Viktor Ingolfsson - The Flatey Enigma

“Has anything like this ever happened on the islands before?” Kjartan asked as Hogni was tying the casket to the thwart with some rope.

“There’ve been stories of people who were found frozen to death on the islands long after they were considered to have been lost at sea,” Hogni answered. “But they were known to be missing along with their boats and the rest of their crews. But this man was stranded on the island without anyone having the slightest idea that everything wasn’t as it was supposed to be. I’ve never heard of anything like that in the fjord.”

Although the casket had been painstakingly sealed, Kjartan could feel the stench clinging to him all the way at the back. He got very seasick, even though there was little movement from the waves, and repeatedly threw up over the gunwale. The islanders, on the other hand, snorted snuff with unusual frequency.

“…In the last decades of the fourteenth century there was a wealthy farmer in Vididalstunga in the district of Hunavatnssysla, who went by the name of Jon Hakonarson. We contemporaries know very little about this farmer, and he would, of course, have been forgotten today if he had never had the idea to create this majestic manuscript, which many years later came to be referred to as the Book of Flatey. The writing of the manuscript took many years and was mostly completed in 1387. Some sections were then added in the years that followed, since the annals at the end of the book terminate in 1394.

“It is impossible to say what led the farmer Jon Hakonarson to have these stories written down, but perhaps the manuscript was intended as a gift to a young man who at the time was taking over the kingdom of Norway, which at that time included Denmark and Sweden, and who bore the same name as two great kings who had reigned long before him-Olaf. He was the third Norwegian king to bear that name, and the expectations that were placed on him were clearly high. The vellum manuscript was also a veritable treasure that would have brought great honor at the royal court. But this Olaf died or vanished in Denmark at around the time the book was being completed, and his death marked the end of Norwegian king Harald Fairhair’s lineage. Olaf’s mother, Margret Valdimarsdottir, ascended to the throne and ruled until 1412…”

I t was close to seven o’clock by the time Grimur steered the boat toward Eyjolfur’s pier in Flatey. Thormodur Krakur was standing on its edge, clutching his hat in his hands, with a large wooden cart by his side. Standing close to him was a priest in a cassock with a psalmbook in his hands. But apart from them there wasn’t a soul in sight. The swarm of kids that had been so conspicuous earlier that day was nowhere to be seen, nor were there any curious faces peeping through the windows. The village seemed deserted.

Kjartan was stunned. “Where is everybody?” he asked Grimur. “Does everyone eat dinner at the same time around here or what?”

Grimur glanced across the village. “No, that’s not the custom here. But people find events like these a bit disturbing. Death isn’t much of an attraction around here, and people prefer to shun it.”

“So people lock themselves inside then?” Kjartan asked.

“The adults avoid spectacles of this kind, and the children are kept indoors to avoid any inappropriate behavior,” the district officer answered gravely.

Hogni tied the boat to the pier, and Grimur and Kjartan carried the casket up the steps between them and placed it on the cart.

The priest, who was around seventy, possessed a solemn air, long gray sideburns, round glasses, and a bald head. He bowed and muttered something over the casket, which Kjartan neither heard nor understood. The priest then nodded at Thormodur Krakur, who put on his hat and started dragging the cart away. Grimur and Hogni walked behind it, also helping to push it along. The priest followed behind, then finally Kjartan.

The path led up a slope, which proved to be no difficulty, because the load was light. Thormodur Krakur was obviously strong and capable of dragging the cart on his own without any great effort. The others nevertheless gently pushed behind as a token gesture. They took slow and dignified steps as the cartwheels screeched faintly to the rhythm of the silent march. It was a short distance to walk, but Kjartan felt it was taking them ages to reach their destination.

Thormodur Krakur opened the church doors with a large key, and the casket was borne inside. Two trestles has been prepared in the middle of the floor, and they lowered the casket onto them. Once this had been done, they walked outside again to breathe in some fresh air.

The village was suddenly bustling with life again. Children ran between houses. Three men were chatting at the bottom of the slope and occasionally glanced up at the church. Women unpegged their washing from the clotheslines. A young boy was escorting three cows at the bottom of the slope. The stillness had been magically dispelled.

“I asked Johanna, the doctor, to come over and take a look inside the casket,” Grimur said. “She’s more used to this kind of stuff than we are…I think.”

The priest seemed eager to leave. “Remember to lock the door before you leave now, Krakur,” he said over his shoulder as he rushed off.

“Reverend Hannes doesn’t want to lose his appetite before dinner if he can avoid it,” said Grimur, watching the priest speed away.

“I met a man once,” said Hogni, “who’d been sent to Oddbjarnarsker to fetch a body that had been washed up on the shore. It gave off such a terrible stench that he lost his appetite for three days, even though he felt hungry. He just couldn’t keep the food down. Then they made him sniff some ammonia and he recovered.”

“Does the doctor know we’ve arrived?” Kjartan asked.

“Everyone knows we’ve arrived,” Grimur answered. “Johanna is bound to be here any second now.”

“Isn’t it difficult for a woman to be a doctor with transport being as difficult as it is on these islands?” Kjartan asked.

Grimur blew his nose before answering: “Hasn’t been a problem so far. No one’s had any sudden illnesses, and there are no pregnant women here. Anyone who’s really sick gets sent to the hospital in Reykjavik. The main stuff she has to deal is arthritis, hemorrhoids, and toothaches. She’s got strong hands and is quick at pulling out a tooth if she has to. She also learned how to drive a motorboat as soon as she moved to Flatey. She wants to be able to visit patients between the islands on her own if the weather’s OK, without having to drag anyone away from their work.”

“There’s nothing new about a woman handling a boat on these islands,” Hogni added. “My great-grandmother, for example, used to be a foreman in the spring in Olafsvik, so my grandfather was born in a fishing hut between trips.”

“…In the decades before the manuscript was written, the black death had swept across Europe, and transport to Iceland was greatly reduced. The language of the Norse was changing, and they had probably lost the ability to be able to read the manuscripts that had previously been brought from Iceland. The sagas had largely been written to be exported and were obviously precious trading assets in the period in which the language spoken in Norway and Iceland remained the same. The Nordic countries were a single book market, as it were, and Snorri’s Heimskringla, or History of the Kings, was probably a best seller in Norway back then, just as much as it was after printing was invented. Jon Hakonarson’s majestic manuscript was slow to get off the ground, on the other hand, because the Norse couldn’t read their old language anymore, so it remained in Iceland for many centuries.”