Yrsa Sigurdardóttir - The Day Is Dark

Eyjólfur was first to reply. Friðrikka, looking ashamed, said nothing. ‘I knew nothing about it, so there’s no need to tell me off. I didn’t see him with anyone from the village, and I never heard him mention anyone. If he was meeting the natives, it didn’t happen while I was here.’ He stared at the back of Friðrikka’s neck; she had turned to the window again, her cheeks bright red. ‘She was here a lot more than I was.’

‘What do you have to say for yourself, Friðrikka? Why did you never mention this?’ Thóra was not about to drop it.

Friðrikka spun around. ‘I just didn’t realise it mattered. If I remember correctly you asked whether any Greenlanders had worked here, which they certainly did not.’ She sniffed loudly, and Thóra hoped another crying fit wasn’t on the way. ‘To my knowledge he went to the village several times, on Sundays, but he didn’t tell me much about it and he never mentioned that he had any particular friends there. I think he was trying to start an AA group. I never went with him and I don’t know any more about it.’ Then she brightened, as if a light had been switched on in her head. ‘Of course, you can ask him yourself when we return to Iceland.’

‘What about your friend, Oddný Hildur? Did she ever tell you that she’d gone with him down to the village?’

Friðrikka furrowed her brow. Her whole face had reddened and it almost looked as if she’d used red eye-shadow on her pale eyebrows. ‘What?’

Thóra repeated herself, but she was wondering whether there could possibly be another woman. If neither Oddný Hildur nor Friðrikka had gone with Arnar to visit Naruana, there weren’t any others to choose from as they were the only women listed on the staff organizational chart. ‘Could she have gone without you being aware of it?’

Friðrikka seemed uncertain. ‘Well, I sincerely doubt it, but I wasn’t with her every single Sunday. For example, I was ill for several days and she might very well have gone to the village. However, I clearly remember that she never said a single word about it to me.’

‘Isn’t that strange,’ said Thóra heatedly. ‘You would have thought new topics of conversation would have been welcome around here.’

Alvar cleared his throat to remind them of his presence. Reserved as he was, he tended to blend into the surroundings. ‘Is there anything to drink over here? I’m pretty thirsty.’

Finnbogi looked up from his reading. ‘You’re not drinking anything from here. Everything in the little refrigerator is old, and it would be too risky. You’ll just have to get yourself a handful of snow.’

It clearly wasn’t the oddest suggestion Alvar had ever heard, because he stood up without complaint and left the room. ‘Is there really nothing else available?’ asked Bella. ‘I’m dying of thirst too, but I didn’t realize until he started talking about it.’ She snorted. ‘I’m not about to eat a handful of snow, though.’

‘Then you’ll just have to stay thirsty,’ said Finnbogi, without looking at her. He had re-immersed himself in his reading. Then he slammed the book shut and pushed his reading glasses up onto his head. They sat better there, since one of the arms was damaged, making them sit crookedly on his nose. He turned to Matthew. ‘Will you come and discuss something with me in the hallway? There’s more privacy there.’ Friðrikka and Bella had clearly started to get on other people’s nerves too, thought Thóra as she followed the men out of the room.

‘I don’t know how much to say in everyone’s earshot,’ said Finnbogi after shutting the door and leading them a way down the corridor. ‘But I feel it’s inadvisable to talk about anything out of the ordinary with Friðrikka. I think she may be losing it.’

‘Did you find anything in the files?’ Thóra hugged herself. It was even colder in the empty corridor than the meeting room.

‘I’m not completely finished but I think I’ve got most of it. Some of it is actually beyond my level, which I’m surprised by, so I’ve been poring over every detail. This Usinna wasn’t doing research for some secondary school or undergraduate programme. At least, it appears more theoretically demanding than that.’

‘Is it connected to this area somehow?’ Thóra was impatient and wanted to stop him before he started outlining the technical aspects of the study.

‘Yes and no. The research is based on the theory that particular manmade toxins in the diet affect the gender of foetuses. These toxins are persistent organic pollutants that do not degrade in nature, so they accumulate in the food chain and more often than not wind up in the sea. They are found in more plentiful quantities the higher they go in the sea’s food chain, so they occur in the greatest quantity at its surface. They include substances like the pesticide DDT; PCB, which is used in coolants; fire-retardant chemicals, and other chemicals that affect the endocrine system. It has long been known that seals and polar bears have a high level of these toxins in their systems – a million times higher than in plankton, for example. Their meat is the main subsistence food in the Inuit diet, therefore it’s not too surprising that the Inuits are the most impacted by this pollution.’

‘It’s pretty ironic, given that there can’t be people that pollute the environment less .’ Thóra had never read about any of what the doctor was telling them, since she was hardly a news addict – she made do with skimming the headlines.

The doctor appeared angered by her comment. ‘Yes, it is. It’s thought that if the toxins are present in excessive amounts during the first weeks of pregnancy they can be carried to the foetus through the mother’s blood. There they imitate the hormones controlling the child’s gender and prevent the creation of boys. Figures on the gender ratios of newborns in the Arctic support this theory. Among the Inuits in Russia and in northern Greenland it’s not uncommon for two girls to be born for every boy. In some villages no boys are born – as appears to be the case here in these parts.’ Matthew’s expression suggested that he found this rather disagreeable. ‘What do you mean about the hormones controlling gender? Is it like a sex change in the womb?’

‘No, not exactly. During the first weeks of development male and female foetuses are identical. The genitals, for example, are formed from the same cells, so this makes sense. Even without these pollutants, historically more girls are born than boys. The difference is very small, but it’s increasing throughout the world. I found an article there saying that since 1970, around 250,000 fewer boys than girls are being born each year in Japan and the US. No one has been able to explain this development, but these pollutants might be involved. Of course they cause much more damage to the natural environment than just these gender changes, but in a hunting culture in which the men provide the food it’s extremely serious.’

‘And elsewhere, too,’ added Thóra. ‘It’s hardly desirable to disrupt the ratio of men to women in any community.’

‘No, of course not,’ said the doctor. ‘But this is still just a theory, and this woman’s research was trying to demonstrate that it could be substantiated.’

‘Isn’t a whole village where only girls are born pretty compelling evidence?’ asked Matthew.

Finnbogi smiled patronizingly. ‘That alone proves nothing about the relationship between these substances and the gender ratios. They could be caused by something completely different. Demonstrating it properly would require, among other things, the collection of blood samples from the girls’ mothers, and that’s one thing this woman was doing.’

This seemed a likely explanation for Oddný Hildur’s entry about Usinna. Blood tests. ‘Was she able to prove anything? Did she get the blood?’ asked Thóra.