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The Flatey Enigma
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THE FLATEY ENIGMA
Forthcoming from Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson:
House of Evidence
Day Break
THE FLATEY ENIGMA
VIKTOR ARNAR INGOLFSSON
Translated by Brian FitzGibbon
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2002 by Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson
English translation copyright © 2012 by Brian FitzGibbon
Illustrations copyright © 2012 by Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
The Flatey Enigma was first published in 2002 by Forlagid as Flateyjargáta. Translated from Icelandic by Brian FitzGibbon. Published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2012.
Published by AmazonCrossing
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781611090970
ISBN-10: 1611090970
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011963582
This book is dedicated to the memory of my grandfather and grandmother, Viktor Guðnason and Jónína Ólafsdóttir.
The village on the island of Flatey in Breidafjördur has been used as a backdrop for several movies, but normally as a surrogate for some other place. On this occasion, the location is used to represent itself under its own name, since this story is set on the Breidafjördur islands in 1960.
The nature has been borrowed: its birds, seals, fish, winds, stillness, smells, and sounds. So too have its boats, piers, houses, hens, cows, and potato patches. But not its people. The characters who appear in this story are not based on any of the real people who inhabited those islands during those years. If anyone feels they see any similarities with actual people, they are purely coincidental. The events that are described here are pure fiction, but I would like to thank the islanders for lending me this setting for my story.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
AUTHOR’S POSTSCRIPT
ADDENDUM: EXTRACT FROM THE SAGA OF THE JOMSVIKINGS IN THE FLATEY BOOK
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
CHAPTER 1
Wednesday, June 1, 1960
An easterly wind swept across Breidafjördur with the break of dawn, and a sharp spring breeze intensified the foam of the waves breaking on the strait between the Western Isles. A determined puffin flew low, skimming the surface of the waves at high speed, and an inquisitive sea raven stretched its wings on a reef. Black guillemots plunged into the ocean, while knowing seagulls circled the air high above, scanning the horizon for food. The whole of creation in the fjord was ablaze with life and alertness in the glaring morning sun.
A small but sturdy motorboat tackled the choppy waves and moved away from the island of Flatey toward the south. The small vessel was a converted old rowboat and tarred in black, with its name painted on the stern in large white letters: RAVEN. It carried a crew of three: a young boy, a grown man, and another, who was considerably older. Three generations from a small croft called Ystakot, on the western corner of the island of Flatey.
Jón Ferdinand, the eldest, sat at the stern, steering. White stubble sprouted from his hollow face, and black snuff trickled out of his wide nostrils. Some tufts of gray hair spilled out of his old peaked cap, groping for his face in the wind. His big and rawboned hand held the tiller, as the old eyes under his bushy eyebrows searched for a little island in the south. It wasn’t such an easy course to sail, even though visibility was good. Islets and skerries were scattered across the horizon before the mainland, beyond which lay the Dalafjoll mountains in the blue dusk.
Jón Ferdinand steered the boat head-on against the largest waves but held his course in the gaps between them. It was a small vessel, so it could be unpleasant if the waves hit the side of the boat directly. But the old man sailed by his instincts and seemed to enjoy this duel with the sea.
Gudvaldur, the steersman’s son, sat down on the thwart in front of the engine bay, smoking a pipe and sharpening a large pocketknife. Bareheaded, in a thick woolen sweater, he turned away with his pipe to avoid the spray of the waves that occasionally splashed over the gunwale. He had a weather-beaten face and a rugged expression and was blind in his left eye, following an injury to the eyeball that had whitened as it healed. The other eye was pitch black. Gudvaldur was named after a long-dead ancestor who had visited his mother in a dream, but locals normally just called him Valdi and associated him with the croft of Ystakot in Flatey.
A freak high wave broke over the boat, splashing the curly hair on the back of Valdi’s neck. He looked up and scanned ahead. “Careful, Dad,” he barked. “Don’t forget it’s Ketilsey were going to; you’re heading too far south.”
The old man smiled, flashing his few yellow teeth and raw gums.
