What the one-eyed raven told the doves at the court of Queen Isabella.

The black clouds had crouched, seemingly unmoving, far to the north. They'd cast off at dawn and headed northwest against the quartering wind, making good time. Less than six hours after leaving Reykjavik, they began to feel the first gusts, and as the aft mastlines began to sing, Bjorn ordered the mast unstepped. The storm snarled into action, near-freezing North Sea waves rising to 20 foot crests, quartering their progress and drenching the open ship. Twenty two men listened to the air; twenty men bent to the oars.
They rowed hard, heading almost directly north by the occasional glimpses of sun, and watched the first day pass. Human sinew, however, could not hope to make headway against a polar northeaster. Eighteen hours of daylight rowing, at this latitude, and the night all too short for fixing position by the stars. Handling the five meter sweeps in unison was not a matter of ease on still water, and in the choppy waves, with numbed fingers, the men couldn't row well, and even the endurance of years could be worn thin by such treatment as they were receiving.
Light waned and the first stars vaguely, tenatively showed themselves through fog and driving rain. Any real fix on the airts was impossible, given the motion of the boat, but forty four eyes scanned the skies, and forty two had no need to hear what Bjorn affirmed, that they were not going to make landfall at the Eastern Settlement. Eirik was going to have to wait for his wood.
Their technology really only allowed for locating one's position north to south, but that's what was vital to them. Bjorn could tell they were far south of Herjolfsness, and moving south at an alarming rate. Compensating for the drift by rowing could ameliorate the problem, but they were well past any hope of landfall, and there was little point in tiring the oarsmen, so he ordered the sweeps shipped; they pulled them from the gunwales and tied them along the cargo in the narrow central aisle of the longship. They affixed oilskins on the thwarts to lessen the water they were shipping, although the waves often crested and broke across the ship. Then the men crouched under the rainy sky, huddled in sealskin, and waited, as the rudderman brought the boat to south-south-west and they began to run before the storm in earnest. The longship crackled and whined as the planed boards slipped across each other; as it crested waves, it bent to fit them, rather than be broken by them.
Two days, three, five, seven, and the wind was relentless. They'd 40 days rations on board, so were not overly worried. Any landfall within the Danelaw or the northern countries would be fine, they'd be treated as guests if they paid, and they were loaded down with goods bound for Brattahlid. Even a landing in the south was fine; they had swords, and it would hardly be the first time a Norse merchantman had gone a-viking in France or Spain. But, to find the land was a different problem, and they had to hope they were within twenty five days of some solid place, when the cold front broke and released them.
The wind slackened somewhat on the eighth day out of Iceland, and by the morning of the ninth, they had uninterrupted sunlight. But, more importantly than that, on the bottoms of the light cloud-cover at the horizon was reflected a distant land-sign. Men stretched and groaned, untied the oars from their racks, retied the leathern oarlocks, and began to row to the northwest, across the low rolling water.
Well less than one doegr sailing, they met the low land and coasted along the shallow water, staring. Greenland, both the Eastern Settlement and the West, was a thing of fjords, ice, steep rock-walled canyons with thin sandy beaches far upwater. What opened itself to them was a low, flat shore, with long beaches and dense, dense forest beyond that, stretching off beyond sight. The sea was wickedly cold and ran southerly.
They coasted into a cove, beyond a breakwater, watching the coastline with one eye and Bjorn with the other. He climbed over the cargo, clumsily, to stand at the prow-post, with one arm wrapped about it.
He stared for a long time. Turned and sighed.
"We go northwards."
There was a long moment of silence. Oarsmen stirred, looked down, looked back over their shoulders at him. He shook his head, his red hair silvery and clumped from salt-spume.
"We're at least twenty two days late. North."
"By the same argument, we've little time lost if we stop and explore," Thorvi Gundrisson said, quietly.
Bjorn dropped his head down, exhaled noisily. "That's not how it'd be, Thorvi. You know the score. We've everything we own onboard. If we stop, we could stay for a year, and I've got to get this shipment to Eirik."
He spoke carefully. He needed them a great deal more than they him; he'd gotten them onboard by promises of new land. They weren't planning on returning to Iceland, this was a one-way trip, and even the most glowing descriptions of Brattahlid and the Eastern Settlement had made it clear that the abundance of natural resources was very low. Why else were they running this shipment to Greenland? Bjorn knew there was another reason, but he didn't entirely understand it himself, so didn't mention it. To the eyes of most of the crew, those that didn't have family or commitments in Greenland, this land was just as free from the entanglements they fled, and was not claimed.
