The Flatey Enigma (3 page)

For a brief moment the men focused on their meal until Ingibjörg reentered to place a bowl of soup in front of Kjartan.

“Here’s some leftovers from yesterday’s meat soup. I hope your stomach will find that more agreeable.”

Kjartan tasted the soup and preferred it to the seal meat.

Grímur spoke again: “There are about sixty of us on the island right now. But people are leaving. It’s mostly old folks that are left now. How many kids were there in the school this winter, Högni?”

Kjartan realized that the district officer knew exactly how many kids there were in the school and all their names, and that he undoubtedly knew more about their families than the kids did. The question had just been a ploy to draw the teacher into the conversation.

“There were fifteen, but many of them were from the inner islands,” Högni answered punctiliously.

“Then they’ll leave as soon as they can,” Grímur continued. “There isn’t much for youngsters to do around here the way things are right now. The catch is so meager, and the fish factory has never worked properly. Seventeen islands have been abandoned in this fjord over the past eighteen years, and now only eight of them are inhabited.”

“How come?” Kjartan asked.

“The reason is simply that we don’t have a sufficient workforce to be able to make full use of the resources this place has to offer. And young people are no longer content to be paid in food for their labor on the bigger farms. They want their wages in cash and to own their own houses. But Icelanders have yet to learn to appreciate these islands. With new farming equipment and good boats, there are many plots of land that could start yielding quite nicely here in the Western Isles, and that’s something that’ll happen with the coming generations. An area that can yield up to seventy pup seal furs every summer will always be considered to be a big asset in this country. The nation can’t afford to allow resources like this go to waste, my friend.”

Grímur looked at his plate and frowned. “The worst thing about this seal meat is that the fat cools off and hardens if you get carried away in conversation,” he said and stood up. “But all you have to do is stick the plate on the stove to liven it up a bit again.” He vanished into the kitchen with the plate in his hand.

Högni was full and stared inquisitively at Kjartan.

“Where are you from exactly?” he asked.

“I’m just from Reykjavik, from the east side,” Kjartan answered politely.

“On both sides of the family?”

“Yes, Reykjavik on both sides.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-two.”

“So you started studying law a bit late then?”

“Yes.”

“What delayed you? Lack of money, maybe?”

“You could say that.”

“So I guess you must have worked to finance your studies before you started then?”

“You could say that.”

“Where did you work?”

Kjartan hesitated before answering but was interrupted by Grímur, who returned with his plate and the melted fat simmering on the meat. “This is delicious,” he said, smacking his lips. “Doesn’t that soup go down nicely?” he asked Kjartan.

“Yes, thanks.”

“That’s good. You’re welcome to stay in our loft until you’ve finished your business here. My sweet Imba will make sure you don’t die of hunger.”

“…This miscellany of episodes and sagas was characteristic of Icelandic literature in the fourteenth century. The objective was to collect related material from various sources in one book, and to compile and join stories about the same kings with the aim of forming a precise narrative, which was, broadly speaking, chronological, even though the style could vary somewhat. The intention was more on collecting as much narrative material as possible than creating a structured whole. One could therefore say that the
Flatey Book
is slightly chaotic when compared to Snorri Sturluson’s
Chronicle of the Kings of Norway,
which deals with similar material. But thanks to this mania for collecting material, the
Flatey Book
contains many elements that cannot be found on vellum elsewhere, with countless episodes and verses. Ólaf Tryggvason’s saga is followed by Helgi’s saga, Sverrir Sigurdsson’s saga, Hákon the Elderly’s saga
,
and other tales. At the end of the book there is a set of annals that stretch from the origins of creation to the times in which the book was written…”

L
unch was now over in Flatey’s district officer’s home, and his wife placed a pot of coffee on the table. The men poured the boiling coffee into their empty glasses of water and snorted snuff. Kjartan also poured some coffee into his glass but declined Ingibjörg’s offer of sugar and milk. The men sipped the hot coffee, sighed, and burped.

