Eirik the Red's Saga eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 37 pages of information about Eirik the Red's Saga.

Eirik the Red's Saga eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 37 pages of information about Eirik the Red's Saga.
“It is not safe as matters are,” answered Sigrid.  “There is all that crowd of dead people before the door; Thorstein, thy husband, also, and myself, I recognise among them, and it is a grief thus to behold.”  And when this passed away, she said, “Let us now go, Gudrid; I see the crowd no longer.”  Thorstein, Eirik’s son, had also disappeared from her sight; he had seemed to have a whip in his hand, and to wish to smite the ghostly troop.  Afterwards they went in, and before morning came she was dead, and a coffin was prepared for the body.  Now, the same day, the men purposed to go out fishing, and Thorstein led them to the landing places, and in the early morning he went to see what they had caught.  Then Thorstein, Eirik’s son, sent word to his namesake to come to him, saying that matters at home were hardly quiet; that the housewife was endeavouring to rise to her feet and to get under the clothes beside him.  And when he was come in she had risen upon the edge of the bed.  Then took he her by the hands and laid a pole-axe upon her breast.  Thorstein, Eirik’s son, died near nightfall.  Thorstein, the franklin, begged Gudrid to lie down and sleep, saying that he would watch over the body during the night.  So she did, and when a little of the night was past, Thorstein, Eirik’s son, sat up and spake, saying he wished Gudrid to be called to him, and that he wished to speak with her.  “God wills,” he said, “that this hour be given to me for my own, and the further completion of my plan.”  Thorstein, the franklin, went to find Gudrid, and waked her; begged her to cross herself, and to ask God for help, and told her what Thorstein, Eirik’s son, had spoken with him; “and he wishes,” said he, “to meet with thee.  Thou art obliged to consider what plan thou wilt adopt, because I can in this issue advise thee in nowise.”  She answered, “It may be that this, this wonderful thing, has regard to certain matters, which are afterwards to be had in memory; and I hope that God’s keeping will test upon me, and I will, with God’s grace, undertake the risk and go to him, and know what he will say, for I shall not be able to escape if harm must happen to me.  I am far from wishing that he should go elsewhere; I suspect, moreover, that the matter will be a pressing one.”  Then went Gudrid and saw Thorstein.  He appeared to her as if shedding tears.  He spake in her ear, in a low voice, certain words which she alone might know; but this he said so that all heard, “That those men would be blessed who held the true faith, and that all salvation and mercy accompanied it; and that many, nevertheless, held it lightly.”  “It is,” said he, “no good custom which has prevailed here in Greenland since Christianity came, to bury men in unconsecrated ground with few religious rites over them.  I wish for myself, and for those other men who have died, to be taken to the church; but for Garth, I wish him to be burned on a funeral pile as soon as may be, for he is the cause of all those ghosts which have been among us
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Eirik the Red's Saga from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.