The Flatey Enigma

by Ingolfsson, Viktor Arnar

  “Still raining,” she said.

  Grímur looked at the weather. “Someone once said don’t wish for rainfall if you don’t like getting your feet wet. The fields were getting pretty dry and the wells were low.”

  “I still need to learn that all weather serves its purpose,” said Jóhanna.

  They stood there in silence until Thórólfur came out and told Jóhanna that the interview could resume. She took a deep breath and walked back in.

  Thórólfur asked Grímur to look for Kjartan, the magistrate’s assistant, and to summon him for the final interview. Then he went back into the classroom and sat opposite Jóhanna.

  “We just got a message from Reykjavik,” he said. “We sent them a list of all the people who were on the island and compared it with a list of all the names that cropped up in their investigation into Bryngeir down south, and it turns out that your name pops up.”

  “That’s not unlikely.”

  “When did you first meet Bryngeir?”

  “In my second year at high school.”

  “How did you meet?”

  Jóhanna thought a moment and finally said, “I wrote an essay about the Tale of Sarcastic Halli in the Flatey Book. I sometimes used the Flatey Book as assignment material in high school when I was lazy. I knew the material so well, having listened to my father’s countless lectures about it in five different languages over the years, so I could write pretty good essays on the subject quite fast. I got good grades for this assignment, and it appeared in the school magazine. Bryngeir was taking his finals that year and was really into Icelandic philology. He was reading the printed edition of the Flatey Book every night at the time and felt the urge to meet me after reading my essay. I wasn’t enthusiastic about it because I was engaged to Einar Fridriksson, whom I mentioned earlier. I’d met Einar in Copenhagen when I was fifteen years old and he was seventeen. We were good friends back then and later developed a crush on each other when we got a bit older. His parents were studying and working in Denmark. As I told you, they moved back to Iceland at the same time as my dad and I did. At that time Einar was in his last year at the high school, in the same class as Bryngeir.”

  “You mentioned he died?”

  “Yes, he died in a horrible accident.”

  “What happened?”

  “Einar was invited to join a weird students’ cultural club called the Jomsviking Society. It was a semi-secret club for snobby, vain young men. New members were initiated into the society through some ridiculous ritual, and there was a terrible accident at it and Einar died.”

  “What kind of accident?”

  “The initiation involved a reenactment of the execution of the Jomsvikings after their defeat in battle against Earl Hákon. The members acted out the scene from the saga, reciting the dialogue between the Jomsvikings and the earl’s men like in a play. The initiate had to kneel under a sword, which was then dropped. Naturally, he was supposed to move his head out of the way at the last second, just like Sveinn Búason did in the story. It was a perfectly harmless game, even though the sword was sharp and heavy. On this occasion, however, they were unusually drunk. Something went wrong, and the sword landed on Einar’s head.”

  “Who was it that swung the sword?” Thórólfur asked.

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Yes, but I want to hear it from you.”

  Jóhanna stared at the policeman for a long moment without betraying any emotion and then finally said, “It was Kjartan, the magistrate’s assistant in Patreksfjördur.”

  Thórólfur broke into a numb smile. “Yes, it was Kjartan, and he was convicted of manslaughter and spent a few years in prison. It must have been a tough experience for him to meet you here again. The man who killed your boyfriend?”

  Jóhanna sank into a long silence.

  “Yes, it was difficult, but not in the way you imagine,” she finally said.

  “In what way then?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I love long stories.”

  “Very well then, you’ll get a long story. I was devastated when Einar died. He was a particularly bright and good young man. I’m not just saying that because of our teenage romance. Now that I’m an adult I can still recall our time together and our nightlong conversations. I’ve missed him every day since I lost him.”

  Jóhanna fell into a long silence and didn’t continue with her story again until Thórólfur signaled her to do so with a faint nod.

  “Anyway, there was a funeral and a police investigation and finally a court case, and Kjartan was convicted. It gave me some outlet to be able to hate him, and I was pleased when he got his prison sentence. Of course, my studies went down the drain during that period, but I still managed to drag myself to school most days. It was then that Bryngeir took it upon himself to console me. I found him to be more considerate than I’d initially expected, and I was vulnerable to someone who seemed to really care for me. I got little support from my father at that time. The only job he could get was teaching in a secondary school, which of course was a total waste of his education and talents, so he got depressed and drank a lot. Bryngeir passed his school exams and started studying literature at university in the fall. I continued in the high school and we became an item that winter. Then we rented a small basement apartment in the west of Reykjavik and started living together. It lasted for four years and almost finished me off before it ended.”

  “How’s that?” Thórólfur asked.