“I met a guy once who told me that coffee was God’s gift to man to compensate for a long day’s work,” said Högni. “But I’ve always felt that there’s no need for the good Lord to compensate man for the privilege of being able to work for his livelihood. But a drop of coffee is invigorating, and thank God for that.”

Kjartan nodded approvingly.

“Now we’re ready for anything,” said Grímur, patting his potbelly and finishing the coffee in his glass. “Ghosts and specters won’t bother you if you’re on a full stomach,” he added.

Högni laughed and said, “We call this the district officer’s wisdom, and it’s completely unproven.”

Then they wandered outside, and the men grabbed two shovels from Grímur’s barn. Kjartan asked why.

“You don’t pick up a winter-old corpse with your bare hands. Not straight after lunch,” Grímur answered, wiping a film of manure off the blade of the shovel with a tuft of grass he pulled up by the barn wall.

Kjartan followed the men, who walked off with the shovels on their shoulders, down to the village and across to the pier. Högni pulled the boat to the ledge, and they stepped on board. Grímur untied the moorings, turned on the engine, and headed off to the west of the island.

The district officer pointed out the Flatey lighthouse to Kjartan on a skerry a short distance away, and the croft of Ystakot soon appeared to the west of the tip of the island, half buried in the slope, just above sea level. A small, fenced-off patch of garden had newly been dug, and several neat-looking beds of dark brown soil could be seen. A young boy sat watching them on a rock on the shore.

“That’s little Nonni,” said Grímur. “He’s just as peculiar as his dad and grandpa. He was in your school this winter, Högni, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, and the kid can learn, but he only wants to do one thing at a time. He could spend days on end hunched over just one page of a botany book and then wouldn’t talk about anything else. Then the next week it would be astronomy. He’s become reasonably literate, though, and he’s not bad at math either.”

Högni gazed back at the land and then continued: “Valdi, little Nonni’s dad, is also one hell of an eccentric. He’s always scribbling worthless notes into a copybook. Details about the weather, who comes or goes on the mail boat, who attended mass and who didn’t. And I think the old man, Jón Ferdinand, is going senile. He’s also half deaf. Valdi’s wife, Thóra, has given up on them all. She works as a cook for a team of roadworks men on the mainland and never comes home. She just sends them money to buy some milk for little Nonni and some clothes.”

Kjartan noticed that the boy was holding some glistening object to his eyes and that he watched their boat for a while until he suddenly stood up, ran to the croft, and disappeared inside.

Next the new pier and fish factory came into view. Three open motorboats were moored there, as well as a bigger boat with a pilot house. The smallest boat was black, and the others were painted white.

“Those fishing men haven’t been able to catch anything recently,” said Grímur. “They obviously didn’t feel like going out this morning.”

“They can’t afford the fuel,” said Högni. “I can’t imagine the co-op giving them more of an overdraft.”

“They should use their sail then,” said Grímur. “The Ystakot clan still know how to do it. They can raise the sail if they can’t afford the fuel for the engine. Their boat is that black one there. It’s called
Raven
.”

“Yeah, they sure know how to sail, those people,” said Högni. “Old Jón Ferdinand was one of the most reliable foremen in Breidafjördur when he was still at the top of his game in the olden days. There weren’t many who could steer sails better than he could. He could play ducks and drakes with those boats when the winds were good. They once sent him on a sailing boat to collect laborers in Króksfjardarnes. He had strong southeasterly winds in his sails on the way back and reached Flatey in only four hours. Even if the currents were with him, I don’t think there are many people would have been able to handle it the way he did.”

They soon reached Flatey’s outermost reef and started to sail south toward a cluster of barely visible islands in the distance.

Kjartan dreaded reaching their destination. He had seen a dead person before, but it remained an uncomfortable memory. The task that awaited them was probably even grimmer. He nevertheless tried to feign interest as Grímur pointed out landmarks to him on their way—islands, skerries, and mountains in the distance, as well as the Svefneyjar islands behind them and Mount Klofningur on the mainland ahead.

