The Flatey Enigma

by Ingolfsson, Viktor Arnar

  “It is impossible to say what led the farmer Jón Hákonarson to have these stories written down, but perhaps the manuscript was intended as a gift to a young man who at the time was taking over the kingdom of Norway, which at that time included Denmark and Sweden, and who bore the same name as two great kings who had reigned long before him—Ólaf. He was the third Norwegian king to bear that name, and the expectations that were placed on him were clearly high. The vellum manuscript was also a veritable treasure that would have brought great honor at the royal court. But this Ólaf died or vanished in Denmark at around the time the book was being completed, and his death marked the end of Norwegian king Harald Fairhair’s lineage. Ólaf’s mother, Margrét Valdimarsdóttir, ascended to the throne and ruled until 1412…”

  CHAPTER 6

  It was close to seven o’clock by the time Grímur steered the boat toward Eyjólfur’s pier in Flatey. Thormódur Krákur was standing on its edge, clutching his hat in his hands, with a large wooden cart by his side. Standing close to him was a priest in a cassock with a psalmbook in his hands. But apart from them there wasn’t a soul in sight. The swarm of kids that had been so conspicuous earlier that day was nowhere to be seen, nor were there any curious faces peeping through the windows. The village seemed deserted.

  Kjartan was stunned. “Where is everybody?” he asked Grímur. “Does everyone eat dinner at the same time around here or what?”

  Grímur glanced across the village. “No, that’s not the custom here. But people find events like these a bit disturbing. Death isn’t much of an attraction around here, and people prefer to shun it.”

  “So people lock themselves inside then?” Kjartan asked.

  “The adults avoid spectacles of this kind, and the children are kept indoors to avoid any inappropriate behavior,” the district officer answered gravely.

  Högni tied the boat to the pier, and Grímur and Kjartan carried the casket up the steps between them and placed it on the cart.

  The priest, who was around seventy, possessed a solemn air, long gray sideburns, round glasses, and a bald head. He bowed and muttered something over the casket, which Kjartan neither heard nor understood. The priest then nodded at Thormódur Krákur, who put on his hat and started dragging the cart away. Grímur and Högni walked behind it, also helping to push it along. The priest followed behind, then finally Kjartan.

  The path led up a slope, which proved to be no difficulty, because the load was light. Thormódur Krákur was obviously strong and capable of dragging the cart on his own without any great effort. The others nevertheless gently pushed behind as a token gesture. They took slow and dignified steps as the cartwheels screeched faintly to the rhythm of the silent march. It was a short distance to walk, but Kjartan felt it was taking them ages to reach their destination.

  Thormódur Krákur opened the church doors with a large key, and the casket was borne inside. Two trestles has been prepared in the middle of the floor, and they lowered the casket onto them. Once this had been done, they walked outside again to breathe in some fresh air.

  The village was suddenly bustling with life again. Children ran between houses. Three men were chatting at the bottom of the slope and occasionally glanced up at the church. Women unpegged their washing from the clotheslines. A young boy was escorting three cows at the bottom of the slope. The stillness had been magically dispelled.

  “I asked Jóhanna, the doctor, to come over and take a look inside the casket,” Grímur said. “She’s more used to this kind of stuff than we are…I think.”

  The priest seemed eager to leave. “Remember to lock the door before you leave now, Krákur,” he said over his shoulder as he rushed off.

  “Reverend Hannes doesn’t want to lose his appetite before dinner if he can avoid it,” said Grímur, watching the priest speed away.

  “I met a man once,” said Högni, “who’d been sent to Oddbjarnarsker to fetch a body that had been washed up on the shore. It gave off such a terrible stench that he lost his appetite for three days, even though he felt hungry. He just couldn’t keep the food down. Then they made him sniff some ammonia and he recovered.”

  “Does the doctor know we’ve arrived?” Kjartan asked.

  “Everyone knows we’ve arrived,” Grímur answered. “Jóhanna is bound to be here any second now.”

