‘They’ll be flying back shortly,’ Ulrik announced. ‘As far as I can gather, they need to pick up some equipment before setting up a camp out here, so they can examine the entire crevasse right down to the bottom. The police will guard the iceman tonight to make sure nothing happens to him. The archaeologists aren’t allowed to move him until our people have examined him, but they’ve been given permission to put up a protective tent around him. They say he needs stabilising. I don’t know why—he seems perfectly stable to me. When I pulled him out, he was stiff as a board.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘I can’t imagine that lying in the sun will do him much good after all those years down in the cold, but he can’t get any more dead, can he?’
‘So will you be sleeping here?’ Malik teased him. ‘Next to the dead man?’
‘I don’t know if it will be me. Not that it matters.’
Malik gave a light shrug. ‘Rather you than me.’
‘Why?’ Matthew frowned. ‘Could you freeze to death out here?’
‘Easily,’ Malik said. He looked down. ‘But I was thinking more about the spirits. They hate being disturbed. If he’s been lying dead down there for all those centuries, many spirits will be attached to him…And they won’t be the nice ones. They’re from underground.’
Ulrik rolled his eyes. ‘Ignore him. There are as many spirits out here as there are musk oxen.’
‘A stray one might turn up looking for food,’ Malik objected.
Ulrik threw up his hands in disbelief. ‘There are no spirits or musk oxen on the ice cap!’
‘It’s full of spirits and demons underground,’ Malik insisted. ‘I’ve seen them myself.’
‘When you play your drum?’
‘Before I play my drum, obviously.’
‘It’s a part of our culture, and it’s beautiful,’ Ulrik told Matthew. ‘But personally I don’t believe any of that stuff. It makes no sense that the bedrock is full of spirits, and that we can use them against our enemies by carving little tupilak figures—but hey, each to his own.’
‘Well, let’s see if you survive the night,’ Malik said with a broad grin. ‘I could always come out here and play my drum for you, if you want me to? I could be back before it gets dark.’
‘Oh no, I’m not having you getting under my feet out here. And I don’t think I’ll be the one staying anyway.’ Ulrik clapped his hands. ‘Right, why don’t we take a quick look at the discovery before the others decide they’re ready to fly back to Nuuk?’ He nodded towards the group by the helicopter.
It took Malik only seconds to reach the brown bundle on the scarred surface of the ice cap. Matthew approached more slowly with Ulrik. They couldn’t see very much of the dead man, but his face and feet were, as Ulrik had said, free from the stiff brown and yellow fur wrapped around him. It was impossible to tell whether the fur had been rolled around his body or whether he had pulled it tight around himself, but they guessed that he was naked beneath it, given that the feet and lower legs sticking out from it were bare. The fur itself seemed fossilised, almost like bronzed turf, the individual hairs having merged over time into a solid mass. The skin on the man’s face had shrunk around his skull, and his eyes were long gone. All that remained were two deep hollows in the shrivelled, leathery skin, while his beard still bristled over his chin and halfway up the empty pouches of his cheeks. It was impossible to say whether he had been blond or red-haired, but his hair was definitely not black, and his facial features were far more Nordic than Inuit, so the theory that he was a Norseman seemed solid.
Malik bent over the mummified body with his camera, trying to capture every macabre detail. ‘He looks like a tupilak with that demon face.’
The iceman’s lips were nothing but two thin lines that had dried up and then pulled away from his jaw. It looked like he had died while grinning—a hysterical, angry grin, which had bared his teeth and torn his lips free from his face.
‘Does it get dark out here at night?’ Matthew asked.
Ulrik and Malik both looked at him. ‘Not really,’ Ulrik said. ‘The snow lights up everything, and the sun isn’t completely gone for very long at this time of the year.’
Matthew nodded. The snow. He had forgotten about that. Even so, he’d rather not sleep out here next to the dead man, no matter how light the night.
