Viktor Ingolfsson - The Flatey Enigma

“Difficult to say,” Grimur answered. “Maybe a few.”

Hogni sipped on his coffee and said, “There was once a woman who tended to her animals in the winter on a remote island out there in Skardsstrond. There were two laborers with her, a man and a woman. The man had run out of tobacco after the long period of isolation, and the girl had some boyfriend on the mainland. So they wanted the old woman to allow them to go home, but she wouldn’t let them until they tricked her by extinguishing the fire in the hut. That way she had to send them to the mainland to fetch more fire. But when they left her, there was a cold northern wind one night, and the sea froze over so that the old bag couldn’t be reached for the next eight weeks. She had something to eat on the island, even though it was raw, and she got a tiny bit of warmth from the animals, but she was always considered a bit weird after that.”

Hogni gave Kjartan a meaningful look.

“But the man in Ketilsey had neither food nor heat,” said Kjartan.

“You’re right there, lad,” Grimur answered with a grave air. “I just hope the poor wretch didn’t have to suffer long.”

They walked inside, and the district officer showed Kjartan the old typewriter on the small standing writing table in the living room. It seemed to be in reasonable condition, and Kjartan placed two sheets in it with a carbon sheet in between and rolled it into place. He recalled the doctor’s words from memory and then started to type. He was accustomed to using a typewriter and wrote texts with relative ease. The opening read as follows: “Notice to the inhabitants of the district of Flatey. The remains of a man’s body were found on Ketilsey.”

Once the description of the man’s clothes had been written, he added the words of Jon Finnsson that had been found in the deceased’s cardigan pocket. Finally, he wrote: “If anyone can provide any information on the man’s journey to Ketilsey or knows of a missing person, they are asked to contact Grimur Einarsson, the district administrative officer of Flatey.”

“…the characters in the sagas contained in the Flatey Book are not my favorite people. If its accounts are accurate, these were some of the worst rogues, and few of them were honorable leaders. Olaf Tryggvason’s and Olaf Haraldsson’s relentless endeavors to convert the Norse to Christianity are of little credit to their religion. It can also be argued that the Viking raids delayed the advance of civilization in northern Europe for centuries. It is, however, the Icelandic record keepers that I admire. The people who passed the sagas down from one generation to the next, first orally and then from one vellum sheet to another. There are countless phrases in the Flatey Book that have now become sayings that are quoted over and over again, without anyone being remotely aware of their origin. Sayings such as ‘No one can stand against great odds,’ ‘Ale is another man,’ and ‘The one who yields is generally the wisest.’ These are all sayings that Icelanders have become accustomed to using without thinking particularly about their origin. Few contemporary authors exhibit this kind of insight…”

The deacon’s house was located in the island’s interior, a small low cottage. Even though the man was not tall, he still had to stoop to get through the doorway, once he had parked his cart by the gable of the building. The place comprised a small hallway sectioned off by a partition of rough crate planks, a kitchen, and one room, which served both as a living room and bedroom. Pink floral wallpaper adorned the walls, and the ceiling was of dark wood.

Thormodur Krakur removed his Sunday best clothes, folded them neatly, and placed them in a green painted chest that stood at the foot of the bed. He then put on his work clothes: old gray overalls, woolen socks, and frayed rubber shoes.

Gudridur, his wife, was boiling fermented ray and potatoes. She was a stout woman and even shorter than her husband. Because of her bad legs, she sat on a bench by the cooker and used both hands to shift her body to and fro. Her false teeth soaked in a glass of water on the kitchen table. They were a little too big, so Gudridur only put them in when she really needed them at meals.

“The food smells great,” said Thormodur Krakur as he sauntered into the kitchen and they sat at the table. They folded their hands as the husband intoned, “We thank you, our Lord and Savior, for this meal we are about to receive, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

As they were eating, Thormodur Krakur described the transportation of the corpse to his wife. Even though he hadn’t actually looked into the casket himself, he could quote the words of the district officer and embellish the story with a few imaginative touches of his own. The topic did nothing to dampen their appetite, and the pieces of ray were rapidly devoured with smacking lips. Gudridur pounded her fish and potatoes into a mush, because even though she had put her teeth in, she found it awkward to chew with them.

Thormodur Krakur waxed lyrical about the Ketilsey mystery in a long monologue. He couldn’t recall any other event of this kind on the islands over the decades. Shipwrecks and sea accidents had been an inevitable part of the islanders’ lives in his youth, but for a stranger to be stranded out on an island like that was completely new to him. Gudridur concurred with a string of exclamations and finally asked, “Do you think you’d be able to communicate with your late foster father if we took out the Ouija board? Maybe he’d have a message from that stranger.”

Thormodur Krakur shook his head. “No, not straightaway. My foster father is so unsociable. He’d never deliver a message just like that. Maybe he’ll appear to me in a dream soon and give me some sign. Then we’ll see. The danger with people who perish in a horrific way like that is that they can be troubled spirits.”

The meal was over, and Gudridur cleared the table and placed the dishes in the sink. It was a time-consuming task because she had to sit on the bench and shift back and forward, using her hands. Then she put some coffee beans into the grinder, while Thormodur Krakur fetched a pile of books in the living room. The pile was carefully wrapped in old newspapers and tied with string. He cautiously unwrapped the books and placed them on the kitchen table. The first book on the top of the pile was an old Bible, below which were four hefty tomes of the Flatey Book, volumes one, two, three, and four, printed in 1944.

Thormodur Krakur lit a stubbed candle and opened the Bible where a bookmark had been placed. He read a short passage from the fourth book of Genesis out loud, while Gudridur put on the coffee, and then closed the Bible again and took out the second volume of the Flatey Book. He opened it at a bookmark in the middle of the Foster Brothers’ saga and, as they drank their coffee, read a long chapter about Thorgeir Havarsson and his namesake, Thormodur, Kolbrun’s poet. When he had finished reading, he put the books back in their place. Then he went outside again to complete the day’s work. The animals still needed to be tended to before nightfall.

He fetched the cows in the field and milked them in the shed. Little Nonni from Ystakot came to collect the half pot of milk his family bought from them every day, and Hogni greeted him on his way from the district officer’s house to the school. They chatted for a while, and then Thormodur Krakur filled several buckets of water from the well by the shed and emptied them into the cows’ trough. Finally, he prepared for bed, and it was long past midnight when he turned in.

“…The Flatey Book is the largest vellum manuscript known to have been written in Iceland. It contains a total of 225 sheets and therefore 450 pages. The book is so large that only two sheets could be obtained from each calfskin, and therefore 113 calfskins went into the making of the book. Of these, 101 went into the main section, which was written in Vididalstunga, and then another twelve went into the additional material, which was written in Reykholar nine decades later. This double-fold sheet is called a folio, but if the calfskin is folded in four it is known as a quarto. The sheets are about forty-two centimeters long and twenty-nine centimeters wide. The preparation of the skin used in the Flatey Book required a great deal of labor, tanning, shaving, and scraping for it to be turned into usable vellum. It can therefore be said that the book is the work of many hands. There are no accounts of this work, so the methods used are unknown. The technique used was probably similar to the one applied to tanning on the mainland, although less lime was probably used…”