As they approached Ketilsey, a great black-backed gull flew up and squawked. The sea splashed against the rocks as seals plunged into the ocean.

“They have this agreement between them,” said Grímur. “The black-backed gull wakes up the seals when they’re sleeping on the reefs. In return he’ll get a good piece of the catch when the seal is fishing. His favorite part is the liver.”

“…When ancient tales were written down on sheets of vellum, they were just one of many versions. Prior to that they had been passed down orally or written into older manuscripts. Each generation told the tales in their own way. My father told me stories from this book like fairy tales when I was a child. Since then I’ve trained myself to recount my favorite stories in my own way…”

K
etilsey wasn’t a big island, but finding the body wasn’t easy. They had walked the full perimeter of its shore and then moved slightly higher. The district officer and the teacher were tired of searching.

“We should have taken Valdi with us and let him show us the spot,” said Högni.

Grímur had his doubts. “Then the old man would’ve had to come along and probably the boy, too. They’re practically inseparable.”

He took off his cap and wiped the sweat from his brow with a red snuff handkerchief.

“Didn’t the man say anything about where we should look?” Kjartan asked.

“No, damn it. I thought the corpse would just be lying there on the shore by the slip and that we would have been able to just follow the smell,” Grímur answered.

“Could he have floated back into the sea?” Kjartan asked.

Grímur shook his head. “No, the tide is neap and the waves have barely moved since those men were here.”

Högni glared at some of the black-backed gulls spiraling above them. “Do you think those bloody seagulls finished him off?” he asked.

Kjartan had almost given up on finding the body when he walked between some rocks. The green of the parka blended with the color of the patches of grass, and its hood was drawn over the skull so that only a portion of some bare facial bones were visible. Pants and shoes concealed the lower part of the body. A rotting stench lingered in the air, and a cluster of flies hovered above.

“He’s here,” Kjartan called out in a voice that he did not recognize as his own.

The men swiftly rushed to the scene, the district officer first.

“Not that I was expecting the smell to be pleasant,” Grímur said, coughing.

“So this is where he was all along,” Högni said in surprise, once he had examined the scene. “The sea must have been bloody wild this winter if it managed to chuck him all the way up here.”

“No way,” said Grímur. “There’s no wreckage up here. The nearest pieces of driftwood and seaweed are thirty fathoms below.”

Högni was taken aback. “Could it be that…” His voice trailed off.

Grímur looked around. “Yeah, he must have had some life left in him when he reached this island.”

He scrutinized the man’s body for a brief moment and then started to walk and look around.

“Look,” he called out. Högni and Kjartan looked in the direction he was pointing.

It was a slanted crag against which several pieces of driftwood had been diagonally arranged. Stones and seaweed had then been piled onto the wood to create a small shelter. One man could have crawled into it and lain there lengthwise and been reasonably shielded.

“The man must have built this when he landed here. The Ystakot lads would never have done a botched job like this.”

“Couldn’t he have attracted someone’s attention?” Kjartan asked. It was uncomfortable to think that the man could have been stranded there for some time, maybe in the heart of winter.

“No,” Grímur answered, “that would have been difficult if he had nothing to make a fire with. The sailing routes are far west, and the next inhabited area is miles away. There are no fishing grounds around here, so no one comes until the Ystakot clan comes here to collect the eiderdown from the nests and hunt seal. There’s nothing else that would draw anyone here.”

“So did he starve to death?” Kjartan asked.

“Yeah, and froze. He wouldn’t have been able to keep any heat in here without any fire. Especially if he crawled up here after being drenched in the sea.”

“How the hell did he get all the way out here?” Högni asked. “There’s no boat he could have come on. There’s no regular sailing route that passes through here, so he could hardly have fallen off some ship.”

“He must have come out here on a boat and lost it,” Grímur answered. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“It would have been noticed if a man and his boat had gone missing from the fjord,” said Högni.

“Unless he’s from further afield,” said Grímur.