“Too far south, too far south,” he repeated in his husky voice, turning the boat against the wave, and Valdi resumed smoking his pipe and fiddling with his knife once he saw they were back on course again.
Little Nonni Gudvaldsson sat on a folded sail at the bow, clinging to the gunwale with both hands. He was feeling cold and seasick, and although he was well used to the sea and didn’t normally allow the chill and queasiness to get to him, this was worse than usual because of his urgent, unseamanlike need to empty his bowels. Nonni had been late that morning and forgot to visit the outhouse before they left. He made no mention of this to his father because Valdi would just have told him to squat over the gunwale and do it right there. The boy didn’t fancy that in these rough waters. Every now and then he stretched his head over the stern to see if they were drawing any closer to their destination, but the boat seemed to be taking forever. Then he lay on the folded sail again, pigheadedly bit his lip, and tried to contract the muscles of his anus. Shutting his eyes tight, he muttered to himself over and over: “For Christ’s sake, Jesus, for Christ’s sake, don’t let me shit in my pants today.”
He glanced toward the front of the boat again.
“Dad, Dad,” he called out, “Grandpa’s forgetting himself again.”
Valdi looked up and turned to the old man. “You’re veering too far east. We’re going to Ketilsey, remember? Seal hunting.”
The old man seemed bewildered a moment but then regained his focus. He wrestled with another wave and headed straight for the island, which was now just a short distance away. Then he looked at Valdi, muttering an old refrain: “To Ketilsey the men did row, to catch the sixteen seals.”
Valdi didn’t answer, stuck his knife back into his pocket, and emptied his pipe on the gunwale. Then he moved back to the stern.
The tide was out at the island, and the landing toward the south was well sheltered. Valdi took command of the boat now and Jón Ferdinand waited, ready with a small anchor dangling from a long chain. The boat broke a wave, which crashed on the rocks, and Valdi turned the engine off as the old man dropped the anchor. The chain slid overboard with a rattle, and shrieking birds shot into the air from the island. A seal surfaced a short distance away before suddenly vanishing into the depths again. Little Nonni stood ready at the stern, and as soon as the anchor had steadied the boat, he managed to grab a bulky, rusty iron ring hanging from the rock, and to slip the rope through it and fasten it. Hopping onto the boat again, he stretched over to grab a pile of old newspapers from the place where they were kept under the cover of the engine bay. Valdi watched the boy leap off the boat and disappear behind the rock.
“I’ve told you many times before not to shit on the island,” he growled. “The seals will pick up your scent for weeks.”
Little Nonni felt a tinge of guilt. This was one of the golden rules of seal hunting, but he couldn’t help it. He ran up the island, found a good spot between the rocks, and yanked down his pants. The relief was immense, and he started to look around now. Natural monoliths formed a sheltered alcove, and two eider ducks lay brooding a short distance away. They were perfectly still, and only a trained eye would have been able to distinguish them from the turf. A sea pie perched on a rock and screeched loudly. His nest was probably close by on the edge of the shore. Further on, under a mighty boulder, lay the carcass of a large animal.
Nonni had often seen things like this on the shore, small whales, fat gray seals, or the bloated carcass of an old sheep. The novelty of this specimen, though, was that it was dressed in a green parka.
“Tell me about the Flatey Book,” he asked.
She pondered a moment. “Do you want to hear the long story or the short one?” she finally asked.
“The longer story if you have the time.”
She gazed through the window where the sun was setting behind the mountains in the northwest and said in a soft voice, “I’ve got plenty of time now.”
CHAPTER 2
Thursday, June 2, 1960
The mail boat sailed from Stykkishólmur to the island of Flatey once a week, on Saturdays, and then traveled on to Bardaströnd north of Breidafjördur. The wharf was in Brjánslækur, and it was there that the few farmers who inhabited the roadless fjords to the east of it came to collect their mail. Transport was limited in these parts, and the vast differences between the tides made sea travel there very difficult.
Once a road had been built over Kleifaheidi, there was far greater access to Patreksfjördur in the west and the villages to the north of it. A growing number of passengers started to travel on the mail boat, which increased its transportation of goods.
