To-day I travelled up to the Greenlanders in the Baal’s River. When we came to the nearest dwelling, some from the old colony had arrived there, among whom two were sick, wherefore the inhabitants there, for fear of being smitten by them, in all haste removed themselves from the dwelling and departed further up the fjord. The sick died the next morning. News came to me also that at the inner reaches of the fjord, to where people had come from the aforementioned dwelling, they too had fallen sick and were dying.
FROM HANS EGEDE’S JOURNAL, JANUARY 1734
I am Katarina. It is the Christian name given to me in baptism by the priest called Henrik three years ago. I know, because he told me so, that he was once betrothed to a girl by the same name, in his homeland, and therefore he thought I should be called the same. It puzzled me, because I was brought up to believe that the soul is in the name, and did it mean he wanted me for his sweetheart? But of course this is heathen talk, as Henrik said, for my soul is my own, the Lord God has given it to me. I asked him where the soul resides. I was brought up to believe that a person has many souls, one in the ear, one in the hand, one in the eye, and then, as I said, one in the name, but the Christians have only one soul, and where might it be? The soul is incorporeal, he said. It is not in any particular place, though is constrained by and associated with your body for as long as you are alive. When you die it leaves your mortal frame and goes to wherever God has decided it is to go. God passes judgement on your soul, not your body, for the body is mortal. But what about the Inferno, I asked him. If the soul is no more than air, then surely it cannot burn or feel suffering? Most certainly it can feel suffering, he said, but it cannot burn up, for it is incorporeal, and therefore the torments of Hell shall endure for ever, for the soul is immortal. How can God allow people to burn for ever? I asked. Does he hate people that much? No, God loves man, and he wishes for him only salvation. Therefore he warns us of the cruellest punishment in order that we be obedient to him and ascend to him when we die. He looked at me. Even the most ignorant native girl it seems can pose questions a priest must ponder before he is able to answer, he said and smiled, though it was a solemn smile. If you are to be baptized, you must obey the word of God and be less inquisitive. And so obediently I was baptized, and then I left the colony and its poisonous air and returned to my settlement up the fjord.
I am nineteen years old, I think. Henrik helped me work out how old I might be. I was born a few summers before Egede came to our land, in the dark times when years were not counted in the same way as the Christians count them, and when the shamans were our priests and the fjord, edged by the fells, was our church. But God created nature, as too he created man. He created the sheer face of blue ice which rises at the bottom of the fjord, he created the heather on the moors, the flowers, the birds in the air and the trout in the streams. I go up there whenever I wish to pray. I have a prayer-stone, flat and white. It lies up at the falls. Whenever I feel uneasy in my heart, or if I bear a sorrow, I go there and kneel, and my ears fill with the rush of the water, which consumes all else, and there I say my Lord’s Prayer and a peace comes to my soul.
My settlement is only sparsely inhabited. Two handfuls and two fingers more are all who remain. This is how we count. But I know it is called twelve, or a dozen. I have two languages and have also two kinds of soul, one Christian and some others which are heathen. Perhaps God thinks me unclean with my heathen souls. Perhaps he thinks I smell. Heaven is such a clean and tidy place. I don’t know if they will ever let me in.
My brother died some few days ago. He had been in the colony when the sickness was raging there. He fled in terror but took the sickness with him like an invisible veil trailing behind him all the way here. He was baptized and could therefore die in peace. I helped him. It was in the night. I crept under his bed cover, pinched his nostrils together and placed my hand over his mouth. He squirmed a bit, but not much. He died with a smile on his lips. We sang a Danish hymn when we carried him to the grave, and we praised the Lord. My mother was sad. But then she is not baptized and has no hope of any heavenly afterlife.
But where is he now? she asks.
He is with God, Mother.
Yes, but where?
I point to the sky where the moon is shining like the blade of a knife. Up there.
Can he see us?
Yes, he sees everything, for it is so high up, higher than any fell.
She smiles. I don’t understand it. But I believe it. It makes me happy. And then she cries. Afterwards, she waddles from the grave and back to the house.