  “Isn’t it difficult for a woman to be a doctor with transport being as difficult as it is on these islands?” Kjartan asked.

  Grímur blew his nose before answering: “Hasn’t been a problem so far. No one’s had any sudden illnesses, and there are no pregnant women here. Anyone who’s really sick gets sent to the hospital in Reykjavik. The main stuff she has to deal is arthritis, hemorrhoids, and toothaches. She’s got strong hands and is quick at pulling out a tooth if she has to. She also learned how to drive a motorboat as soon as she moved to Flatey. She wants to be able to visit patients between the islands on her own if the weather’s OK, without having to drag anyone away from their work.”

  “There’s nothing new about a woman handling a boat on these islands,” Högni added. “My great-grandmother, for example, used to be a foreman in the spring in Ólafsvík, so my grandfather was born in a fishing hut between trips.”

  “…In the decades before the manuscript was written, the black death had swept across Europe, and transport to Iceland was greatly reduced. The language of the Norse was changing, and they had probably lost the ability to be able to read the manuscripts that had previously been brought from Iceland. The sagas had largely been written to be exported and were obviously precious trading assets in the period in which the language spoken in Norway and Iceland remained the same. The Nordic countries were a single book market, as it were, and Snorri’s Heimskringla, or History of the Kings, was probably a best seller in Norway back then, just as much as it was after printing was invented. Jón Hákonarson’s majestic manuscript was slow to get off the ground, on the other hand, because the Norse couldn’t read their old language anymore, so it remained in Iceland for many centuries.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Grímur’s predictions about the doctor’s arrival proved to be correct. They did not have to wait long before a woman dressed in dark clothes appeared beyond the graveyard. She took the shortest route between the graves toward them.

  “I knew we could count on her,” Grímur said with a twinkle of admiration in his eyes. “Jóhanna Thorvald never keeps you waiting in this district if she can help it.”

  Jóhanna was around thirty, with a pale complexion and long dark hair tied at the back in a ponytail. She wore glasses, jeans, and a black coat, and she held a small briefcase in one hand and a paper bag in the other.

  “Thank you for coming over, Jóhanna,” said Grímur.

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked, barely glancing at them.

  The three men looked at each other. Finally Grímur answered: “You could maybe take a brief look at the man in the casket. See if he has anything in his pockets or whether he has any distinctive features. Anything that might give us some indication of who he is.”

  “I can do that if one of you is willing to write the notes.”

  Grímur looked at Kjartan. “Isn’t that your job?”

  “Yes, probably,” Kjartan replied.

  Jóhanna took a thin plastic coat out of the paper bag and put it on. It included a hat, which she placed and tightened around her head. Finally, she placed a white surgical mask over her face and slipped her hands into some rubber gloves.

  “Ready?” she asked Kjartan.

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s start.”

  They walked into the church. Kjartan stopped five steps away from the casket and took out his notebook and pen. Jóhanna placed her open briefcase on one of the pews and loosened the latches on the casket.

  Some flies appeared as soon as she lifted the lid, but they didn’t seem to have much life left in them and soon tumbled to the floor. The mixture Grímur had sprayed inside the casket had cle
arly done its job.

  For a long moment Jóhanna stood motionless by the casket, staring at its contents in silence.

  “A male judging by the clothes,” she finally said.

  “Yes, we know that much,” Kjartan answered.

  She glanced at him. “It doesn’t matter what you know. You just write down everything I say. This will be my report to the Directorate of Health.”

  Kjartan seemed taken aback. He hadn’t realized the investigation had actually started.

  Her eyes continued to linger on Kjartan a moment.

  “I remember you from high school,” she said finally.

  He gave a start and suddenly looked up, but he was unable to distinguish any expression behind her mask. He could not place her face. She must have been in a lower year, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask her. They looked into each other’s eyes for a moment and then gazed down into the casket.

  “Corpus decompositium,” she said.

  “I’m sorry?” Kjartan didn’t understand Latin.

