Monday, June 6, 1960
It was raining. The nocturnal eastern wind had subsided at dawn, but the downpour persisted as the islanders gathered for their morning chores. The sheep had taken shelter under the gables of the houses in the village during the night. Ewes lay about pensively chewing the cud, while the lambs slept off the troublesome night. The farmers examined the sky and forecast more of the same weather.
Grimur had no nets in the sea and therefore took it easy for most of the morning. The nets had all been taken up before the day of the mass, so there was no hurry to go out to sea. The seal pups could play undisturbed on the furious surf by the skerries that day.
Kjartan was upstairs in the loft and seemed to be sleeping. Grimur had gone to bed early the night before and had not heard the guest come in, although he saw his wet overcoat in the hall. Let him rest, the district officer thought to himself as he was drinking his morning coffee. He didn’t really know where the investigation was supposed to go from here. The most sensible thing was probably to request some assistance from Reykjavik.
Ingibjorg sat in the living room, listening to music on the radio as she knitted a sock out of a ball of coarse wool. Hogni popped by and accepted a cup of coffee, but then he headed home when Grimur told him their sea trip was on hold. It looked as if they were in for an uneventful day.
Grimur went into the shed, milked the cows, and led them out to the field. There were three of them, two of which he owned himself and one which he fed for Sigurbjorn. In exchange the Svalbardi farmer housed a few sheep for him.
Thormodur Krakur was busy doing something in front of his old barn. He started the day early and had obviously taken his cattle to the pastures ages ago. Grimur walked over to him and said hello.
“What are you making there, Krakur?” he then asked.
“Can’t you see? A new lid for the well. You’ve been hassling me about it for long enough,” Thormodur Krakur answered, brandishing his hammer. He was in a bad mood.
Grimur examined the work. It was true that he’d told Thormodur Krakur several times that the lid to the well needed mending. The wood was starting to rot, and it could be hazardous to step on it. Thormodur Krakur had found material to make the lid from some boat wreckage lying on the southern shore.
“That’ll make a great lid, Krakur, my friend,” said the district officer, but then he left when he realized that Thormodur Krakur wouldn’t be answering him.
Grimur let the cows roam freely in the field while he was shoveling the dung channel, but then he led them to the pastures further out on the island. They were lazy in the wet weather and moved slowly. Little Rosa from Radagerdi was also out with her father’s cows.
“Grimur, Grimur,” she said breathlessly when they met. “Svenni says there’s a red angel in the churchyard. Do you think that’s true?”
“There are certainly many angels in the churchyard, Rosa dear,” Grimur answered, “and who knows, some of them might be red.”
“Yeah, but you can’t see them normally. Svenni says that you can see this one very clearly.”
“When did little Svenni see this angel?”
“Earlier on. He slipped into the churchyard to gather some tern eggs. I met him when he came running back. He was so petrified that he ran straight home. Maybe the angel appeared to stop Svenni stealing the eggs from the churchyard.”
“Do you really think God would send an angel down to us just because someone was pilfering a few tern eggs in the corner of a garden?” Grimur asked.
“The priest says we’re not allowed to take any eggs out of the churchyard. It’s sacred. You can’t even pick sheep sorrel there,” Rosa said gravely.
They ushered the cows through the gate into the outer pastures and then closed it with a sliding hinge bar.
“Off you go now, and eat well,” Grimur said to the cattle as he left.
“Shall we go take a look at this angel, Grimur?” Rosa asked.
Grimur smiled at her. “Sure, we can pass the churchyard on the way back, even if it’s raining a bit,” he said. “It’s not every day that you get a chance to meet a real angel.”
They sauntered back and turned right along the road to follow a narrow track toward the churchyard. Everything seemed normal. The fences that lined the graves and tombstones were surrounded by dense clusters of tall yellow grass from last fall, and the wet ironwork glistened in the drizzle. There was some commotion among the arctic terns that nested in the southern part of the cemetery. They were screeching noisily over one of the graves, and Grimur thought he spotted something new by the tombstone.
Rosa saw it, too, and stopped. She tugged at Grimur’s jacket and whispered, “I think I’ll just take a look at the angel later. I’ve just remembered I was suppose to go straight home.”
“Right then, you just go on home,” said Grimur, but she hadn’t waited for an answer and was already running back the same way they came and swiftly vanished down the slope without looking back.
There was no opening in the fencing on this side of the churchyard, but Grimur had no problems climbing over the low wire netting, even though he was a bit stiff in his hips. Once he had entered, he felt it appropriate to bless himself but then continued walking. The quarrelsome arctic terns then turned on Grimur and dived toward his head, one after another, as he trod the narrow trail between the graves. He waved his arms at them and pushed his cap to the back of his head. His visor was pointing in the air now, so that the most daring terns would knock their beaks against it, while his bald head remained mostly protected. He had dealt with terns like this countless times before and wasn’t too bothered by their uproar. His eyes were firmly focused on what lay ahead.
Inching forward, step by step, Grimur approached a mass that initially looked like a red angel, as Svenni had said. But as he drew even closer, he saw that it was a half-naked human body covered in blood and kneeling on the grave. Its arms and head dangled over the white tombstone. On its bare back there was something that in the distance had looked like fiery red wings. Blood had trickled down the body in the rain and dyed it red. The body’s coat, jacket, and white shirt had been yanked down over the man’s waist.
Grimur froze and swallowed in an attempt to moisten his parched throat. Then he drew closer to see who had met this terrible fate in the night.
Question twenty: Who ate his father’s killer? First letter. Sarcastic Halli said, “I don’t know of anyone who avenged his father as gruesomely as Thjodolf because he ate his father’s killer.”
The king said, “Tell us how this is true.”
Halli said, “Thorljot, Thjodolf’s father, led the calf home on a lead, and when he got to his hayfield wall, he hoisted the calf up the wall. Then he went over the wall, and the calf tumbled off the wall on the other side. But the noose at the end of the lead tightened around Thorljot’s neck, and he was unable to touch the ground with his feet. So each hung on his own side of the wall, and they were both dead by the time people arrived. The children dragged the calf home and prepared it for food, and I think that Thjodolf ate his full share of it.” The answer is “Thjodolf,” and the first letter is t.