CHAPTER 35
After dinner Kjartan strolled out onto the embankment in front of the district officer’s house. He liked feeling the breeze on his face and decided to go on a walk to the east of the island. The village had sunk into tranquility, and he passed no one but a curious calf roaming between the houses. Walking past the island store, he heard a radio through a window. A short while later he had reached Innstibaer. He felt he was being watched from the window of a house, but he avoided looking back. His mind was busy connecting the few threads linked to the disappearance of Gaston Lund. Even the women in Innstibaer. But right now he wanted to forget, and he walked across the island in a determined stride. The track meandered up to a reef that dropped onto the sea, and he saw some puffins perched on top of the rock. He carried on walking and soon stood on the shore on the innermost part of the island. The village had vanished behind him, but to the east of the strait he could make out the houses of the nearby islands in the evening sun. Far behind them the sky had darkened with clouds of rain.
Kjartan enjoyed the view for a brief moment, but then he turned to walk back along the island’s southern shore. He spotted eider ducks flying from their nests along the trail here and there and then the arctic terns spiraling over him. He snapped an old twig of northern dock and dangled it over his head as he crossed the densest swarm of terns. It was low tide, and mud flats protruded between the small islets to the south of Flatey. Shorebirds he was unfamiliar with were feeding there. A sheep with two lambs used the opportunity to stroll over the shallows to the grassy isle on the other side of a narrow strait. Kjartan wanted to continue walking out to the little isles to the south of the inhabited island but decided to do so later. It was getting late and rainy.
As he walked along the shore right to the south of the church, he saw a faint light glowing in the library window. Intrigued, he decided to peep in to see if there was someone inside. If it was someone he didn’t want to talk to, he could always say that he saw the light and just thought that he’d forgotten to switch it off. Then he could leave.
He walked up the field toward the building and knocked on the door.
“Come in,” a female voice answered from within.
The door creaked as he opened it and stepped inside.
Dr. Johanna sat by the glass case containing the Munksgaard edition of the manuscript open in front of her. An oil lamp glowed on the wall above her. A small gas heater on the floor generated some cozy warmth.
Kjartan hovered in the doorway and finally said, “I was in the church this morning when they announced that your father passed away. I’m very sorry.”
She was slow to answer but finally said, “Thank you. My father was actually very ill, and he’d been longing to die for some time.”
“I know, but it’s still sad to lose a father,” said Kjartan.
“Yes, that’s certainly true. It leaves a vacuum, and maybe it’s harder than I expected. I came here this evening to take a look at the books he admired the most.”
Kjartan looked around. “It’s not a big library,” he said.
“No, but it’s served its purpose for a hundred and thirty years. The building is exactly 11.2 feet wide and 15.4 feet long, I’m told.”
She was leafing through the manuscript again.
“Are you reading the Flatey Book?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m just perusing through it and jogging old memories. My father knew the original version of this manuscript more than most. The islanders take good care of their book, though, even if it’s just an imperfect copy. They normally keep it under this glass, but I’ve been given permission to browse through it.”
Kjartan drew closer and looked at the book. “Can you read that text?” he asked.
“Yes, most of it.”
“Where did you learn that?”
“My father taught me, indirectly.”
“How do you mean, indirectly?”
“It might strike some people as odd, but it seemed perfectly logical to me at the time. My mother died when I was six, and after that I was brought up by my father on his travels. We lived in Copenhagen when Dad was working on his research at the Arnamagn?an Institute and the Royal Library. He’d just completed his doctorate when my mother was diagnosed with the cancer that killed her within two years. My father and I were very close and couldn’t be parted from each other after that. Dad was withdrawn and didn’t mix much with other people unless he had to for his work. So we had few friends. I learned very early on that if I could sit quietly and behave, I could follow my father just about anywhere. He, therefore, never tried to find me a foster home. I didn’t even go to school until we moved back to Iceland after the war. Dad taught me everything I needed to learn and a lot more besides. It mightn’t have been on the national syllabus, but he often allowed me to decide what we read myself.”
She smiled at the memory. “I also believe that children should be allowed to choose what they study. The subjects should be introduced to them, and then they should decide. I realize that that would mean that everyone would have to have a private tutor, of course, which wouldn’t be very economical.”
Johanna smiled again and then continued: “My father traveled around the Nordic countries and Germany, delivering lectures about the Icelandic sagas at universities. I tagged along and sat in the corners of the lecture halls. I often read something I brought along with me or drew pictures or allowed myself to daydream about having friends and playmates. Naturally I longed for friends, but I never dared to tell my father that. I was too scared he would send me to boarding school so that I could mix with other girls. He sometimes mentioned that it might be a good idea, but I categorically refused. He was all I had after Mom died, and I didn’t dare to let go. I preferred to be with him on his trips and put up with sitting still in stuffy classrooms for hours on end.”
Johanna mused in silence a moment and then continued: “Sometimes I listened to Dad when he was delivering his lectures. I also accompanied him when he was conducting his research at the library. That was on the same conditions. I was never to disturb him while he was working. The manuscript texts could be difficult to read, and he was used to reading them out loud and skimming the words with his finger. I often stood by his side, listening and following. That’s how I learned how to read the Gothic letters and understand the spelling and abbreviations.”
Johanna stopped talking. Kjartan’s question had been answered.
“That must have been an odd life,” he said.
“Yes, but they were also very special times. I was only ten when the war broke out, and after that people just became preoccupied with themselves. No one gave much thought to a little foreign toddler of a girl following her dad around everywhere.”
“Where were you during the war years?”
“We carried on living in Copenhagen, and Dad continued on his research. After the Germans occupied Denmark, he continued his lecture tours to Germany. He was totally apolitical and completely indifferent to who happened to be in power, so long as he could pursue his studies. Researching the sagas and deciphering their mysteries was his only goal in life. There was a great deal of interest in Germanic philology in Germany at the time.”
“Why did you move back here to Iceland?”
“We were forced to. My father hadn’t realized that during the German occupation his Danish colleagues resented him traveling around Germany on lecture tours. He had such a poor grasp of what was actually going on around him that he didn’t realize that people’s attitude toward him was changing. He didn’t feel the need for friends. So long as he could find a group of university students who were willing to listen to him for part of the day, he was happy. It didn’t matter to him whether he spoke Icelandic, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, or German. And I tagged along and listened, too. But then the Germans lost the war, and the day they pulled out of Copenhagen my father’s world crumbled. He was fired from the Arnamagn?an Institute and was never allowed to set foot on the premises again. The Royal Library was closed to him, too. His greatest treasure, the Flatey Book, had been taken away from him forever. He was driven back to Iceland and could count himself lucky that he got a teaching post in a secondary school.”
“Did he need to have access to the original manuscript to able to continue his research? Couldn’t he have used a copy like this?” Kjartan asked, pointing at the book lying on the table in front of Johanna.
“That’s a good question. Is this old vellum manuscript of any value? Everything it can say to us in the text has
