Viktor Ingolfsson - The Flatey Enigma

Large, thick folders of newspapers lay on the table in front of the two men, and Dagbjartur ensured each pile was renewed as soon as it had been viewed. It was a moderate task to be performing on a beautiful June day, and it seemed to be proceeding nicely. It was also a quiet day at the library on that Saturday, and there was only a small group of regulars at work. Every now and then a smothered cough, sneeze, whisper, or shifting chair could be heard. Otherwise everything was as quiet as a morgue.

Dagbjartur was dozing off in his seat when the reception manager suddenly exclaimed, “There he is!”

Dagbjartur popped off his chair. “Are you sure?” he asked, disappointed.

“Yes, yes,” he said, “absolutely sure.”

Dagbjartur looked at the paper. The picture was of an amiable-looking silver-haired man, who was named underneath as Fridrik Einarsson. The title of the article was “Killing methods in the Orkneyinga saga.”

Dagbjartur glanced at his watch. There was still plenty of time left in the day to find this man and talk to him. There was no way of avoiding it. Dagbjartur sighed wearily.

Question two: Most impudent. First letter. When they reached Reine, they spotted three longships rowing down the fjord. The third was a dragon ship. As the ships passed the merchant vessel, an imposing figure walked onto the deck of the dragon ship and said, “Who is the commander of this ship, and where did you first make land and camp last night?”

Sarcastic Halli replied, “We spent the winter in Iceland and sailed from Gasir, and our commander is called Bard. We made land at Hitra and camped at Agdanes.”

The man, who in actual fact was King Harald Sigurdsson, then asked, “Didn’t Agdi sodomize you?”

“Not yet,” Halli answered.

The king smiled and said, “Have you made some arrangement for him to perform this service on you later then?”

Halli answered, “If you’re curious to know, Agdi is saving that up for nobler people than us and is expecting you to arrive this evening so that he can pay you this debt in full.”

“You’re exceedingly impudent,” said the king.

The answer is “sarcastic Halli,” and the first letter is s.

The island’s store was a two-story building close to the co-op building. Its doors faced west, but on its eastern side there was an extension and other entrances. From there was a staircase to the top floor where Asmundur, the storekeeper, lived with his wife in a small apartment. The store and stockroom were on the lower floor. When Kjartan opened the door into the store, a shrill bell resounded in the empty space. Kjartan looked around and took a deep breath. Strong and familiar odors lingered in the air. Wooden furnishings gave off a symphony of smells to the accompaniment of a broad range of products: candy, shoe polish, coffee, nails, books, oatmeal, hooks, potatoes, needles, baking powder, coffee jugs, raisins, scythes, brown sugar, paint, lemonade, grindstones, snuff, caps, peas, rubber shoes, vanilla drops, rakes, chocolate, and net buoys. These and many other products were crammed into cluttered piles on the shelves that covered all of the store’s walls. Some categories of products simply lay in bundles on the floor or on the counter.

Asmundur soon appeared in the store. He was a short, fat man, bald with a round jovial face, dressed in a white storekeeper’s apron tied around his potbelly. In his breast pocket there were two pencils and a folding ruler. The storekeeper greeted him amiably: “Hello, young man. We’ve got special offers on penknives and vitamins this week, cattle feeding corn is back in stock, and we’ve got the latest fashion in shoes from Reykjavik.”

“I’m not here to buy anything and I apologize for the intrusion, but I came for another reason,” said Kjartan at the end of the storekeeper’s sales pitch. He then asked him the same questions he had asked the farmers earlier. Asmundur’s answers were similar. He remembered the Danish visitor quite well. The man had come into the store to ask about film for his camera.

“Unfortunately, I didn’t have any rolls of film. I order them especially from Reykjavik when someone requests it. Since the Dane was on his way south anyway, I didn’t bother ordering any film for him,” said Asmundur. “I did, however, manage to sell him two pairs of woolen socks.” Then he thought a moment and said, “My boat certainly wasn’t moved during that time.”

“What do you use the boat for?” Kjartan asked.

“Mainly for small deliveries from the store,” the storekeeper answered. “Having a decent motorboat can come in quite handy when you need to pop over to the mainland or to the inner isles when the farmers are busy in the summer. The co-op doesn’t offer a good service like that, and that’s how you get customers. But I never go south to Stykkisholmur because the mail boat brings supplies over once a week. Then I always take my boat away after the slaughtering season and let it rest in the storehouse over the winter. I don’t like traveling by sea in the winter, both because of the dark and the cold. Farmers also normally find they have more time on their hands in the winter and like the change of doing their shopping in town.”

“Have you any idea how that Danish man could have ended up in Ketilsey?” Kjartan asked.

“It’s all people can talk about in the village,” the trader answered. “But nobody can figure it out. Who the hell could have left the man out there? I know every single person on these islands, and I can assure you there isn’t an ounce of evil in any of them. Maybe there was an accident. Maybe the man boarded the mail boat without any of the crew really noticing him. Then maybe he was standing by the gunwale and fainted and fell into the sea. Then perhaps he regained consciousness and swam until he found something to hang onto. Or the current was really fast and carried him all the way to Ketilsey. But it’s all so unlikely that one can barely believe it.”

Kjartan was on the point of giving up on the investigation. He felt no closer to solving Gaston Lund’s death.

“How much do you charge for these penknives of yours?” he asked.

Question three: The bad choice he made for me. Second letter. King Magnus said, “Many people can be grateful to their fathers, and so am I in many ways and more than most, but he made a bad choice in the mother he selected for me.” So “mother” is the answer, and the second letter is o.

Kjartan was on his way back to the district administrative officer’s home when he suddenly remembered that a new name had cropped up in connection with the Danish visitor. The farmer Sigurbjorn had told him that Hallbjorg in Innstibaer had allowed the guest into the library. It could do no harm to hear more details about that side of the story. The young boy who had taken the priest’s message down to Grimur was now on Kjartan’s path and was able to direct him toward Innstibaer. It was easy enough. There was only one path in that direction, and Innstibaer was the last croft on the sea side of the path. Two amicable orphaned lambs greeted him with their bleating by a quaint little house. Two women were sitting on wooden footstools on the sidewalk, knitting woolen socks in the sunshine. One of them was in her seventies, tall and stout. The other might have been just over fifty and was small with delicate features.

Kjartan greeted them and introduced himself. The women returned the greeting, intrigued, but did not introduce themselves in return.

“Is one of you called Hallbjorg?” Kjartan then asked.

“Yes, that’s good old me, young man,” the eldest answered.

Kjartan recounted his conversation with Sigurbjorn to her and asked if she remembered the Danish visitor.