At night especially, when I wake for no reason and lie staring out into the darkness, I see things which are far away, and I know that if I wanted, or had the courage, I could follow my gaze and my thoughts and travel anywhere I liked. I know it is a heathen thought. But then I take the little crucifix given to me by Henrik, the priest, and clutch it in my hand as I say the Lord’s Prayer, and then it all passes. The Lord is my shepherd. He leadeth me.
Others are sick, my two young brothers, my cousins and uncles, and a sister. Not all have taken to their beds, some still manage to do their work, catching trout in the river, mending boots and clothing, preparing food. But it is hard for them. They drag their feet and shuffle about. My sister has broken out in blisters all over. They bubble up on her skin and she scratches them until she bleeds. But she laughs about it. I’m not afraid to die, she says. She was baptized with me. We talk about how much we look forward to going to Heaven.
Now and then someone collapses. One of the men fell in the river and was unable to get out again. It may have been me who pushed him, struck him with a rock or tripped him up, whatever, but no one saw, so in a way it never happened. He was dying anyway. I have nothing against seeing people die, but I cannot abide to see them dying. So I shouted and made a fuss, and they came running and waded out into the ice-cold water and dragged him ashore. His face was blue and there was a large swelling on the back of his head. He must have hit a rock when he fell, I said. In the river I could see the fish as they darted nervously about, snapping up the filaments of blood as they ran downstream and collected in the pool. We buried him under rocks, sang hymns, laughed and praised the Lord.
Not many are left now, only a handful and one finger. Which is to say six. Besides the children. I haven’t counted the children. They are quite a number. They too die, though it is hard to keep up with how many. So little it takes. Everyone is glad. We sing one of the songs taught to us by Egede, a lovely hymn: ‘Let the earth conceal, erase me, worms my very juice devour, fire and water me consume, I lie trusting in my tomb, that to life I shall be taken, in death’s realm not lie forsaken.’ And so on. I think it is the loveliest song I know.
Afterwards we sit into the night and talk about Egede and about Jesus and the time we were baptized, how it felt.
I remember how excited I was, says my cousin. He is much older than me. It was in the old house by the sea, where the priest and his family lived before the colony days. Egede called my name out, and he took me lovingly by the hand as if he were my own mother, and then he asked me to kneel. I was trembling, and I think perhaps I felt I was not quite ready for the baptism then, that I was not good enough or had not understood things sufficiently, but when I felt the water run down my neck everything became bathed in light and illuminated. It was the sun. The sun shone in through the parlour window at that very moment and made everything radiant. That was when I knew it was true, that He loves us all and wants us to find salvation and avoid the flames of Hell and ascend to Him.
I felt the splendour of it immediately, says his brother, my second and younger cousin, his voice gentle as a smile and filled with quiet reminiscence. It was out in the skerries one summer. Egede was out missionizing and he and the two other priests had been there several times that summer and instructed me. Then one day he said it was time, now I was to be anointed, and I was so glad, for I had not thought I would ever succeed. It was raining that day, a slight drizzle, but the priest wanted it done outside regardless. It took place on a grassy plain a short distance from the settlement. He looked at me and winked and said, Come here, my child, as the priests say even when they are speaking to a grown man. I approached him and he placed his hand on my shoulder. His hand was so heavy that I sank to my knees. I put my hands together and looked up at him. He said, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and as he poured the water over me it immediately stopped raining and a rainbow appeared over the skerries. I was so moved by it I started to cry. Since then I have not been afraid to die.
I managed to bite the priest’s finger, says a girl. But I was only little then. Ow, you little Satan! the priest blurted. First he asked if I renounced the devil and all his works and ways, and someone from the crew of a ship which lay at anchor that summer held me and answered on my behalf and said yes, I did. Do you believe in God the Father Almighty? Yes, said the seaman. Do you believe in Jesus Christ? Yes! And so on. I remember it all. And then he moved his hand towards me and I put his finger in my mouth and bit as hard as I could, causing him to cry out and swear. Ow, you little Satan! But I was christened anyway.
We laugh at her story. We are all so happy.
