The Flatey Enigma

by Ingolfsson, Viktor Arnar

  CHAPTER 35

  After dinner Kjartan strolled out onto the embankment in front of the district officer’s house. He liked feeling the breeze on his face and decided to go on a walk to the east of the island. The village had sunk into tranquility, and he passed no one but a curious calf roaming between the houses. Walking past the island store, he heard a radio through a window. A short while later he had reached Innstibaer. He felt he was being watched from the window of a house, but he avoided looking back. His mind was busy connecting the few threads linked to the disappearance of Gaston Lund. Even the women in Innstibaer. But right now he wanted to forget, and he walked across the island in a determined stride. The track meandered up to a reef that dropped onto the sea, and he saw some puffins perched on top of the rock. He carried on walking and soon stood on the shore on the innermost part of the island. The village had vanished behind him, but to the east of the strait he could make out the houses of the nearby islands in the evening sun. Far behind them the sky had darkened with clouds of rain.

  Kjartan enjoyed the view for a brief moment, but then he turned to walk back along the island’s southern shore. He spotted eider ducks flying from their nests along the trail here and there and then the arctic terns spiraling over him. He snapped an old twig of northern dock and dangled it over his head as he crossed the densest swarm of terns. It was low tide, and mud flats protruded between the small islets to the south of Flatey. Shorebirds he was unfamiliar with were feeding there. A sheep with two lambs used the opportunity to stroll over the shallows to the grassy isle on the other side of a narrow strait. Kjartan wanted to continue walking out to the little isles to the south of the inhabited island but decided to do so later. It was getting late and rainy.

  As he walked along the shore right to the south of the church, he saw a faint light glowing in the library window. Intrigued, he decided to peep in to see if there was someone inside. If it was someone he didn’t want to talk to, he could always say that he saw the light and just thought that he’d forgotten to switch it off. Then he could leave.

  He walked up the field toward the building and knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” a female voice answered from within.

  The door creaked as he opened it and stepped inside.

  Dr. Jóhanna sat by the glass case containing the Munksgaard edition of the manuscript open in front of her. An oil lamp glowed on the wall above her. A small gas heater on the floor generated some cozy warmth.

  Kjartan hovered in the doorway and finally said, “I was in the church this morning when they announced that your father passed away. I’m very sorry.”

  She was slow to answer but finally said, “Thank you. My father was actually very ill, and he’d been longing to die for some time.”

  “I know, but it’s still sad to lose a father,” said Kjartan.

  “Yes, that’s certainly true. It leaves a vacuum, and maybe it’s harder than I expected. I came here this evening to take a look at the books he admired the most.”

  Kjartan looked around. “It’s not a big library,” he said.

  “No, but it’s served its purpose for a hundred and thirty years. The building is exactly 11.2 feet wide and 15.4 feet long, I’m told.”

  She was leafing through the manuscript again.

  “Are you reading the Flatey Book?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’m just perusing through it and jogging old memories. My father knew the original version of this manuscript more than most. The islanders take good care of their book, though, even if it’s just an imperfect copy. They normally keep it under this glass, but I’ve been given permission to browse through it.”

  Kjartan drew closer and looked at the book. “Can you read that text?” he asked.

  “Yes, most of it.”

  “Where did you learn that?”

  “My father taught me, indirectly.”

  “How do you mean, indirectly?”

  “It might strike some people as odd, but it seemed perfectly logical to me at the time. My mother died when I was six, and after that I was brought up by my father on his travels. We lived in Copenhagen when Dad was working on his research at the Arnamagnæan Institute and the Royal Library. He’d just completed his doctorate when my mother was diagnosed with the cancer that killed her within two years. My father and I were very close and couldn’t be parted from each other after that. Dad was withdrawn and didn’t mix much with other people unless he had to for his work. So we had few friends. I learned very early on that if I could sit quietly and behave, I could follow my father just about anywhere. He, therefore, never tried to find me a foster home. I didn’t even go to school until we moved back to Iceland after the war. Dad taught me everything I needed to learn and a lot more besides. It mightn’t have been on the national syllabus, but he often allowed me to decide what we read myself.”

  She smiled at the memory. “I also believe that children should be allowed to choose what they study. The subjects should be introduced to them, and then they should decide. I realize that that would mean that everyone would have to have a private tutor, of course, which wouldn’t be very economical.”

  Jóhanna smiled again and then continued: “My father traveled around the Nordic countries and Germany, delivering lectures about the Icelandic sagas at universities. I tagged along and sat in the corners of the lecture halls. I often read something I brought along with me or drew pictures or allowed myself to daydream about having friends and playmates. Naturally I longed for friends, but I never dared to tell my father that. I was too scared he would send me to boarding school so that I could mix with other girls. He sometimes mentioned that it might be a good idea, but I categorically refused. He was all I had after Mom died, and I didn’t dare to let go. I preferred to be with him on his trips and put up with sitting still in stuffy classrooms for hours on end.”