Bjorn exhaled again through closed teeth. The oarsmen understood his position somewhat; despite his Frisian background, he was Norse. He was as loath as they to leave this place unknowing.
"What do you think, Gunnar?" Ingolf, who spoke, was maybe seventeen and considerably in awe of the named oarsman, as, to a lesser degree, were most of the rest of the crew.
Gunnar turned, at his name, to stare at the land directly. He was singular, born with one eye and a scar where the other should have been, one cobaltic eye and long red hair. He'd been born in Uppsala and raised in the Temple of Odin there, Odin One-Eye, and had not only picked up an unusual store of knowledge, but was generally said to have ties to the unknown. People said of him that he knew the runes, meaning that he saw the unseeable with his missing eye, much as Odin saw.
Gunnar turned to look at Bjorn, who tightened his jaw somewhat. Bjorn had more than a little respect for Gunnar himself, despite the call of Christianity, the other major difference between himself and his crewmen. Bjorn had been baptized by the French priest in the court of King Olaf Tryggvason himself, the Sword of the White Christ, and was beholden to the true faith. Or at least, beholden when he was within five hundred miles of Konigslot, Olaf's court.
Here, in the middle of nowhere, childhood superstitions came back to Bjorn, and he nodded to Gunnar, stepped down from the fore platform. Gunnar stood and stepped uncertainly, nine days mostly seated having taken a toll on his legs. He walked forward, climbed over timber, fabrics in oilskins, raw iron billets, all the things that Greenland needed so desperately, and ended up aside the forepost.
Silence fell, respect and awe, and fear, keeping the men from sound, and appreciation of the new land holding their attention to a greater or lesser degree. A buck deer stepped out of the edges of the forest to watch them, his forehooves sliding somewhat into the deep loam, and one antler tapping a tree with a delayed "click."
Gunnar spoke quietly, to himself and to one other, invisible, entity. "What'cha think, old man? We're in a spot." Silence. "You know where we are. You know what I've done for you. Remember Ronwyn? Remember the goats at Kebnekiase?" Silence stretch. "You saved me when those damned southlanders came on us at dawn, remember that? I've payed in full for that, gold from Paris." Silence twist. "We took fire to the cathedrals, burned every Rome church within one day's march of the coast." Bjorn winced. "Remember the flames? They were sacrifices for you, old man. Were they in vain? Maybe we shouldn't have burnt them, eh? Maybe we should have joined with them, coz we don't need a god who doesn't answer his faithful." Gunnar looked up at the heedless sky. "No lightning bolt? You asleep? Can't get it up anymore? One little question, that's all I..."
Suddenly Gunnar froze, his singsong prayer forgotten, and seemed to listen to something.
Then he exhaled, too, and leaned his head against the forepost, the splinters crackling across his salt-covered leather jacket.
Turned.
"North."
There was a resigned silence, and Bjorn quirked his mouth. He was by no means dead-set against a landing, but was more than a little pleased that Gunnar agreed with him, to proceed without landing.
"What'd Odin tell you?" Ingolf asked, wide-eyed.
Gunnar pursed his lips. "Odin doesn't talk, boy. Or at least, I can't say he's ever talked to me. He paints."
The one cobalt eye partly vanished beneath a lowered eyebrow.
"Pale their hair, and bright swords, and blood. Three longships, maybe, but maybe just one, and scores of small skin-covered craft, piloted by spear-throwing, dark-skinned men, skraelings. A flein-drifa. The longboats were running for open sea, and one of every three was dead." Gunnar dropped his voice, though he'd no need for dramatic effect, and stood silent.
At his words, the solid deciduous forest seemed to sprout eyes, and memories of landing on hostile shores, of the need for clear beach-heads, of ambush by sea, came to many of the crew, men who'd served on ships not bent for trading. Though the deer still stood and stared, the shore no longer seemed as inviting, and ten pair of oars sliced into the water with a swish and a burble.
The longship pulled north, rounding the headland, headed towards Cape Race. Bjorn looked back, as did every man on board save the rudderman, at the cove. Some sense of despair at the deaths of his countrymen, whether this occured in the past or future or only in Gunnar's imagination being unknowable, led him to stumble through half-learned words, taught to him at Olaf's court, "Rest in peace, those who will die here." The two millenium old tongue of a dying empire blessed the passing coast. Likewise, Gunnar looked at the land, but he addressed it in the white heat of a rising empire, the Viking curse, heard across the beaches of France, Spain, England, Italy, "We will not forget. Look for us again on the first tide of spring." The ship skirted towards the Davis Strait.