Viktor Ingolfsson - The Flatey Enigma

“Quite surprised?”

“Yes. Bryngeir had always been fascinated by this ancient tradition of carving blood eagles on the backs of one’s enemies. I thought it was an odd coincidence to see him in that state.”

“So you were familiar with wounds of this kind?”

“I’d never seen them before, but the descriptions in the Flatey Book stood out in my memory. It was pretty clear what had happened.”

“A witness claims that Bryngeir intended to visit you the night before he was murdered.”

“He didn’t. I actually wasn’t at home, so I don’t know if he tried to get into the house.”

“Where were you that night?”

“I went out for a walk and went to the library to read.”

“Did you meet anyone there?”

“Kjartan came by.”

“How long were you in there?”

“Quite a long time. Until the early hours of the morning, actually.”

“That long? What were you both doing?”

“I told Kjartan about the Flatey Book.”

Grimur stuck his head into the classroom.

“Sorry, Thorolfur, but I can’t find the magistrate’s envoy.”

“You can’t find the magistrate’s envoy?” Thorolfur snapped in a temper.

“No, he seems to have vanished,” Grimur answered, bewildered. “I’ve been to most of the houses and sent messages to the others.”

“Did you go into the doctor’s house?” Thorolfur asked.

“Yes, but there was no one there.”

Thorolfur turned to Johanna. “Do you know anything about Kjartan?”

“Yes, he visited me this morning and I invited him to take a hot bath. There’s a bathtub in the house, the only one on the island. He then had a lie-down. This whole case has become a bit too much for him and he had problems sleeping. He managed to fall asleep, and he was still asleep when Hogni collected me earlier. I couldn’t bring myself to wake him up. He must have woken up and gone somewhere.”

Thorolfur eyed her with suspicion. “I hope you haven’t done anything to him.”

She suddenly stood up. “Is this how this is going to continue? Do you think I tied him to a pole, maybe, and ripped out his intestines or something like that?”

She marched to the door.

Thorolfur signaled Lukas to follow her and then looked at Grimur. “What did she mean?”

Grimur shrugged. “She might be referring to the killing of Asbjorn Prudi.”

“The killing of who?”

“It’s in the Flatey Book.”

“That bloody book again? How is this murder described?”

Grimur thought about it. “I don’t know the whole book off by heart like my friend Sigurbjorn does, but let me see. I browsed through it not so long ago. Asbjorn, Virfill’s good son, ended up in the hands of Brusi the giant. Brusi opened Asbjorn’s belly, grabbed his intestines, and tied them to an iron pole. Then he led Asbjorn in circles around the pole until all his guts were wrapped around it. While this was going on, Asbjorn recited many long poems. Finally he died with great honor and valiance. Later Ormur Storolfsson killed Brusi the giant and carved a blood eagle on his back, but you know all about that now.”

Grimur ended his speech and shrugged again. Thorolfur shook his head. “I just hope the magistrate’s envoy still has all his intestines inside him.”

Question thirty-four: The most mutilated but healed. Second letter. Following the death of holy King Olaf, there were many stories of miracles that were attributed to him being invoked, and the priests who wrote the Flatey Book conscientiously collected them. The most mutilated man was Richard the priest. Einar and his servant broke his legs and dragged him into the woods. Then they wrapped some rope around his head and tightly tied his head and torso to a board. Einar then took a wedge and placed it on the priest’s eye, and the servant who stood beside him struck upon it with an axe, causing the eye to fly out of its socket and land on the board. He then placed a pin on the other eye and struck it so that the wedge sprang off the eyeballs and tore the eyelid loose. They then opened his mouth, grabbed his tongue, and sliced it off, and then untied his hands and head. As soon as the priest regained consciousness, he slipped the eyeballs back into their place under the eyelids and pressed them with both hands as hard as he could. The men then asked the priest if he could talk. The priest made a noise and attempted to speak. Then Einar said to his brother, “If he recovers and the stump of his tongue starts to grow, I’m afraid he will get his speech back again.” Thereupon they seized the stump with a pair of tongs, drew it out, cut it twice, and the third time to the very roots, and left him lying there half dead. It had taken a lot of power to heal those wounds, but thanks to the intercession of the good King Olaf, the priest was restored to full health, even though he had been so badly mutilated. The answer is “Richard the priest,” and the second letter is i.