  Jóhanna mused in silence a moment and then continued: “Sometimes I listened to Dad when he was delivering his lectures. I also accompanied him when he was conducting his research at the library. That was on the same conditions. I was never to disturb him while he was working. The manuscript texts could be difficult to read, and he was used to reading them out loud and skimming the words with his finger. I often stood by his side, listening and following. That’s how I learned how to read the Gothic letters and understand the spelling and abbreviations.”

  Jóhanna stopped talking. Kjartan’s question had been answered.

  “That must have been an odd life,” he said.

  “Yes, but they were also very special times. I was only ten when the war broke out, and after that people just became preoccupied with themselves. No one gave much thought to a little foreign toddler of a girl following her dad around everywhere.”

  “Where were you during the war years?”

  “We carried on living in Copenhagen, and Dad continued on his research. After the Germans occupied Denmark, he continued his lecture tours to Germany. He was totally apolitical and completely indifferent to who happened to be in power, so long as he could pursue his studies. Researching the sagas and deciphering their mysteries was his only goal in life. There was a great deal of interest in Germanic philology in Germany at the time.”

  “Why did you move back here to Iceland?”

  “We were forced to. My father hadn’t realized that during the German occupation his Danish colleagues resented him traveling around Germany on lecture tours. He had such a poor grasp of what was actually going on around him that he didn’t realize that people’s attitude toward him was changing. He didn’t feel the need for friends. So long as he could find a group of university students who were willing to listen to him for part of the day, he was happy. It didn’t matter to him whether he spoke Icelandic, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, or German. And I tagged along and listened, too. But then the Germans lost the war, and the day they pulled out of Copenhagen my father’s world crumbled. He was fired from the Arnamagnæan Institute and was never allowed to set foot on the premises aga
in. The Royal Library was closed to him, too. His greatest treasure, the Flatey Book, had been taken away from him forever. He was driven back to Iceland and could count himself lucky that he got a teaching post in a secondary school.”

  “Did he need to have access to the original manuscript to able to continue his research? Couldn’t he have used a copy like this?” Kjartan asked, pointing at the book lying on the table in front of Jóhanna.

  “That’s a good question. Is this old vellum manuscript of any value? Everything it can say to us in the text has long been copied down, letter by letter, and even photographed, as you can see. The only thing that remains is the object itself, the vessel used to convey texts that have long reached their destinations. Why then are some people so obsessed with this ancient vellum manuscript?”

  She peered into Kjartan’s eyes, but he seemed unable to offer an answer. She provided one herself: “It’s because when we look at this book and pick it up, it brings us into direct contact with people who lived in the fourteenth century. We sense their presence in the manuscript’s aura. And that was the presence that my father needed to feel. I think there are very few people who can sense that contact. To other people, this is just manuscript number 1005 folio in the Royal Library.”

  “Have you seen this vellum manuscript?” Kjartan asked.

  “Yes, I have. I read practically every single page over my father’s shoulder.”

  “Did you sense this presence?”

  “Not in the way my father could, but it’s the most beautiful book I’ve ever set my eyes on. The glowing black letters on the light brown vellum are like endless strings of pearls. To me these illuminations are on a par with the most beautiful frescoes on the ceilings of majestic palaces. Unfortunately, these photographs are just a pale reflection of what they’re really like.”

  Jóhanna turned the pages in front of her. “When I look at these pages, I get the same feeling I get when I look at photographs of relatives and friends. It gives me some pleasure, but I’d rather meet them in person. Each page in the book is like an old friend you long to see again.”

  “Tell me about the Flatey Book,” he asked.

  She pondered a moment. “Do you want to hear the long story or the short one?” she finally asked.

  “The longer story if you have the time.”

  She gazed through the window where the sun was setting behind the mountains in the northwest and said in a soft voice, “I’ve got plenty of time now.”

  She then started to tell the story, talking relentlessly for hours. Kjartan listened intently, and they both became oblivious to the passage of time.

  Finally, the story ended, and Jóhanna silently leafed through the Munksgaard edition. Kjartan was also silent and pensive. Then he took out the sheet that Reverend Hannes had given him with Gaston Lund’s answers to the Flatey enigma.

  “Do you know the story of the Flatey enigma?” he asked.

  Jóhanna nodded. “I’ve read the questions. My father spent hours grappling with it.”

  “Was he able to solve the riddle?”

  “He’d figured out the key to the solution. I don’t know if anyone else got as far as he did, since living here gave him daily access to the clues in the library. He knew that the answers to the first thirty-nine questions were useless until the answer to the fortieth question was found. There was no other way of verifying the answers. He overexerted himself the night he unraveled the clue and collapsed by this table here. I found him really ill on the floor. Thormódur Krákur helped me to get him home on his cart. My father never got back on his feet to be able to complete the task after that, and he didn’t want me to finish it. His notes have been waiting here ever since.” Jóhanna pulled a ring binder off one of the shelves.

  “I’ve got a copy of the professor’s answers here,” Kjartan said. “Can you help me to understand the questions and answers?”

