Ingolf was silent. Leif had given expression to his own thoughts. He felt so convinced at this moment that here it was his lot to settle and remain. But this feeling was followed in his mind by a peculiar anxiety which almost made him sorry. Was it a good land—a land where one could peacefully build and settle, and where his family could flourish in happiness and prosperity? Not himself alone, but his children and children's children should dwell here, if he determined to settle himself in the place.
The brothers chose a landing-place on the north side of the fjord, and steered thither. It was with strange feelings that they set foot on this new land, which from time immemorial had lain here behind the sea and the distance, alone with its birds. On sea and land, everywhere the birds swarmed. The questioning whistle of the golden plover and the rippling quaver of the curlew were the first sounds that greeted them as they trod the stones of the shore.
Ingolf and Leif immediately set the crew to work to bring the animals on land and to unload the vessel. They themselves proceeded to pitch their tents, after having selected a spot with thick green grass, well protected from wind and weather by a projection of rock, and close to the brink of a small, clear stream. The kitchen utensils were brought up, and a fire kindled. The shore was covered with driftwood, so that there was plenty of fuel. Pots containing salted flesh were hung up; at last they got hot meat again. They could not remember that any meat had tasted so good as this hot salt flesh after the dried fish, preserved flesh, and hard and finally mouldy bread they had had on the sea voyage. They baked bread, too, and ate it warm from the embers. It was splendid to have soft bread between their teeth again.
Round them the animals dispersed, grazing eagerly over the fertile pastures. It was a pleasure to see the satisfaction with which they swallowed the green grass. Towards evening the vessel was so far unloaded that it could be brought ashore and rolled on logs over the ground. They had chosen a little cleft in the rocks for it to lie in shelter during the winter.
By the evening, when the men had crept into their skin bags and had lain down to sleep, Ingolf and Leif, Hallveig and Helga, still sat round the remains of the fire, but did not think of sleep. They sat silent, close to one another, and did not talk. The night was bright and still, and dew was falling. The fire gleamed palely in the night. Red ember-snakes writhed at the bottom of it. The fjord spread a shining surface, dotted white with sleeping swans. There was a peace and stillness over the land which filled their minds with a peculiar awe and sense of expectation.
III
The summer they spent in South Svanefjord was, for the brothers and their wives, an unbroken succession of beautiful days. There was a peculiar atmosphere of peace and prosperity about the lonely settlement, where the fire burnt day and night under the cliff behind the tents, while on a rising ground close at hand their winter dwelling rose slowly from the ground. It was a house sixty feet in length, thirty in breadth, which the brothers were having built—a house with thick turf walls for a protection against the cold of winter, and adapted to be partitioned according to their needs when they had first roofed it in.
While their men worked at the dwelling and gathered in hay as winter fodder for the cattle, Ingolf and Leif let the days come and go. And whether they were sunny days or the fog hung in grey, soft, gliding belts down to the middle of the mountain-sides, all the days had a peculiar solemn solitariness and charm about them.