. I follow a river and come to a lake, then follow its shore, ascend a scree-covered slope still shadowed by the fell and then reach the sunlight to stand on top of the ridge. Behind me is the past, in front of me the future. An eagle circles high above. My eyes follow it. I shout out – hey! I feel joyful and free. I look down on a moor with intermittent rock, pools and lakes, water courses and bogs. This land is vast. The wind is gentle and brings with it a fragrance of ice and wild herbs. The sea to the right, empty and calm, swelling upwards to meet the sky, two arching vaults, a giant mouth, and here am I.
I notice the man at the shore of the tarn below. He sits looking up at me. He is waiting for me. Yes. His chest is bare. Now he waves to me. I wave back.
I begin my descent, lose my footing, fall, recover again. I have nothing, no provisions, no equipment, only the flintlock, a pouch of gunpowder and a handful of lead bullets. It is enough.
When I reach the tarn he gives me food. Trout roasted over an open flame. We eat. The fish is succulent, it tastes of heather and smoke. He has only a knife. It is his only weapon. His long hair hangs down his back, kept from his face by a band of colourful beads. The trout lie fanned out in front of him. I ask him how he catches them. His hand snatches the air. Like that. He laughs. They are plentiful. Plentiful enough for the two of us, my lad.