  “Yes, probably,” she said pensively. “I can try.”

  Jóhanna leafed through the Munksgaard book until she found the loose sheets with the Flatey enigma. She placed them to the side where she could see them and also took a sheet out of her father’s folder. Then she read out the questions one after another, checked the answers that her father had guessed, and looked up the relevant chapters in the Munksgaard book with her nimble fingers. She knew all these pages so well and found the right chapters in the bat of an eyelid. Running her finger over the text, she occasionally read a few lines out loud, but she generally just gave Kjartan an overview of what the chapter was about. Kjartan limited himself to a silent nod whenever Gaston Lund’s answers were the same as those of Björn Snorri, but otherwise he read out the alternative answer. In this manner they went though each of the forty questions, one after another…

  Question nineteen: Cannot be hidden from. First letter. Thormódur walked up to the cook and grabbed a haggis, broke it in two, and ate half. The cook said, “The king’s men have poor manners, and he wouldn’t be too happy about this if he knew what you were doing.”

  Thormódur answered, “We often act against the king’s wishes. Sometimes he knows it, sometimes he doesn’t.”

  The cook said, “It cannot be hidden from Christ.”

  “I guess not,” said Thormódur, “but if half a haggis is to be the only thing that stands between me and Christ, we would be quite satisfied.”

  The answer is “Christ,” and the first letter is c.

  CHAPTER 36

  Monday, June 6, 1960

  It was raining. The nocturnal eastern wind had subsided at dawn, but the downpour persisted as the islanders gathered for their morning chores. The sheep had taken shelter under the gables of the houses in the village during the night. Ewes lay about pensively chewing the cud, while the lambs slept off the troublesome night. The farmers examined the sky and forecast more of the same weather.

  Grímur had no nets in the sea and therefore took it easy for most of the morning. The nets had all been taken up before the day of the mass, so there was no hurry to go out to sea. The seal pups could play undisturbed on the furious surf by the skerries that day.

  Kjartan was upstairs in the loft and seemed to be sleeping. Grímur had gone to bed early the night before and had not heard the guest come in, although he saw his wet overcoat in the hall. Let him rest, the district officer thought to himself as he was drinking his morning coffee. He didn’t really know where the investigation was supposed to go from here. The most sensible thing was probably to request some assistance from Reykjavik.

  Ingibjörg sat in the living room, listening to music on the radio as she knitted a sock out of a ball of coarse wool. Högni popped by and accepted a cup of coffee, but then he headed home when Grímur told him their sea trip was on hold. It looked as if they were in for an uneventful day.

  Grímur went into the shed, milked the cows, and led them out to the field. There were three of them, two of which he owned himself and one which he fed for Sigurbjörn. In exchange the Svalbardi farmer housed a few sheep for him.

  Thormódur Krákur was busy doing something in front of his old barn. He started the day early and had obviously taken his cattle to the pastures ages ago. Grímur walked over to him and said hello.

  “What are you making there, Krákur?” he then asked.

  “Can’t you see? A new lid for the well. You’ve been hassling me about it for long enough,” Thormódur Krákur answered, brandishing his hammer. He was in a bad mood.

  Grímur examined the work. It was true that he’d told Thormódur Krákur several times that the lid to the well needed mending. The wood was starting to rot, and it could be hazardous to step on it. Thormódur Krákur had found material to make the lid from some boat wreckage lying on the southern shore.

  “That’ll make a great lid, Krákur, my friend,” said the district officer, but then he left when he realized that Thormódur Krákur wouldn’t be answering him.

  Grímur let the cows roam freely in the field while he was shoveling the dung channel, but th
en he led them to the pastures further out on the island. They were lazy in the wet weather and moved slowly. Little Rósa from Rádagerdi was also out with her father’s cows.

  “Grímur, Grímur,” she said breathlessly when they met. “Svenni says there’s a red angel in the churchyard. Do you think that’s true?”

  “There are certainly many angels in the churchyard, Rósa dear,” Grímur answered, “and who knows, some of them might be red.”

  “Yeah, but you can’t see them normally. Svenni says that you can see this one very clearly.”

  “When did little Svenni see this angel?”

  “Earlier on. He slipped into the churchyard to gather some tern eggs. I met him when he came running back. He was so petrified that he ran straight home. Maybe the angel appeared to stop Svenni stealing the eggs from the churchyard.”

  “Do you really think God would send an angel down to us just because someone was pilfering a few tern eggs in the corner of a garden?” Grímur asked.

  “The priest says we’re not allowed to take any eggs out of the churchyard. It’s sacred. You can’t even pick sheep sorrel there,” Rósa said gravely.

  They ushered the cows through the gate into the outer pastures and then closed it with a sliding hinge bar.

  “Off you go now, and eat well,” Grímur said to the cattle as he left.

  “Shall we go take a look at this angel, Grímur?” Rósa asked.

  Grímur smiled at her. “Sure, we can pass the churchyard on the way back, even if it’s raining a bit,” he said. “It’s not every day that you get a chance to meet a real angel.”