Malik had lain down flat on the ice to get a good shot of the iceman’s shrivelled feet. He glanced over his shoulder. ‘This is pure beef jerky, this is. Yuck, it’s gross.’ Then he smiled at Matthew, a mischievous look on his face. ‘What those feet need is some whale blubber to make them baby-soft again.’
Matthew heaved a sigh and shook his head at his photographer, then headed back to the helicopter.
He stopped when he reached the archaeologists. ‘Excuse me. Which one of you is from the museum?’
‘I am,’ said a middle-aged man of medium build.
Matthew couldn’t decide whether he looked more Danish or Greenlandic. Not that it mattered. Genetically, Scandinavians and Inuit had been well and truly mixed up over several centuries.
‘Can I ask you a question about the discovery?’
‘Yes, of course. This find will give us a great deal to talk about.’ The man raked his fingers through a dense, greying beard. ‘There’s every sign that this is a unique discovery.’
‘Yes, that was my question. Just how unusual is it?’
The man straightened his back. ‘As far as I’m aware, no one has ever found a mummified Norseman from the Viking age. Bog finds and skeletons, yes, but none mummified, and that’s crucial, because his skin, bones and possibly his stomach contents will have been extremely well preserved.’ He paused, but Matthew could see he had more to say. ‘Have you heard of Ötzi from the Tyrol? That’s how important this discovery could be. The mummy might be a valuable source of knowledge once we open him up. But we need to proceed carefully or vital evidence could be lost. This is an exceptional discovery for Scandinavia, and possibly for the world.’
‘So you’re sure that he’s a Norseman from a Viking settlement in West Greenland?’
‘I find it hard to believe otherwise. We haven’t collected samples for analysis yet—we need to wait for the police technicians—but I’d expect all our assumptions and theories to be confirmed in due course.’
‘You compared him to Ötzi just now—is that because there might be some dramatic reason that he ended up all alone in the crevasse?’
‘You’re thinking murder, or death in battle?’
‘Yes, something like that.’
‘I haven’t seen any marks on him yet, but we definitely can’t rule it out. We know that the Norsemen disappeared completely from their many settlements after living here for about four hundred years, so something drastic must have happened. If this man lived during the Norsemen’s last days in Greenland, then injuries from weapons or the contents of his stomach could certainly help explain their fate.’
‘So he might have been killed?’
‘Yes, he might easily have been killed.’
The sun was still high over the Atlantic when Matthew got back to his apartment. Both he and Malik had headed straight home from the airport to work undisturbed. They had agreed to meet early the next morning, so they could upload Matthew’s story and Malik’s photographs to Sermitsiaq’s website.
As Matthew began writing, he felt his skin tingle. It was a long time since he’d last experienced that sensation. It reminded him of the time he got top marks in his final exams, and when Tine had told him she was pregnant. A sense of being untouchably alive. The feeling was coming back to him now—not as strongly, but it was close. Before noon tomorrow, much of the world would have read his story, or heard about the discovery because of it.
THE RESURRECTION OF THE LAST VIKING—A more than 600-year-old Norse Viking emerged from the Greenlandic ice cap this week. His fair hair and a worn reindeer skin were all he had with him after a journey of several centuries. According to archaeologists, the mummified man is in s
uch good condition that he will provide them with crucial information about the lives of the Vikings, and also, more importantly, may help them understand why the Norsemen disappeared from Greenland after having lived there for over four hundred years. Was it war, famine or the harsh conditions that drove them back to more densely populated areas of Scandinavia? And what about the Norsemen who reached North America?
As soon as he had emailed his story to his editor, Matthew shut the lid of his laptop and flopped back on the sofa. He reached for a plate of crispbread topped with thin sheets of chocolate that he’d prepared before sitting down to write.
Crispbread was one of Tine’s things, preferably served with a thick layer of butter and thin sheets of milk chocolate. During the early years of their relationship they would often go bike riding, and Tine would always pack crispbread for their trips. A white manor house had been a favourite destination. They would cycle along a path through the forest and picnic at the far end of the park. Tine rode a green bicycle with a white basket at the front where she kept the crispbread and bottles of water.
