The Flatey Enigma

by Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson

  “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 Arnamagn?an Institute and was never allowed to set foot on the premises again. 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 Johanna.

  “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.”

  Johanna 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 Johanna 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.

  Johanna 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. Thormodur Krakur 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.” Johanna 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.”

  Johanna 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 Bjorn 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. Thormodur 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.”

  Thormodur 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 Thormodur, “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.

  Grimur 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. Grimur 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.

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

  Grimur 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 Sigurbjorn. In exchange the Svalbardi farmer housed a few sheep for him.

  Thormodur Krakur 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. Grimur walked over to him and said hello.

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

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

  Grimur examined the work. It was true that he’d told Thormodur Krakur 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. Thormodur Krakur had found material to make the lid from some boat wreckage lying on the southern shore.

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

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

  “Grimur, Grimur,” 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, Rosa dear,” Grimur 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?” Grimur 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,” Rosa 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,” Grimur said to the cattle as he left.

  “Shall we go take a look at this angel, Grimur?” Rosa asked.

  Grimur 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.”

  They sauntered back and turned right along the road to follow a narrow track toward the churchyard. Everything seemed normal. The fences that lined the graves and tombstones were surrounded by dense clusters of tall yellow grass from last fall, and the wet ironwork glistened in the drizzle. There was some commotion among the arctic terns that nested in the southern part of the cemetery. They were screeching noisily over one of the graves, and Grimur thought he spotted something new by the tombstone.

  Rosa saw it, too, and stopped. She tugged at Grimur’s jacket and whispered, “I think I’ll just take a look at the angel later. I’ve just remembered I was suppose to go straight home.”

  “Right then, you just go on home,” said Grimur, but she hadn’t waited for an answer and was already running back the same way they came and swiftly vanished down the slope without looking back.

  There was no opening in the fencing on this side of the churchyard, but Grimur had no problems climbing over the low wire netting, even though he was a bit stiff in his hips. Once he had entered, he felt it appropriate to bless himself but then continued walking. The quarrelsome arctic terns then turned on Grimur and dived toward his head, one after another, as he trod the narrow trail between the graves. He waved his arms at them and pushed his cap to the back of his head. His visor was pointing in the air now, so that the most daring terns would knock their beaks against it, while his bald head remained mostly protected. He had dealt with terns like this countless times before and wasn’t too bothered by their uproar. His eyes were firmly focused on what lay ahead.

  Inching forward, step by step, Grimur approached a mass that initially looked like a red angel, as Svenni had said. But as he drew even closer, he saw that it was a half-naked human body covered in blood and kneeling on the grave. Its arms and head dangled over the white tombstone. On its bare back there was something that in the distance had looked like fiery red wings. Blood had trickled down the body in the rain and dyed it red. The body’s coat, jacket, and white shirt had been yanked down over the man’s waist.

  Grimur froze and swallowed in an attempt to moisten his parched throat. Then he drew closer to see who had met this terrible fate in the night.

  Question twenty: Who ate his father’s killer? First letter. Sarcastic Halli said, “I don’t know of anyone who avenged his father as gruesomely as Thjodolf because he ate his father’s killer.”

  The king said, “Tell us how this is true.”

  Halli said, “Thorljot, Thjodolf’s father, led the calf home on a lead, and when he got to his hayfield wall, he hoisted the calf up the wall. Then he went over the wall, and the calf tumbled off the wall on the other side. But the noose at the end of the lead tightened around Thorljot’s neck, and he was unable to touch the ground with his feet. So each hung on his own side of the wall, and they were both dead by the time people arrived. The children dragged the calf home and prepared it for food, and I think that Thjodolf ate his full share of it.” The answer is “Thjodolf,” and the first letter is t.

  CHAPTER 37

  Dr. Johanna was wearing a green raincoat and held a black umbrella, but Kjartan was in his trench coat and bareheaded. They stood a few feet away from the grave and stared at the man on the tombstone that Grimur had alerted them to. The rain had intensified during the course of the morning.

  “That’s got to be the reporter from Reykjavik who arrived on the mail boat on Saturday,” Grimur uttered in a low voice. “I’m told his name is Bryngeir.”

  Johanna walked up close and then circled the grave. She stooped over the man’s back and examined him. “The ribs were chopped on both sides of the spine from the back with two or three big blows and then stretched out,” she said. “Both lungs were then pulled out from the chest.” She walked another circle around the man and then added, “Those are the only injuries I can see.”

  Grimur looked at them and asked, “Should we pick him up and carry him into the church?”

  “No, no,” Kjartan said in a tremulous voice, “absolutely not. We won’t move anything here. We’ll do nothing. We’ll close the churchyard and immediately call the Criminal Investigation Department in Reykjavik.”

  He clasped his coat around his throat, but the rain streamed down his hair over his ashen face.

  “Whoever carved this man up like this had to be strong and knows how to handle a knife,” Johanna said. “It takes a lot of strength and skill to be able to cut through the bone like that. And the knife was big and sharp.”

  “Will you call the police in Reykjavik?” Grimur asked Kjartan.

  “I would prefer you to do it,” Kjartan answered. “This is all so way over my head. I think I’ll just take the first trip back to Patreksfjordur. I hope you can deal with communicating with the police.”

  Grimur scratched the beard under his chin. “But I’ve got to hang around here and make sure no kids come near this,” he said awkwardly.

  “I’ll phone Reykjavik,” Johanna said, “and ask them to send an investigator straightaway. I can describe the incident.”

  Grimur was relieved. “Yeah and find Hogni for me and tell him to come up in his sailing overalls. He can take it in shifts with me.”


  “I’ll do that,” Kjartan answered, swiftly turning and rushing out of the cemetery.

  Question twenty-one: The ugliest foot. First letter. Thorarinn Nefjulfsson was in Tunsberg staying with King Olaf. Early one morning the king lay awake while the others were asleep, and the sun was shining so there was a lot of light inside. One of Thorarinn’s feet stuck out of his bedclothes. The king stared at the foot for a while and then said, “I’ve witnessed an invaluable sight; this man’s foot has got to be the ugliest in the whole town.”

  Thorarinn answered, “I’m willing to bet you that I can find an uglier foot.”

  The king answered, “Whoever wins the bet shall demand a favor of the other.”

  “So be it,” said Thorarinn. He then produced his other foot from under the bedclothes, which was no more beautiful and had a toe missing, too. “And now I have won the bet,” said Thorarinn.

  The king answered, “The other foot is uglier because it has five ugly toes on it, but this one has only four, so I can ask a favor of you.”

  The answer is “Thorarinn,” and the first letter is t.

  CHAPTER 38

  The announcement of another death in Flatey did not go down well with Dagbjartur. Now he knew that the peace was over. He’d be required to give an account of his investigation over the past few days and submit a report. The worst part was that he hadn’t written anything down yet. This would become a priority case now, some higher-ranking officer would be put in charge, and the department’s best men would be dispatched to Flatey. The only positive thing to come out of that morning was the fact he would no longer be required to travel to the island.

  Using three fingers, Dagbjartur hammered out the conclusions of his interviews with Fridrik Einarsson and Arni Sakarias on his typewriter. He didn’t need to write much to cover the essentials, but it still took him a long time. His chubby fingers were stiff on the keyboard and didn’t always hit the right letters.