  “The body is decomposed,” she said.

  That’s pretty obvious, Kjartan thought to himself, but he said nothing and just jotted it down on the page.

  Jóhanna firmly gripped the parka and trousers and turned the body over in one swift move. A few additional flies woke up with the shift and flew out of the casket.

  “No remains of skin or flesh on the face, nor in the eyes,” said Jóhanna, taking some implement out of her bag, which she used to loosen the skull’s clenched jaw.

  “No cavities in the teeth, but worn. Some gold fillings. A man well into his middle age and wealthy enough to be able to afford a good dentist.”

  She examined the skull under the hood.

  “Remnants of gray hair.”

  She walked to the other end of the casket and scrutinized the shoes. “Sturdy leather hiking shoes. Lace missing on right shoe.”

  Next she examined the hands. “No rings on his fingers.”

  She loosened the parka around his throat and unzipped it.

  “Quality parka with a rust-free zipper. Seems to be a foreign label; color: dark green.” She peered into one pocket and then fetched some tongs and a small envelope in her briefcase. “In the outer pocket there are several small shells, mussels, small starfish, remains of…sandworm, I think.” She placed it all in the envelope as soon as she extracted it from the pocket.

  “The deceased may have eaten some of this to stave off hunger. Need to examine this in the autopsy. Test for shellfish poisoning, if possible.”

  She examined the inside of the parka. “No internal pockets on the parka. Wearing a brown woolen cardigan under it. No visible labels on the cardigan. Side pockets. A leather wallet in the right pocket.” She removed the wallet with her tongs, placed it in a small envelope, and took it over to Kjartan. “Here, take a look.”

  He opened the wallet and counted several banknotes and coins. He counted: “Seven thousand two hundred and fifty-two crowns and fifteen cents.” There was nothing else in the wallet, and he left the money in it.

  “That’s a lot of money to be carrying around,” he said.

  Jóhanna looked into the other pocket of the cardigan. She took out a small folded piece of paper with her tongs and handed it to Kjartan. He unfolded the note and examined some words that had been written with a pencil, and then he read them out loud: “This book belongs to me, Jón Finnsson, and was a gift from my departed father’s father, Jón Björnsson, as can be verified, and was personally given to me by my departed father and is cherished in their memory.” The handwriting was clear and legible.

  Kjartan pondered the note. Below it another hand had written “folio 1005.” On the back of it thirty-nine letters were written out in three rows of meaningless text.

  O S L E O Y I A R N R Y L

  E M H O N E A E N W T L B

  A U R M L E Q W T R O N E

  The note had been ripped out of a perforated copybook, a small sheet with blue lines and narrow spacing. He placed the note in the envelope with the wallet, which he in turn slipped into his pocket.

  “So we’ve got a name to go on, Jón Finnsson,” Kjartan said. “This is some kind of a book inscription, but a rather old-fashioned use of words.”

  “Some of the islanders are a bit old-fashioned,” said Jóhanna.

  She finished searching through the pockets but could find nothing else.

  “Under the cardigan a light brown cotton shirt and green foulard. Quality clothes, it seems.”

  “Could he be a local from these islands?” Kjartan asked.

  “Very unlikely,” she answered. “He would have been missed. No one’s isolated enough here to be able to disappear without questions being asked after two or three days. Then there’s the clothing that doesn’t quite fit the islanders’ style.”

  “A foreigner maybe?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea about that,” she said. “But this’ll have to do for now. We’ll send him to Reykjavik like this. They’ll be able to investigate it better down there.”

  She placed the lid on the casket and locked it firmly. Then they walked outside.

  “Is Jón Finnsson a name that rings any bells?” Kjartan asked the three men waiting outside.

  “In what context?” Grímur asked.

  Kjartan took out the note and read them the text.

  Grímur and Högni stared blankly at each other, but Thormódur Krákur tilted on his toes and puffed up his chest. “I know who this Jón Finnsson is.”