The crispbread crunched in his mouth. Dry, soft and sweet. He wished he could tell Tine that he loved her. Properly. Intimacy and openness had never been his strong suit.
6
NUUK, 9 AUGUST 2014
The wind had changed direction overnight and dense fog had settled over Nuuk in the morning hours. Visibility was down to ten metres. Everything was swallowed up by this grey North Atlantic blanket, whose moist breath licked the houses and the mountains and caused everything to run together in a foggy, cold cloud.
Everything was obscured. Erased. Even the sea and the mountains Matthew could normally see from his flat. He inhaled the smoke from his cigarette deep into his lungs and let it take effect for a few seconds before releasing it into the fog.
When he first arrived in Nuuk, he’d imagined that he would just find himself a place to live. No private rentals had been available, but a company had offered him one of their apartments. It was on the second floor of a grey and yellow block with huge windows. Several items of furniture had been left behind, and he’d quickly decided to stay there as the place had everything he needed and more. There were two bedrooms and a living room with wonderful views over southern Nuuk, the sea and some distant mountains, and it was only a five-minute walk from the city centre.
He flicked away his cigarette butt and watched it fall towards the street, then he took a step back and closed the balcony door before returning to his bed.
He picked up his iPhone from the floor beside him and checked the time. It was only seven-thirty here, but eleven-thirty back home in Denmark. Home. Nuuk was his home now. He had taken the job with Sermitsiaq for an indefinite period of time because he had nothing to go home to. He opened his mailbox and skimmed the new emails. He had sent his story to his editor late last night so it could be uploaded early the next morning, once it had been edited.
The reply from his editor was short and to the point:
Great work, Matthew. I’ve only changed a few minor things. Get it translated today, upload both the Danish and the Greenlandic version, and don’t forget that I also want it uploaded in English today, so we can send links across the world. Tell me you got some good pictures? Please report back when it’s online, then I’ll take a look at it and send links to the major news agencies.
Matthew opened the edited document and carefully went through the text twice to make sure he hadn’t overlooked anything, then he saved the new version and emailed it to the Greenlandic translator.
Then, with some reluctance, he untangled himself from the bedclothes a second time and sat up on the edge of the bed. He reached for his jeans and pulled them on, before going to the bathroom.
The man in the mirror looked exhausted. Pale, skinny and haggard. Coming to Nuuk hadn’t put much colour in his cheeks, although the air here was clear and pure like nothing he had ever known. The problem was that he didn’t spend enough time outside in it. His cheeks and chin were covered by a fine layer of reddish-blond stubble. He turned his head slightly and craned his neck to examine the stubble under his chin.
Some days his eyes were slate-blue, other days more green, and others again just grey. It depended on the weather, but he had noticed that they were blue more often in Nuuk than at home. He had never seen the blue in his eyes in Denmark in quite the same way. Close to his left pupil was a black dot, which made it look as if his eye had two pupils. He had never seen a doctor about it because his mother had told him that his father’s eyes had been the same—it was nothing but a pigmentation error. Tine had called it an extra well in his eye. A place to hide his thoughts.
He had trouble hiding from his thoughts—couldn’t hide from them anywhere—but since he’d come to Nuuk, they seemed to come together more easily. He’d started to feel like a human being again, for the first time since the accident. Or something close to human, anyway. He still had trouble sleeping, but it wasn’t as bad as it used to be. Last night he’d managed five hours in total, which only six months ago would have been impossible due to the pain in his neck and the gloomy thoughts that refused to leave him alone for more than a few minutes. All that remained were the violent nightmares, some occasional pain and night sweats.
The sound of angry knocking roused him.
‘Coming,’ he called out and made his way to the front door. ‘Malik! What—’
‘I’ve been burgled.’
‘Eh? What are you talking about?’
