A creaking sound penetrated the doctor’s house from the road as the handcarts were dragged past the building on their way down to the village. Johanna peeped out the kitchen window and watched them moving away and eventually disappearing down the slope behind the graveyard. The mail would therefore soon be reaching the telephone exchange, and she would be able to collect her newspapers. It was best to wait a bit, though. Stina, the postmistress, was pretty quick at sorting out the mail, but some of the islanders were bound to show up early to collect their mail and just have a chat. Johanna, on the other hand, was in no mood for socializing that afternoon. She heard more footsteps passing the house, and then silence descended on the neighborhood again. The redshank that nested on the edge of the road grew calmer and stopped twittering in alarm. Strange that it should have chosen to build itself a nest in such an inconvenient place when there was no shortage of undisturbed nesting ground nearby. And it had laid its eggs in the same place the spring before.
Half an hour later, Johanna looked up from the book that she was leafing through when she heard a faint moan from the next room. She stood up and walked in to her father.
“Are you in pain, Dad?” she asked.
“Not too much, but it would be good to get the afternoon dose now,” her father answered. He lay under a white quilt in a high medical bed, looking shriveled and emaciated.
She glanced at her watch and fetched the dose from the pharmacy, which was a little room off the infirmary. He flinched slightly as she injected the dose into the intravenous drip connected to his arm, but he swiftly felt the effect of the opiate and closed his eyes again.
“Would you like me to read for you for a while?” she asked.
“No, I’m going to rest a bit.”
“The mail boat has arrived. I’ll go get the papers soon. We can read them when I come back. I won’t be long.”
He braved a smile and said, “I somehow feel I’ve read enough. I think I’ll soon be meeting my namesake, the late Snorri Sturluson and the mysterious author of Njal’s saga.”
He closed his eyes and dozed off. She adjusted his quilt and gently kissed him on the cheek.
Question eight: Greatest skiing champion. First letter. They ended up on a big mountain. It was a steep, narrow slope, which ended abruptly in a precipice dropping to the sea. King Harald Sigurdsson said to Hemingur, “Entertain us now with your skiing.”
Hemingur answered, “This isn’t a good place for skiing because there is little snow now and it’s stony and there is hard ice on the mountain.”
The king answered that he would not really be putting his skills to the test if conditions were perfect. So Hemingur put on his skis and zigzagged down the slope. Everyone agreed that they had never seen anyone ski so well. He skied down the slope at such speed that it was a wonder he did not fall. The answer is “Hemingur,” and the first letter is h.