TheGreenlanders, an epic historical novel set in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century, has a vast cast of supporting characters to whom Gunnar Asgeirsson relates in the course of his sixty plus years. Gunnar however, is crucial because he is the one who records current events in writing, acts or does not act at important turning points, and tells tales of the ancestors' exploits. It is Gunnar who most fully comprehends the slow collapse of his family's and society's fortunes as natural and social disaster after disaster strikes himself, his relatives, his neighbors, and his friends. It is he whom Smiley depicts weeping at the end of the novel.

Family members who play important roles in developing the themes are Gunnar's sister Margret Asgeirsdottir, a skilled weaver, herb gatherer, and housekeeper, who is banished to a life of transient service after being found to be an adulteress...