  “Who is he?” Kjartan asked.

  “That’s Jón Finnsson, the farmer in Flatey, the one who delivered the Flatey Book to the bishop of Skálholt, Brynjólfur Sveinsson. It was the bishop who sent the book to the king, wasn’t it?”

  The deacon looked around with a triumphant air.

  “But that was in the autumn of 1647,” Grímur added.

  Thormódur Krákur continued: “Those words are written at the beginning of the Flatey Book and were copied in that note. It’s actually quite peculiar that the only person who inscribed this book was the person who allowed it to leave the family.”

  Thormódur Krákur gesticulated to add emphasis to his story.

  “And the Flatey Book is now with the king in Copenhagen,” said Grímur. “So this was hardly copied from the original source.”

  “What could have been the purpose of copying that text down on a piece of paper?” Kjartan asked. “And what does folio 1005 mean?”

  The others looked at each other, but no one had an answer. Finally Grímur said, “Sometimes tourists who’ve read some of the Flatey Book come here and want to find out about the making and history of the manuscript.”

  “And who’s the person who can tell them about it?” Kjartan asked.

  “Various people here and there,” said Grímur. “Most of the islanders can recount some of the sagas if they’re asked. Sigurbjörn in Svalbard is pretty well read and often quotes the book, although Reverend Hannes speaks better Danish and talks to the foreigners.”

  As the men were chatting to each other, Jóhanna slipped out of her plastic coat and packed it back into her bag. Then she took Kjartan’s notes.

  “I’ll copy these and bring them back to you tomorrow,” she said before walking away without saying good-bye.

  Thormódur Krákur turned the key in the lock of the church door and then vigorously shook the handle to convince himself that the door was definitely locked.

  “No one goes in here without me, and no one goes out except in God’s name,” he said, drawing a cross in front of the door with his hand before sticking the key into his pocket. “Isn’t that enough for this evening then, District Officer?”

  “Yes. Thanks for all your help,” said Grímur.

  The deacon grabbed the cart and pushed it down the slope, allowing it to roll in front of him until he reached level ground, and then he turned it around again. He paused a moment and started to spin, first making three clockwise circles and then making three counte
rclockwise ones, blessing himself after each circle. Then, dragging the cart behind him, he headed home.

  “He doesn’t want any impure spirits to follow him home to his cottage tonight,” Högni said with a smile.

  “He’s a bit special and holds some unconventional beliefs,” Grímur explained to Kjartan.

  “He’s also a bit of a psychic,” Högni added.

  “In what way psychic?” Kjartan asked.

  Grímur answered: “Krákur can catch glimpses of the supernatural, although he’s useless when he’s really needed.” He smiled.

  “A normal medium wouldn’t have any problems communicating with that dead man in the box in there,” Högni added. “For example, there was a man from a farm in Kjálkafjördur who could never shut up at funerals. He was always talking to ghosts.”

  Kjartan forced an awkward smile. “I don’t expect the case to be solved that way,” he said. And then, just to change subject, he asked, “Does Thormódur Krákur live off his eiderdown work?”

  “Yes,” Grímur answered, “and the odd little job here and there. He has two cows and makes hay for them in the patch of field behind my land. He can sell the milk. He also works in the slaughterhouse in the autumn and has rights to collect eiderdown and eggs on some of the islets up here to the north. But he farms out those rights to others and gets eiderdown in return. He had a shock when he was young, and he’s been terrified of the sea ever since.” Grímur gazed at the church door. “Plus he’s incredibly superstitious,” he added.

  “What kind of shock?” Kjartan asked.

  “Krákur was reared by a farmer on the island,” Grímur answered, “and was considered to be a bit of a wild one and a boozer, so the farmer decided to teach him a lesson one day when they were out at sea and sent him up a crag to knock out a seal pup. But they didn’t wait for the boy while he was doing it and went off to check on some nets. When they came back, the crag was submerged in water and the sea came right up to the boy’s chin where he was standing on the rock.”