At four o’clock that afternoon, Gudjon and Hogni finished making a casket for Bjorn Snorri Thorvald. It lay on two trestles in the small workshop behind the Radagerdi farm, ready to be transported to the doctor’s house. The two carpenters scrutinized their work as they brushed the sawdust and shavings off their clothing. Hogni snorted some snuff, and Gudjon lit a cigarette. It was a fairly rudimentary casket made of smoothened unpainted pine planks with a brass cross on the lid, precisely as the deceased had prescribed. Bjorn Snorri had talked it over with Gudjon several months earlier and, in fact, had asked him to get working on it straightaway, but Gudjon wouldn’t hear of it. He could make a decent casket for his neighbor if it was needed, but it would be out of the question to start making it before the person in question was definitely dead. Anything else would have been inappropriate and disrespectful to the Lord.

It was still raining, but it was warm when Thormodur Krakur arrived in his Sunday attire, towing his handcart. The three men carried the casket out of the workshop and placed it on the cart. Then they walked across the island pulling the cart behind them.

Inspector Lukas and a crew member from the ship stood outside the doctor’s house.

“Johanna is obviously under house arrest,” Hogni whispered heavyheartedly.

They carried the casket into the house and all the way into the living room where Bjorn Snorri’s corpse had been laid out on the bed, newly washed and dressed in a white tunic. A white linen ribbon had been wrapped around his head to lock his jaw into place and keep his mouth closed. Three white candles flickered on a bedside table. Johanna Thorvald and Reverend Hannes were in the room as they arrived, and received them.

The casket was placed on the floor by the side of the body, and Johanna placed a white quilt inside it and a pillow at the head. The three men then helped to lift the twisted body and place it in the casket.

Reverend Hannes stepped forward and said a farewell prayer to the house, after which the gathering recited an “Our Father” and sang a short psalm. Finally, they all drew a cross over the body, the quilt was drawn over the deceased’s face, and the lid was placed on the casket. Gudjon took a hammer and firmly sealed the lid with some nails.

Hogni and Gudjon carried the casket between them out of the house and placed it on the cart. Thormodur Krakur lifted the handles of the cart and started to pull it away. Johanna and Reverend Hannes walked behind him, followed by Hogni and Gudjon and finally, at a considerable distance, Lukas, the police inspector, and his assistant from the coast guard ship.

As they walked, Hogni pondered the deceased. He and his daughter had lived in the house for about two years. Last year Bjorn Snorri had been mobile enough to take walks around the island and speak to people. Everyone knew he had come to Flatey to die, and that made some of the islanders slightly awkward with him. But everyone could see that he was a very intelligent and educated man with an insatiable eagerness for knowledge. He asked people exhaustive questions about their professions and deeds and kept notes in a little diary. Eventually, though, he came out less and less, until finally he just stayed indoors, confined to his medical bed. From then on it was the islanders who visited him at the doctor’s house and told him stories. Mostly they were tales about accidents and losses at sea from the past decades and centuries, which had been preserved in people’s memories, and Bjorn Snorri lapped it all up with a smile on his lips and a grateful glow in his eyes. And now Hogni started to wonder if these stories could be found in writing somewhere. Some of these incidents were probably recorded in the annals, but who knew if any written record had been kept of the actual stories that lay behind them and had been orally passed down from generation to generation. Perhaps this invaluable knowledge was dying with every individual who passed away on the islands, including Bjorn Snorri himself. He had undoubtedly written countless pieces about his area of research, but didn’t the main bulk of knowledge always go unrecorded? Or was it just that the dead hadn’t disappeared, but simply moved on, slightly ahead of us? Would he himself one day get a chance to learn something from Bjorn Snorri in some other place?