  “After I moved in with Bryngeir, he soon started to control my life every minute of the day. I had to be at school during school hours and focus on nothing else but my homework and domestic chores when he didn’t need me for sex or whatever else popped into his mind. I wasn’t allowed to meet anyone else unless he was present. I wasn’t allowed to hold any opinions unless he approved them. I couldn’t make any decision regarding my life without him having the last word on it. When I got my high school exams, he decided I should study medicine because I was good at studying and it would be a good source of income for the home once I’d become a brain surgeon. He never laid a finger on me, but he could play me like a musical instrument with his words. With just a few sentences he could make me feel like I was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and then with a few extra words he sent me crashing into hell again. The latter tended to be the norm, because he drank a lot, made a mess of our finances, and blamed me for every misfortune. All of a sudden the strings of the instrument snapped, and I had a nervous breakdown in the middle of a class in my second year at med school. I was taken to hospital and put into the psychiatric ward. An unusually perceptive psychologist realized what the situation was in our very first session and made me realize the relationship was life-threatening. I went straight home to Dad from the hospital. He shook himself out of his self-pity and started to take care of me. Bryngeir tried everything to win me back again, but I had regained my senses after four years of unconsciousness. Finally, after many weeks, he seemed to accept that our relationship was over and allowed me into the house to collect my clothes and textbooks. Naturally, I was slightly wary of him because he had threatened me with all kinds of awful things, but I was sure he wouldn’t lay a finger on me and thought that I was by now immune to him hurting me with his words, after my therapy with the psychologist. I therefore went to the meeting on my own. That was a big mistake.”

  Jóhanna picked up a glass of water, lifted it to her lips, and held it there for a long moment without drinking. Finally, she took a small sip and carefully put the glass down again.

  “When I’d finished packing my things into the case and was on my way out, Bryngeir asked me to hang on a moment and talk to him. He said he wanted to tell me about when he saw me for the first time. He’d read my article about the ambiguous Sarcastic Halli in the school magazine, as I’ve already mentioned. It was some kind of sexual turn-on for him to think that an eighteen-year-old high school girl could have written a text like that. He tracked me down at the
school and decided on first sight that I had to be his. The fact that I had a boyfriend spoiled his plans a bit, but he found a way around it. He saw to it that Einar was invited to join the Jomsviking Society, and when the initiation meeting came up, he gave out loads of alcohol. So the kids were all extremely drunk by the time it was Einar’s turn to kneel under the sword. Bryngeir waited, prepared, behind his back, and just as Einar was about to dodge the swing of Kjartan’s sword, as was the tradition, Bryngeir kneed him and pushed him back under the blow. Einar died instantly, and the second half of the plan with me was easy once the boyfriend was no longer in the way. This is something Bryngeir just wanted to tell me for the fun of it, as a farewell gift, and even though I thought I was ready for anything, I couldn’t handle it. I tried going to the police, but I was just being hysterical in their opinion, and Bryngeir convinced them that I was just trying to wreak revenge on him for having broken up our relationship. It was his word against mine, and he was always very persuasive with everyone he was talking to. I should probably count myself lucky that I wasn’t charged and convicted for perjury. I can’t describe how I felt after that. Every single memory of our four-year relationship felt like a hideous rape. I went back to the psychologist again, and through years of therapy, he managed to teach me a way to free myself of the torment. The wound is obviously still there, but I don’t allow it to take a grip on me anymore and ruin my life.”

  Jóhanna sank into a brief silence, took another sip of water, and then continued without looking at the policemen: “The strange thing is that I continued studying medicine. Bryngeir was right about one thing. It was easy for me to learn this profession, and one of the ways I found for clearing my mind was to totally immerse myself in my studies. But I was no longer studying to be a brain surgeon and studied psychiatry instead.”

  Jóhanna was quiet again and stooped over the table. Finally she continued: “A few years after I broke up with Bryngeir, my father applied for a post at the university. When they decided to give him the job and notified him, the devil spotted yet one more opportunity. Bryngeir had been kicked out of university early on and fancied himself as some kind of journalist. I had, of course, told him everything about my father when we lived together, and he wrote a very twisted article about Dad’s abrupt departure from the Arnamagnæan Institute. It was then felt that it was undesirable for an old Nazi sympathizer to be teaching at the university, and the offer of the post was withdrawn. My father saw the last opportunity of a lifetime vanish into thin air. He drank relentlessly for half a year and eventually ended up in an asylum for the chronically medically ill.”

  Jóhanna signaled that her story was over.

  “But what’s a psychiatrist doing working as a local doctor all the way out here?” Lúkas asked.

  “By the time I’d finished my postgrad, my father had been diagnosed with incurable cancer. I wanted to nurse him myself, but also had to work to cover our living expenses. I therefore decided to apply for the first easygoing local doctor post that became available. By sheer coincidence it happened to be here in Flatey, and that suited us down to the ground. I’d never been here before and never imagined that this place would somehow be connected to my life through the Flatey Book. We’ve been comfortable here. I’m good at my job, and I was able to give my father the medication that kept him in a reasonable mental balance. As the cancer spread, he also had to follow a precise palliative treatment. He welcomed death in the end.”

  “How did you react when you met Bryngeir here?”

  “I didn’t meet him and had no idea that he was here until District Officer Grímur asked me to come to the churchyard to examine the body. I was quite surprised.”

  “Quite surprised?”

  “Yes. Bryngeir had always been fascinated by this ancient tradition of carving blood eagles on the backs of one’s enemies. I thought it was an odd coincidence to see him in that state.”

  “So you were familiar with wounds of this kind?”

