The Flatey Enigma Read Online Free PDF Page B

his ears popped up. They had never seen a seal with big ears in Breidafjördur before, so they swiftly hauled the calf on board. He got to travel with them to Flatey, and he was kept in a barn until he recovered from his ordeal.”
    Grímur and Högni fetched the casket and placed it on board the boat. Then they set off toward Flatey.
    “Has anything like this ever happened on the islands before?” Kjartan asked as Högni 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,” Högni 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 Vídidalstunga in the district of Húnavatnssýsla, who went by the name of Jón Hákonarson. 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 Jón Hákonarson 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—Ólaf. 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 Ólaf 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. Ólaf’s mother, Margrét Valdimarsdóttir, ascended to the throne and ruled until 1412…”

CHAPTER 6
     
    I t was close to seven o’clock by the time Grímur steered the boat toward Eyjólfur’s pier in Flatey. Thormódur Krákur 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 Grímur. “Does everyone eat dinner at the same time around here or what?”
    Grímur 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.
    Högni tied the boat to the pier, and Grímur 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,