On the Cold Coasts

mother smiled a wistful smile that vanished almost as quickly as it appeared. “Do you remember when we left Hvalsey? Remember how long you pleaded with us after we sailed from the coast to go back and leave you there?”
    Ragna nodded. “I did not want to leave grandmother or my cousins, and I was afraid to sail out onto the sea. It seemed so vast and endless.”
    “The people of the Eastern Settlement are good people, Ragna,” her mother said firmly. “And though the Lord took all your siblings that were born there, the time in Greenland was a blessing. It saved us. The plague that claimed all my people here at home did not reach Greenland. It is a harsh land but also bountiful, and its people are better protected against many calamities than the people here, whether from plagues or natural disasters or violence at the hands of foreign plunderers…”
    Sigridur was silent and stared straight ahead, her eyes distant. Then in a hypnotic voice she began to tell the tale of the seal woman. She was a good storyteller, and images of precipitous, snow-covered mountains and icebergs in a long fjord, floating in an ice-blue sea, sprung to life in Ragna’s mind. They were vague at first, but then the mists of time gradually lifted and behind her eyelids she could see the sun dancing on sea and firn, and the summer sky above Greenland, bluer than all things blue.
    “There were few women in the Eastern Settlement in those days, too few for all men of marrying age to be able to take a wife, and on many farms the women died young from their brood of children, as often happens. Your great-grandfather was past middle age and unmarried when this story happened; he was a bit of a loner and liked to hunt on his own, not with the other settlers in Hvalseyjarfjord. He was a good, generous man, who shared his catch—seals, fish, and birds—with his neighbors. One night in spring, while he was travelling far from home, searching for seals in a remote cove, he saw a group of young women on the shore, dancing a strange dance and singing songs in no-man’s language.” And Sigridur began to sing a strange, incomprehensible song, disjointed tones that sounded almost like the warbling of birds. Ragna smiled as she recognized it; it had been sung to her as a child, and she had sung it to Michael when he was small. And once to his father.
    “There were seven women, exquisitely beautiful, their movements graceful and their bodies taut and shimmering, and a short distance away, on a large boulder, were seven sealskins. The man became mad with desire and crept closer, seized one of the sealskins, and hid it. Then he hid behind the boulder and watched the women, mesmerized. When they stopped dancing, they put on their skins and dove into the sea—all but one, who could not find hers. She shouted and wept, and soon he appeared from behind the boulder to comfort her. He asked her to become his wife and promised that she would have her skin back in seven years’ time. The seal woman was drawn to the man, for he was kind and had a good physique. She accepted his proposal. Eventually she gave birth to a daughter who was dark-skinned and had a broad face just like hers, high cheekbones, black hair, and the eyes of a seal. The seal woman doted on the infant girl; she sang to her for hours and told her stories about the sea mother at the bottom of the ocean and all the creatures that live there: fishes and seals and whales and polar bears, mermaids and mermen. But when seven years had passed, the man could not bear to keep his promise, for he loved the woman and did not want their daughter to grow up motherless. The seal woman cried bitterly and said she had to go home, otherwise she would wither and die, but the man would not give in.” Sigridur paused and coughed with loud, hacking sounds. She cleared her throat, then continued, her voice hoarse: “The daughter could not endure her mother’s cries of grief. So one night she looked all through the house until she found the sealskin where her father had hidden it in the attic. She gave it to her mother. With salty tears the seal woman bid farewell to her daughter on the shore, donned her skin, and dove into the sea. She was never seen in the guise of a human again. Your great-grandfather grieved desperately for her. Yet during his hunts he fared better than ever before, and their descendants have never suffered scarcity, even when times have been rough in Greenland and others have starved.