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 long been copied down, letter by letter, and even photographed, as you can see. The only thing that remains is the object itself, the vessel used to convey texts that have long reached their destinations. Why then are some people so obsessed with this ancient vellum manuscript?”
She peered into Kjartan’s eyes, but he seemed unable to offer an answer. She provided one herself: “It’s because when we look at this book and pick it up, it brings us into direct contact with people who lived in the fourteenth century. We sense their presence in the manuscript’s aura. And that was the presence that my father needed to feel. I think there are very few people who can sense that contact. To other people, this is just manuscript number 1005 folio in the Royal Library.”
“Have you seen this vellum manuscript?” Kjartan asked.
“Yes, I have. I read practically every single page over my father’s shoulder.”
“Did you sense this presence?”
“Not in the way my father could, but it’s the most beautiful book I’ve ever set my eyes on. The glowing black letters on the light brown vellum are like endless strings of pearls. To me these illuminations are on a par with the most beautiful frescoes on the ceilings of majestic palaces. Unfortunately, these photographs are just a pale reflection of what they’re really like.”
Johanna turned the pages in front of her. “When I look at these pages, I get the same feeling I get when I look at photographs of relatives and friends. It gives me some pleasure, but I’d rather meet them in person. Each page in the book is like an old friend you long to see again.”
“Tell me about the Flatey Book,” he asked.
She pondered a moment. “Do you want to hear the long story or the short one?” she finally asked.
“The longer story if you have the time.”
She gazed through the window where the sun was setting behind the mountains in the northwest and said in a soft voice, “I’ve got plenty of time now.”
She then started to tell the story, talking relentlessly for hours. Kjartan listened intently, and they both became oblivious to the passage of time.
Finally, the story ended, and Johanna silently leafed through the Munksgaard edition. Kjartan was also silent and pensive. Then he took out the sheet that Reverend Hannes had given him with Gaston Lund’s answers to the Flatey enigma.
“Do you know the story of the Flatey enigma?” he asked.
Johanna nodded. “I’ve read the questions. My father spent hours grappling with it.”
“Was he able to solve the riddle?”
“He’d figured out the key to the solution. I don’t know if anyone else got as far as he did, since living here gave him daily access to the clues in the library. He knew that the answers to the first thirty-nine questions were useless until the answer to the fortieth question was found. There was no other way of verifying the answers. He overexerted himself the night he unraveled the clue and collapsed by this table here. I found him really ill on the floor. Thormodur Krakur helped me to get him home on his cart. My father never got back on his feet to be able to complete the task after that, and he didn’t want me to finish it. His notes have been waiting here ever since.” Johanna pulled a ring binder off one of the shelves.
“I’ve got a copy of the professor’s answers here,” Kjartan said. “Can you help me to understand the questions and answers?”
“Yes, probably,” she said pensively. “I can try.”
Johanna leafed through the Munksgaard book until she found the loose sheets with the Flatey enigma. She placed them to the side where she could see them and also took a sheet out of her father’s folder. Then she read out the questions one after another, checked the answers that her father had guessed, and looked up the relevant chapters in the Munksgaard book with her nimble fingers. She knew all these pages so well and found the right chapters in the bat of an eyelid. Running her finger over the text, she occasionally read a few lines out loud, but she generally just gave Kjartan an overview of what the chapter was about. Kjartan limited himself to a silent nod whenever Gaston Lund’s answers were the same as those of Bjorn Snorri, but otherwise he read out the alternative answer. In this manner they went though each of the forty questions, one after another…