They continue to tell of their baptisms and their first days as Christians, the blessings, the happiness and joy. One of them says that when a person is baptized they stop being afraid. Before, when he was still a heathen, he says, he was always so afraid, afraid of the spirits, which were everywhere, afraid of starvation or of freezing to death, afraid that his parents or sisters would die. To be Christian is to be glad, he says. The others tell him they feel the same. They tell him of the time before their own baptisms, dreadful tales of ghosts and of death appearing in the form of a raging evil spirit. I like to listen to the old stories, about the dark times before the Christians came to this land, but I am frightened by them too. For I think that perhaps the old spirits might be awakened if we speak of them too often, and then they will surely harm us in some way, perhaps by luring us into some heathen practice, the wearing of amulets, for instance, or playing the lamp game, and thereby we shall be lost and never get to Heaven.
The small children are rather afraid. It is only understandable. My older sister calls her children to her on the sleeping-bench that she may say farewell to them. She is deathly ill and can barely speak a word. The children, a girl and a boy, begin to cry, and the boy becomes angry, he hits her and tells her to get up. But all she does is smile, and her eyes are narrow slits filled with moisture. We shall meet again in that other place, she whispers. You must not be sad, and you must not be afraid. Death is easy, it is like a cold river across which one must wade. Your feet are cold for a moment, but then you are on the other side in a delightful place. Do as your mother’s sister tells you. She will look after you.
Her mother’s sister is me.
I begin to sing, a hymn everyone knows, and those who are still able join in: ‘Now let us sing in our pity, for Jesus Christ the Lord, God’s son who was born in Bethlehem’s city, and joy to us restored.’
I gather all the children around me. They sit in a semicircle at my feet. I tell them about Jesus, everything I remember Henrik telling me about his life, about salvation and the heavenly afterlife. Jesus loved all children, I tell them. He wants all children to come to him.
How can we get to Heaven? they ask.
We can turn ourselves into ravens when we die, one of them says. And then we will fly there.
There is a hole, another one says. You have to go up onto the fell and somewhere there is a hole leading to Heaven. But you can only find it when you’re dead.
God’s angels will carry us in their arms and take us there, I tell them.
Will our mother be there too?
Yes, your mother will be there and you will be united with her again. She will come running towards you and give you kisses.
Can a person not die in Heaven?
No, never, I say.
Are people always happy there?
Always, I say.
I say the Lord’s Prayer with them and they snuggle up to me and fall asleep.
My sister dies in the night. Death often comes at night. I don’t know why. Perhaps because sleep and death are so closely related, and God gave us sleep so that we will always be reminded that we are to die, as he gave us the bright new dawn to remind us of the resurrection and the eternal life in Heaven. I love sleeping. I go to bed at night and imagine I am preparing for death and that when I awake I will be in Heaven. But I do not die. I live on as those around me perish. I don’t know why God does not call me to him. Does he not like me?
The last thing the sick do before they take to their deathbeds is to sew a reindeer skin in which to be wrapped when they are put to rest. I help them. I am still well. We have been keeping a great pile of skins from the hunt last autumn, when everyone was still well, to take to the colony and sell to the Trader there. But now only a few skins are left, and barely a handful of people. The children perish. They pass in their sleep while I hold their small, cold hands and sing for them. Children are good at dying. I hardly need to help them, only a bit, pinching their nostrils together and placing my hand over their mouths. It is allowed, to curtail their suffering. I cannot bear their suffering. And only a small skin is required in which to wrap the corpse of a child. Adults will often lament and ask if it is really true that they are going to Heaven, and I have even found that some have scorned the Lord while on their very deathbed. But in each case I have spoken with them and prayed with them, until eventually they settled and were ready. The children’s faith is so strong and untainted when it comes to their own passing. They are so trustful when I snuggle beside them in the night. The children are never any trouble.
Now my mother is sick and I am sad because she is not baptized, and when she dies I know I will never see her again. Goodnight, Mother, I whisper, and feel her tremble in my hands, until at last she is quite still.
My mother’s death troubles me. For in a way I shepherded her into damnation, that which Henrik called the other death from which we never return. Perhaps she could have been saved. Perhaps a priest might have come and baptized her at the last. But Henrik is gone. And the other one, Egede, will not baptize indiscriminately, as he says, which I quite understand. Anyway, it is too late now for my mother. There is nothing to be done about it.
