Although the professionals from Reykjavik are finally sent for, it's the amateurs who really do the lion's share of the murder investigations in The Flatey Enigma, and I found following them around this remote area of western Iceland to be fascinating. As villagers are interviewed, as they help guide the magistrate's assistant from place to place, the reader learns a lot about the customs and food of Iceland in 1960. I have to admit that I tended to skim over the menus quickly because roast puffin breast and baby seal stew just don't appeal to me, but the food people eat says a lot about them, and it certainly does here.
I deduced the killer's identity early on, but I still enjoyed following the investigation because I was learning so much about Iceland. Each chapter in the book ends with information about the Flatey Book (which actually exists), ancient Icelandic legends that are contained within its vellum pages, and finally the forty enigma questions themselves. Sometimes inclusions like these interrupt the narrative and are annoying. They certainly weren't in this case.
Sometimes when I read a mystery, what I reap is so much more than solving a crime, and this is what happened when I read The Flatey Enigma. Yes, the mystery is interesting, but I feel as though I learned a great deal about the customs and the people of an area of Iceland far removed from its capital of Reykjavik.
I deduced the killer's identity early on, but I still enjoyed following the investigation because I was learning so much about Iceland. Each chapter in the book ends with information about the Flatey Book (which actually exists), ancient Icelandic legends that are contained within its vellum pages, and finally the forty enigma questions themselves. Sometimes inclusions like these interrupt the narrative and are annoying. They certainly weren't in this case.
Sometimes when I read a mystery, what I reap is so much more than solving a crime, and this is what happened when I read The Flatey Enigma. Yes, the mystery is interesting, but I feel as though I learned a great deal about the customs and the people of an area of Iceland far removed from its capital of Reykjavik.
A tale of nautical, medieval, and mysterious beauty.
First, the realities. The Flatey Book (in Icelandic: Flateyjarbók or "Flat-island book," in Latin "Codex Flateyensis"), the most extensive and most perfect Icelandic manuscript, 225 vellum leaves written and illustrated by two scribe priests, contains the bloody and lustful sagas of Norse kings, an eddic poem, annals from creation to 1394, short tales, the "Greenlander Saga" account of the Vinland colony, and the Icelandic "History of the Orkney Islanders" and History of the Faroe Islanders." The finest (and surviving original) manuscript was owned by Jon Finnsson, residing on tiny Flatey ('Flat Island') off the west coast of Iceland, who gave it to the king of the Danes. From 1651 the Flatey Book was kept in the Royal Library of Copenhagen. It was repatriated to Iceland in 1971 as an Icelandic national treasure.
Now, the fictions. The Flatey Enigma, published in 2012, by Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson, begins with the discovery in 1960 of the gnawed and dissected body of Denmark's leading expert on the "Codex Flateyensis," mysteriously disappeared, then discovered dead, having been stranded on a tiny islet, ending his quest to solve the Flatey Enigma. The Flatey Enigma, a riddle that has challenged generations of scholars, is based on 39 questions whose answers can be found in the Flatey Book, leading to an ancient rhyme, all fitting into a mystical, perhaps magical, rune. The trail of the missing Dane leads straight back to tiny Flatey Island, a mile and half long and a third wide, and its handful of exotic sheep-herding and seal-hunting residents. Ingolfsson adds a neurotic off-islander sent to investigate, the ill reclusive scholarly rival of the missing Dane and his mysterious daughter, and the shadowy bastard son of the dead scholar. The threads of the events leading to the scholar's abandonment and death are as intertwined as a sailor's Turk's Head knot. Slowly and craftily Ingolfsson weaves together the 39 questions, their answers, the medieval tales of blood, lust, and horror, and links these into the forty-year old back stories of the Flatey islanders, their visitors, and the seekers after the Enigma solution. He tightens the knot claustrophobically around the islanders, then loosens it to encompass western Europe during and following World War II, encircles the scholarship of the Enigma quest, then neatly whips off the loose ends into a thing of nautical, medieval, and mysterious beauty.
It is very appropriate to quote from the Author's Postscript: "My grandfather, Viktor Guðnason, was the manager of the post and telephone exchange in Flatey, as well as the church organist. My grandmother, Jónína Ólafsdóttir, was a goodwife in Sólbakki in Flatey and baked cakes that acquired great fame. I got to spend several summers with them, the last of which was in 1964. In the summer of 1960, I was a five-year-old boy staying with them in Flatey, so this period is firmly embedded in my mind. Among other things, I have a vivid memory of the moment when my grandfather showed me the Munksgaard edition of the Flatey Book in the library. The Munksgaard edition can now be viewed there under a glass case, as it is described in this book."
First, the realities. The Flatey Book (in Icelandic: Flateyjarbók or "Flat-island book," in Latin "Codex Flateyensis"), the most extensive and most perfect Icelandic manuscript, 225 vellum leaves written and illustrated by two scribe priests, contains the bloody and lustful sagas of Norse kings, an eddic poem, annals from creation to 1394, short tales, the "Greenlander Saga" account of the Vinland colony, and the Icelandic "History of the Orkney Islanders" and History of the Faroe Islanders." The finest (and surviving original) manuscript was owned by Jon Finnsson, residing on tiny Flatey ('Flat Island') off the west coast of Iceland, who gave it to the king of the Danes. From 1651 the Flatey Book was kept in the Royal Library of Copenhagen. It was repatriated to Iceland in 1971 as an Icelandic national treasure.
Now, the fictions. The Flatey Enigma, published in 2012, by Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson, begins with the discovery in 1960 of the gnawed and dissected body of Denmark's leading expert on the "Codex Flateyensis," mysteriously disappeared, then discovered dead, having been stranded on a tiny islet, ending his quest to solve the Flatey Enigma. The Flatey Enigma, a riddle that has challenged generations of scholars, is based on 39 questions whose answers can be found in the Flatey Book, leading to an ancient rhyme, all fitting into a mystical, perhaps magical, rune. The trail of the missing Dane leads straight back to tiny Flatey Island, a mile and half long and a third wide, and its handful of exotic sheep-herding and seal-hunting residents. Ingolfsson adds a neurotic off-islander sent to investigate, the ill reclusive scholarly rival of the missing Dane and his mysterious daughter, and the shadowy bastard son of the dead scholar. The threads of the events leading to the scholar's abandonment and death are as intertwined as a sailor's Turk's Head knot. Slowly and craftily Ingolfsson weaves together the 39 questions, their answers, the medieval tales of blood, lust, and horror, and links these into the forty-year old back stories of the Flatey islanders, their visitors, and the seekers after the Enigma solution. He tightens the knot claustrophobically around the islanders, then loosens it to encompass western Europe during and following World War II, encircles the scholarship of the Enigma quest, then neatly whips off the loose ends into a thing of nautical, medieval, and mysterious beauty.
It is very appropriate to quote from the Author's Postscript: "My grandfather, Viktor Guðnason, was the manager of the post and telephone exchange in Flatey, as well as the church organist. My grandmother, Jónína Ólafsdóttir, was a goodwife in Sólbakki in Flatey and baked cakes that acquired great fame. I got to spend several summers with them, the last of which was in 1964. In the summer of 1960, I was a five-year-old boy staying with them in Flatey, so this period is firmly embedded in my mind. Among other things, I have a vivid memory of the moment when my grandfather showed me the Munksgaard edition of the Flatey Book in the library. The Munksgaard edition can now be viewed there under a glass case, as it is described in this book."
