Майкл Ридпат - The Wanderer

‘Ouch.’

Einar Thorsteinsson had been patronizing Eygló ever since she had first come across him when he was a graduate student and she an undergraduate at the University of Iceland. He was now a senior lecturer in archaeology at the university. Very tall, with longish blonde hair and a neatly trimmed beard, he was irredeemably pleased with himself. Eygló had to admit he had some right to be. He was a magician of the past: he could conjure a story out of the most obscure elements — physical elements. Ancient sites of dirt and tiny lumps of material spoke to him. The sagas less so.

And he could be so arrogant.

Gudrid and her son were getting very wet. Eygló liked the statue. Although it was consciously modern in an ancient place like this, it was lithe and elegant, evoking Gudrid as the young adventurous woman she was then, rather than the thousand-year-old Viking she had become today.

‘You know Gudrid was a real person, Einar. And the sagas tell us enough to know what kind of person she was.’

‘You’re just guessing,’ said Einar. ‘It’s make-believe.’

Suzy joined them. They had been speaking Icelandic and the Englishwoman hadn’t understood them.

‘The rain has screwed us,’ Suzy said. ‘We’ve still got to do a wide with Eygló against the mountains in the background, that’s really important. We’ll try again early tomorrow morning — we’re going to have to shoot the whole lot again so we get the light consistent. According to my weather app it’s fine until about midday, and this valley would look beautiful in morning sunlight. Do you think it will rain tomorrow, Einar?’

Einar didn’t answer. Meteorology was beneath him.

‘You can never be sure the forecast will be correct in Iceland,’ said Eygló. ‘But it’s always worth a try.’

‘OK, we come back tomorrow morning.’

They walked back to the Land Cruiser that Suzy had hired. ‘Who was that you were talking to?’ Eygló asked Einar.

‘Who?’

‘The woman at the church door.’

‘I don’t know. Some tourist asking me whether it was open. Foreign.’

‘Are you seeing her later? Showing her the Glaumbaer nightlife?’

‘Oh, Eygló, you do so misunderstand me,’ Einar said. ‘That kind of thing is long in my past.’

‘Of course it is, Einar.’

Einar’s womanizing was legendary; in fact Eygló had witnessed it at first hand. He had been married for something like twelve years, but that hadn’t stopped him. Eygló hadn’t seen quite as much of him in recent times, but she doubted Einar would ever change.

A familiar scent tugged at her nostrils, sneaking its way through the fug of damp clothing. It was aftershave, a subtle perfume she remembered Einar bought in Paris. She remembered the night, or morning rather, when she had asked him about it, lying in his bare arms.

But that was a long time ago. And much best forgotten.

Suzy had booked them into one of Iceland’s oldest hotels in the small town of Saudárkrókur, just a few kilometres north of Glaumbaer. Eygló smiled when she saw she had been given the Gudrídur Thorbjarnardóttir room, Gudrid’s room, and she took a quick picture of the wooden door with her phone to tweet. It was the best room in the hotel.

She gazed out of the window towards the harbour, crowded with small fishing boats and a couple of trawlers, out to the fjord behind. She could just see the big rectangular block of rock that was the island of Drangey, moored a few kilometres offshore like a massive supertanker from a bygone age.

She flopped on the bed, pulled out her phone and called her son, who was excited by Liverpool’s rumoured purchase of a new attacking midfielder from Arsenal and wanted to tell her all about it. It was coming up to the end of the transfer window for the new football season, one of Bjarki’s favourite times of year, and Eygló just liked to hear the enthusiasm in his voice. He was staying with his cousins for a few days — yet another few days. Eygló thanked God she had a patient and helpful sister.

After they had finished, Eygló checked out the Arsenal player on her phone — it was important to be properly prepared for future conversations with her son — and then caught up on Twitter and Facebook. Since the success of Viking Queens in America earlier that year, Eygló’s social media presence had exploded. Sometimes it was a chore, but actually she enjoyed the attention. And Suzy was keen for her to develop her fan base as widely as possible before The Wanderer was broadcast the following year.

She put down the phone and looked around her room. Old wooden furniture, old wooden beams. Elegant, cosy, expensive.

She grinned. This was her life now. She didn’t know how long it was going to last, but she was going to enjoy it.

Because, mostly, her life had been crap. Eygló was an optimistic person, famous among her friends for her ability to put a sunny spin on the numerous bad things that seemed to happen to her. There had been a succession of bad men, including Hermann, her husband for two years. She loved history and felt she had real empathy for those Viking men and especially women who had lived in Iceland a thousand years before, but she wasn’t brilliant at writing about them, at least in the dry, rigorous style that was expected of historians. She wasn’t a total disaster — in fact she was just good enough to cling on to the academic world by her fingertips, first at the University of Iceland and then at York University in England, from where she had eventually been let go as a junior lecturer three years before. It was Einar who had hired her there, but once he left to return to Iceland, she had lost her protector.

The only undeniably good thing that had happened to her was Bjarki, who was now eleven, innocent and enthusiastic, and whose life was definitely not crap.

But in 2012 she had been put forward by her boss at York to be a talking head for a couple of minutes in a documentary on the history of Yorkshire produced by Suzy Henshaw. Eygló had spoken about the Vikings in York and had captivated Suzy, and later the BBC audience.

Two years later, Suzy had tracked Eygló down back in Iceland, where she was working as a temporary high school history teacher, to front a new series called Viking Queens about the Norse women who had followed their men across Northern Europe.

It had been a massive success, not just for the BBC in the UK, but in Germany, Australia, Norway, Japan, America, and now, at last, Iceland. Moorhen Productions, Suzy’s company, had done well, both financially and in terms of reputation.

Now, Suzy had asked Eygló to present a documentary series about Gudrid the Wanderer, who had emerged as the most popular of the Viking queens with the television audience. They had spent the previous two weeks filming in Nantucket and Newfoundland, and now they were in Iceland, covering Gudrid’s childhood and her later years.

Eygló had suggested getting Einar involved: Eygló did the presenting, and Einar added the archaeological expertise. Einar looked good on camera, but his delivery was a little aloof, a cool expert rather than a passionate enthusiast.

Whereas Eygló brought Gudrid to life.

Eygló, Suzy and Einar had agreed to meet for dinner at eight-thirty in a restaurant in a blue building on Adalgata, the old main street lined with brightly coloured houses and shops, some dating back to the late nineteenth century. A pair of ravens swooped around the restaurant, croaking what sounded like an aggressive warning, before perching on the roof of the old store opposite. They unsettled Eygló: it was highly unusual for ravens to be seen in town in the summer. Her grandmother would have said it augured a hard winter, or something worse. Gudrid would no doubt have agreed.