  “I’d never seen them before, but the descriptions in the Flatey Book stood out in my memory. It was pretty clear what had happened.”

  “A witness claims that Bryngeir intended to visit you the night before he was murdered.”

  “He didn’t. I actually wasn’t at home, so I don’t know if he tried to get into the house.”

  “Where were you that night?”

  “I went out for a walk and went to the library to read.”

  “Did you meet anyone there?”

  “Kjartan came by.”

  “How long were you in there?”

  “Quite a long time. Until the early hours of the morning, actually.”

  “That long? What were you both doing?”

  “I told Kjartan about the Flatey Book.”

  Grímur stuck his head into the classroom.

  “Sorry, Thórólfur, but I can’t find the magistrate’s envoy.”

  “You can’t find the magistrate’s envoy?” Thórólfur snapped in a temper.

  “No, he seems to have vanished,” Grímur answered, bewildered. “I’ve been to most of the houses and sent messages to the others.”

  “Did you go into the doctor’s house?” Thórólfur asked.

  “Yes, but there was no one there.”

  Thórólfur turned to Jóhanna. “Do you know anything about Kjartan?”

  “Yes, he visited me this morning and I invited him to take a hot bath. There’s a bathtub in the house, the only one on the island. He then had a lie-down. This whole case has become a bit too much for him and he had problems sleeping. He managed to fall asleep, and he was still asleep when Högni collected me earlier. I couldn’t bring myself to wake him up. He must have woken up and gone somewhere.”

  Thórólfur eyed her with suspicion. “I hope you haven’t done anything to him.”

  She suddenly stood up. “Is this how this is going to continue? Do you think I tied him to a pole, maybe, and ripped out his intestines or something like that?”

  She marched to the door.

  Thórólfur signaled Lúkas to follow her and then looked at Grímur. “What did she mean?”

  Grímur shrugged. “She might be referring to the killing of Ásbjörn Prúdi.”

  “The killing of who?”

  “It’s in the Flatey Book.”

  “That bloody book again? How is this murder described?”

  Grímur thought about it. “I don’t know the whole book off by heart like my friend Sigurbjörn does, but let me see. I browsed through it not so long ago. Ásbjörn, Virfill’s good son, ended up in the hands of Brúsi the giant. Brúsi opened Ásbjörn’s belly, grabbed his intestines, and tied them to an iron pole. Then he led Ásbjörn in circles around the pole until all his guts were wrapped around it. While this was going on, Ásbjörn recited many long poems. Finally he died with great honor and valiance. Later Ormur Stórólfsson killed Brúsi the giant and carved a blood eagle on his back, but you know all about that now.”

  Grímur ended his speech and shrugged again. Thórólfur shook his head. “I just hope the magistrate’s envoy still has all his intestines inside him.”

  Question thirty-four: The most mutilated but healed. Second letter. Following the death of holy King Ólaf, there were many stories of miracles that were attributed to him being invoked, and the priests who wrote the Flatey Book conscientiously collected them. The most mutilated man was Richard the priest. Einar and his servant broke his legs and dragged him into the woods. Then they wrapped some rope around his head and tightly tied his head and torso to a board. Einar then took a wedge and placed it on the priest’s eye, and the servant who stood beside him struck upon it with an axe, causing the eye to fly out of its socket and land on the board. He then placed a pin on the other eye and struck it so that the wedge sprang off the eyeballs and tore the eyelid loose. They then opened his mouth, grabbed his tongue, and sliced it off, and then untied his hands and head. As soon as the priest regained consciousness, he slipped the eyeballs back into their place under the
eyelids and pressed them with both hands as hard as he could. The men then asked the priest if he could talk. The priest made a noise and attempted to speak. Then Einar said to his brother, “If he recovers and the stump of his tongue starts to grow, I’m afraid he will get his speech back again.” Thereupon they seized the stump with a pair of tongs, drew it out, cut it twice, and the third time to the very roots, and left him lying there half dead. It had taken a lot of power to heal those wounds, but thanks to the intercession of the good King Ólaf, the priest was restored to full health, even though he had been so badly mutilated. The answer is “Richard the priest,” and the second letter is i.

  CHAPTER 51

  At four o’clock that afternoon, Gudjón and Högni finished making a casket for Björn Snorri Thorvald. It lay on two trestles in the small workshop behind the Radagerdi farm, ready to be transported to the doctor’s house. The two carpenters scrutinized their work as they brushed the sawdust and shavings off their clothing. Högni snorted some snuff, and Gudjón lit a cigarette. It was a fairly rudimentary casket made of smoothened unpainted pine planks with a brass cross on the lid, precisely as the deceased had prescribed. Björn Snorri had talked it over with Gudjón several months earlier and, in fact, had asked him to get working on it straightaway, but Gudjón wouldn’t hear of it. He could make a decent casket for his neighbor if it was needed, but it would be out of the question to start making it before the person in question was definitely dead. Anything else would have been inappropriate and disrespectful to the Lord.

  It was still raining, but it was warm when Thormódur Krákur arrived in his Sunday attire, towing his handcart. The three men carried the casket out of the workshop and placed it on the cart. Then they walked across the island pulling the cart behind them.