When Kjartan returned from the telephone exchange, he found the district administrative officer by his storage hut by the landing. Grimur sat on a wooden crate and had spread a canvas bag over his knees. He had placed the seal fur over it and was scraping the layer of fat off it with a sharp knife. A large basin of red soapy water lay by his feet, and another fur was soaking inside it. The third had been nailed to the gable of the hut, freshly scraped and washed.
Hogni was on the edge of the shore sorting the seal parts into barrels, although he occasionally chucked pieces of fat at a flock of seagulls that had gathered on the rim of the shore. He put down his machete and walked toward them when he saw Kjartan had arrived.
“So what kind of sermon did you get from the priest this morning?” Hogni asked eagerly, sitting on a rusty wheelbarrow and stretching out for the coffee flask and tin of cookies.
Kjartan started telling them about his conversation with Reverend Hannes, while Grimur listened in silence, scraping the fur.
“No wonder the priest’s in a state of shock to find out that his guest never made it home,” Hogni said. “I bet he’ll be saying his ‘Our Fathers’ tonight, poor guy.”
“I called the Danish Embassy in Reykjavik,” Kjartan continued, “and they immediately knew about Professor Lund’s disappearance. It was reported in the Danish press this winter. They’ve been searching for him all over Norway for months, but no one seems to have suspected that he went to Iceland. The Danish embassy is going to get more information. Then I phoned the district magistrate in Patreksfjordur, and he asked us to try to get more information. The detective force in Reykjavik is following the case and will step in if we run into any problems in the investigation. They’ll also be gathering some information on Lund’s movements in Reykjavik.”
Grimur pondered. “We can contact the crew of the mail boat. They might remember this passenger. There can’t have been that many passengers on these trips.”
Kjartan nodded. “But what about the farmer in Ystakot? You said he was in the habit of keeping a record of everyone who comes and goes on the boats. Do you reckon he can help us?”
“Good point,” said Grimur. “We can go over to Valdi after coffee.”
“…when the Flatey Book was written, the Icelandic language was undergoing considerable changes. However, the book was transcribed from various other manuscripts, both old and newer. It therefore contains a blend of old and new spelling, with many inconsistencies, as is the case in all Icelandic manuscripts, since the scribes neither had any spelling rules nor dictionaries. Each group of scribes followed their own methods, although at the beginning of the thirteenth century, one can see that the first grammatical treatise from the mid-twelfth century was beginning to have an impact. But everyone wrote in the way they were accustomed to, and that was to remain the practice in the centuries that followed…”