The boat followed the same route back from Brjánslækur, stopping off in Flatey on the way and terminating its journey in Stykkishólmur. The whole trip took an entire day, and it was often in the small hours that the boat was finally tied to the wharf of its home harbor.
Life was fairly uneventful in Brjánslækur when there was no mail boat on the way. On this particular Thursday, however, a young stranger stood on the wharf, watching an open motorboat approaching the shore, long in the distance from the south. The man was dressed in a coat tied with a belt at the waist. He was of average height, slim, and sported a conspicuous scar on his forehead. He squinted his gray eyes at the glaring sunlight, as if he were unaccustomed to light, and the cool breeze ruffled his thick, dark hair. A metallic oblong box with handles on the side lay at his feet.
The man stood alone on the wharf, watched from a short distance away by two old men under a shed who were intrigued by this unusual guest. A small truck was driving up the road, away from the wharf, and it soon vanished from sight to the west in a cloud of dust.
This was clearly an alien environment to the young man, and he anxiously scanned the broad fjord and islands in the distance. Two ravens hovered high above his head, croaking at each other. Down on the sea, some arctic terns fluttered and screeched. These riotous birds brought back memories, and they weren’t good ones either, so he instinctively blocked his ears with his hands and closed his eyes a moment—until he realized that it was pointless trying to shut them off like that and decided to shrug off the feeling. He dug his hands deep into his pockets and clenched his fists.
The boat was pulling into shore now. The engine had been turned off, and the vessel was being steered toward the wharf. The stranger caught the rope tossed to him by the men on the boat and held onto it as the two men climbed onto the edge of the wharf.
“Hello there,” said the man who stepped up first—a vigorous man in his sixties, chubby, with a round, ruddy face, a collar of white beard that lined his big cheeks, and a stubby nose. He was wearing thigh-high boots, an old woolen pinstriped cardigan, and a black cap on his head.
“I’m Ellidagrímur Einarsson, administrative officer of the district of Flatey; call me Grímur. I guess you must be the district magistrate’s representative from Patreksfjördur?”
“Yes, I’m Kjartan,” the man who had been waiting on the pier answered, taking the hand the officer was holding out to him. It felt thick and the skin was rough, but it was a warm and firm handshake.
“This is Högni, our teacher from the Flatey primary school and our church organist,” said the local officer, indicating his partner, a tall, spare man in neat blue overalls and high Wellingtons. “Högni works with me during the seal-hunting season in the spring and helps out with the hay when the harvesting starts,” the officer added.
Högni gave the young man an equally vigorous handshake. He had a large gray moustache, well-groomed to the sides, but otherwise clean-shaven cheeks. The teacher seemed to be of the same age of his companion but bore his age well. A bright peaked cap perched over the back of his head.
The local officer observed the district magistrate’s man for a moment and took out a tin of snuff.
“So you’ve only just started to work for the magistrate, have you?” he asked, offering Kjartan some snuff.
“Yes, I took the coaster to Patreksfjördur the day before yesterday,” said Kjartan, declining the offer with a wave of his hand.
“And they’ve thrown you straight into the deep end!” Grímur grinned roguishly, handing Högni the tin of snuff.
“Yes, this isn’t exactly the kind of assignment I was expecting. They told me working for the district magistrate would be a clerical job, and that I’d be dealing with notarizations and things like that.”
“So this isn’t a long-term career move then?” Grímur asked.
“No, just until the autumn.”
“Are you training to become a district magistrate?”
“No, I just graduated in law this summer, and I wasn’t planning on any district commissioning job.”
“So what are you going to do then?”
“Well, I might be able to join a lawyer’s practice in the fall, so one of my tutors got me this summer job. I’d like to work in property law in the future, so it’ll be good experience for me to audit some mortgage pledges this summer.”
The local officer glanced at the box that lay at their feet. “Right then, let’s just get this box on board and pick up the c
orpse. But let’s stop off in Flatey to grab a bite to eat from my wife, Imba, on the way. She should have some lunch ready by one if I know her right.”