It feels lonely here. The place is silent and empty. No one is left. All are dead. I wrap my mother in the skin she has sewn, and then I drag her from the house to the place where she wished to rest. It is hard work. People are so heavy when they are dead. I say the Lord’s Prayer at the grave. I pray for her soul, even though it is a heathen soul. Forgive me, Lord, but this is my mother. What else am I to do?
I sit at my mother’s grave and sing: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, my Saviour blest, my Hope and my Salvation, I trust in Thee, deliver me, from misery, Thy word is my consolation.’
I wait for the sickness to smite me. But it does not come. Strange. I feel quite well. I go up onto the fell. Perhaps, I tell myself, perhaps there is a hole somewhere, perhaps the gates of Heaven are here. But I find nothing, only snow and fog and cold. I sit down on my backside and slide down the slopes. It is fun. I love to do it. But on one’s own it is rather dull. Still, I go up and do it again. Perhaps I will fall into the abyss. Perhaps I will kill myself. Then I would be with the others. If it were not forbidden and led to damnation and the other death, I would stick a knife in my stomach. I come close to doing so on a couple of occasions. But I know it is not allowed. It would be so very easy. A quick thrust to the abdomen and a great leap towards God and my family in Heaven.
I take my bow and go inland. It is very cold and the snow is deep. I sink in to my hips with every stride. But on the other side of the pass the land slopes gently down towards the fjord where most often the wind has swept much of the snow away. Up in the air I see a raven. It watches me, sailing above my head on its broad wings. I will not shoot it. It is not good to shoot a raven. Besides, their taste leaves much to be desired.
Of course, I could lie on the bench back at the house and wait for death to come. But that would be a sin, almost the same as suicide. There would be no salvation then. One must strive to live, to show gratitude for the life God has given to one, and yet go calmly into death when it calls. Death comes to us all. But when? Perhaps I will die here in the wilderness. I might have an accident, or freeze to death. I am rather afraid of falling. I am afraid of the pain. Forgive me, Lord. But I am not afraid of freezing to death.
Dear Lord, I whisper in prayer. If you wish for me to come to you, then let me freeze to death.
On the plain below I see a herd of reindeer, their hooves scraping away the snow for them to nibble the winter grass. The wind is in my face, so they cannot smell me. I approach them using the rocks for cover. When I am close enough I pick out a calf and shoot, and the herd stampedes away like thunder. It is the first reindeer I have killed. God must have guided the arrow. He wants me to live.
I make an incision in the calf’s abdomen, opening an artery and lying down to drink the warm blood. Afterwards I eat the contents of the stomach, a warm and steaming porridge which makes me dizzily sated. God does not want me to die. I have understood that now. I drag the calf back with me to the settlement. Darkness comes, and then it is light again before I have even returned. In front of the house I skin the animal and cut it up into smaller pieces. I heat up the dwelling and boil some of the meat in a pot we have taken from the colony. I say the Lord’s Prayer before eating.
I remain in the empty settlement until the calf is eaten. I eat it all, the meat, the guts, the tongue, the brain, the tallow. It takes several weeks. I see no humans, no animals. God wanted me to kill this calf and eat it, thereby to live. But why? I cannot fathom it.
And then there is no more meat. I begin to feel hunger. It feels good. I cannot imagine a better way to die. But then one day someone comes. I see one of the colony boats come sailing with four men on board. I go down to the shore and wait for them. It is the priest, Egede, his son and two oarsmen. They come ashore and follow me up to the dwelling. I have no more food, I tell them.
We have some with us, my child, Egede says.
We eat pease porridge and salt-cured meat, and barley porridge fried into patties. My word, such food makes a person fart. I tell them all that has happened, how all those christened have died in belief of salvation. They look at me as if they cannot quite believe their own ears. But they can see the stone graves. They stay with me for three days and the priest says the Lord’s Prayer over the graves. He performs the Holy Communion, preaches and reads from the Book of Genesis, the wanderings in the wilderness.
It is soon Easter, he says. Return with us to the colony, my child.
On Palm Sunday I am seated in the colony boat. I watch as my home disappears behind me, the graves of my mother, my siblings, my fellows, small snow-tipped mounds of rocks gradually dissolving into the surroundings. A promontory comes between us, and they are gone. I turn and look ahead. If I am lucky, death awaits me in the colony.