‘My studio has been burgled. Everything is gone. The whole bloody lot!’
‘Come in,’ Matthew said. ‘God, I’m so sorry to hear that. I didn’t even know that you had a studio.’
An agitated Malik pushed past him and flopped down on the sofa. ‘They’ve taken everything. All of it. My camera, computer… Everything.’
‘How is that possible? I thought you kept your gear at home?’
‘I do, but I spent the night with my girlfriend, and when I came home this morning…Bang. Gone.’
‘Are you insured? I know that’s not the point, but having the money for new equipment would be a start.’
‘Yes, yes, everything’s insured. What I want to know is why it was stolen in the first place. They also took all my USB sticks and every single memory card I had lying around. Why would anyone do that?’
Matthew shrugged. ‘Have you spoken to the police?’
Malik dismissed the suggestion with a wave of his hand. ‘Not yet. Listen to me, Matt, you can’t sell stolen goods in Nuuk. Everyone would know it was my camera and my computer, so to get rid of it you’d have to leave town, which means sailing or flying, and you’d have to go a bloody long way to find somebody who doesn’t know that stuff belongs to me. Forget it. I’ll never see it again.’
‘But why would someone take it if they can’t sell it? I don’t understand.’
‘Neither do I. It makes no sense.’
‘And the pictures really are gone?’
‘Yes, it’s all gone. My camera, my computer, my memory cards, photos. Everything.’
‘Shit! The story’s going up today.’ Matthew slowly slid his hands over his face. ‘I’ll call the editor—there might be time for us to return to the ice and take some new pictures. And you need to call the police to report the theft.’
‘Okay,’ Malik said. ‘Let’s just get going. I’ll stop off at the police station later.’
7
With a heavy drone from its whirring rotor, the Bell Huey helicopter from Air Greenland chopped its way to the edge of the ice cap.
Apart from the pilot, the passengers were the same four archaeologists, Malik, Matthew and Officer Ottesen, who would be replacing Officer Aqqalu, who had been guarding the mummy overnight. Matthew was sitting on the starboard side of the angular helicopter body, and he could feel the sun roast him through the large, square windows.
Grey-black mountains glided past underneath them in long, serrated, undulating rows. There were still several l
arge patches of snow hiding in the darkness and cold of a gorge, while in other places the mountains were covered by green summer growth. The sea was a brilliant bright blue, speckled with white and turquoise growlers that had broken off the edge of the ice cap at the heart of the fjord.
The helicopter banked to the right, and Matthew’s gaze was drawn down towards the shimmering surface of the sea.
‘Do you see those two traces in the water right there?’ Malik exclaimed, pointing.
‘Where there’s a little bit of foam?’
‘Yes, that’s it.’ Malik nodded enthusiastically. ‘Two whales just came up for air. Humpbacks, I think. They had broad, speckled tails.’
‘So they won’t be coming back up for a while—is that what you’re saying?’
‘No, I think they’ll reappear a little further down, in the direction of the foam. There aren’t any boats around to disturb them.’
The sea turned into sky when the helicopter straightened up. Then mountains and sea once more. They had followed the arm of the fjord most of the way, but now they changed course and were flying across a broad expanse of dark mountains. In front of them the patches of ice grew bigger and more frequent, and the bright white light from the ice cap began to intensify.
‘Did you know that the ice cap is bigger than France and the UK together?’ Matthew said, without taking his eyes off the window in the side door.
‘Really?’ Malik said. ‘No, I’ve never heard that.’ He had a camera borrowed from the newspaper around his neck.
Matthew turned his attention to the museum curator. ‘Do you have more information about the guy who was found? The Norseman?’
The man shook his head. ‘No, sadly. We still don’t know if he’s a Norseman, but I fail to see how he couldn’t be. When you find a naked, mummified Scandinavian wrapped in reindeer skin at the very edge of the ice cap, what else could it be?’
The Girl without Skin Page 3