“Doesn’t matter. He still would’ve been missed,” said Högni categorically.

“There was a shipwreck this winter in the distant west coast. Some men were presumed dead. Maybe one of them reached here on a lifeboat that drifted into the fjord and landed here.”

“And the boat?”

“He could have lost it again.”

“No,” Högni disagreed. He stooped over the body and examined the clothes. “This is no sailor. Look at his shoes. These are the type of hiking shoes that tourists wear, leather.”

“Right then,” said Grímur, “this needs to be better investigated. Let’s get him into the casket and head straight back to Flatey.”

They fetched the casket and laid it by the side of the body. Next Grímur and Högni hoisted the body up with their shovels while Kjartan held the casket. Then they turned the casket so that the body rolled into it facedown. The patch of grass that appeared under the body was yellow and withered, apart from the swarm of maggots squirming in the roots of the grass.

“Shouldn’t we turn him the right way around in the casket?” Kjartan asked.

“No,” Grímur answered. “He won’t be too bothered about which way he lies on such a short trip.”

He took a glass receptacle out of his pocket, unscrewed the lid, and sprinkled it inside the casket. “I got this from the doctor,” he said. “It’ll reduce the smell and kill the flies and maggots.”

The lid of the casket was lined with a rubber seal strip, designed to block out any air once it had been tightly screwed to the box.

They systematically combed the island for signs of the man’s stay there. On a patch of grass at the tip of the isle, some flat stones had been arranged to clearly read as SOS, and each letter was about ten feet long. By the shelter they found an open plastic flask with a thin layer of water and some broken shells. There was nothing inside the shelter itself, however. Every possible crag was examined for any trace of information that the man might have scratched onto flat surfaces, but they found no marks that could have been left by a human. On one flat rock there were many small pebbles that seemed to form letters, although some of them had now been scattered by the forces of nature. Nevertheless, Kjartan drew a picture of them on a piece of paper, as precisely as he could, and readjusted two stones that seemed to have been thrown out of alignment and tried to form a word:

Grímur and Högni watched with interest. “Lucky? Does that have any special meaning around here?” Kjartan asked.

“No,” Högni answered. “Although there’s a stud bull in Hvallátrar called Lucky. The bull was given the name when he was young and got stranded on a skerry flooded at high water and had to swim to survive. It was a long way to land, and he probably wouldn’t have survived if some people from Skáleyjar hadn’t been passing there on their way to a dance in Flatey. At first they thought it was a seal that was swimming there, but then his ears popped up. They had never seen a seal with big ears in Breidafjördur before, so they swiftly hauled the calf on board. He got to travel with them to Flatey, and he was kept in a barn until he recovered from his ordeal.”

Grímur and Högni fetched the casket and placed it on board the boat. Then they set off toward Flatey.

“Has anything like this ever happened on the islands before?” Kjartan asked as Högni was tying the casket to the thwart with some rope.

“There’ve been stories of people who were found frozen to death on the islands long after they were considered to have been lost at sea,” Högni answered. “But they were known to be missing along with their boats and the rest of their crews. But this man was stranded on the island without anyone having the slightest idea that everything wasn’t as it was supposed to be. I’ve never heard of anything like that in the fjord.”

Although the casket had been painstakingly sealed, Kjartan could feel the stench clinging to him all the way at the back. He got very seasick, even though there was little movement from the waves, and repeatedly threw up over the gunwale. The islanders, on the other hand, snorted snuff with unusual frequency.

“…In the last decades of the fourteenth century there was a wealthy farmer in Vídidalstunga in the district of Húnavatnssýsla, who went by the name of Jón Hákonarson. We contemporaries know very little about this farmer, and he would, of course, have been forgotten today if he had never had the idea to create this majestic manuscript, which many years later came to be referred to as the
Book of Flatey.
The writing of the manuscript took many years and was mostly completed in 1387. Some sections were then added in the years that followed, since the annals at the end of the book terminate in 1394.

“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…”