House of Evidence(4)

Diary I


July 6, 1910. Woke up at seven on board Vestri. Arrived at Hólmavík, docking at eight o’clock a.m. There is still snow lying all the way down to the shore in Steingrímsfjördur, it is cold and raining…


July 7, 1910. Saw Drangey Island. There were men out there in boats, catching birds…


July 8, 1910. Arrived at Akureyri at four a.m., disembarked at six. Walked into town. Sunshine and balmy weather, calm sea. On Oddeyrartangi there were piles of small fish on the quaysides. Helgi and I walked to the church and back. The inhabitants of Akureyri are so wonderfully tasteful; they have beautiful gardens, with trees and flowers around the houses. In some places the trees are as tall as the houses…


July 9, 1910. We borrowed a boat and rowed across Eyjafjördur. We walked across Vadlaheidi to have a look at the new bridge that was built across the Fnjóská River in the summer of 1908. The bridge spans 55 meters from bank to bank, yet the thickness of the arch is only 50 centimeters at the top. Vigfús says that this is the longest arch bridge to have been built in the whole of Scandinavia. The woodland is fenced in, and the trees reach a height of 8 meters…


July 10, 1910. Set off on foot from Akureyri. Breeze from the north and rain showers. We have a picnic for the day…Öxnadalur valley is similar to Hörgárdalur except that it is narrower and there is less vegetation on the hillsides. Toward the mouth of the valley it is almost closed off by sand dunes partially covered by grass, “Hillocks high that half the valley fill,” as poet Jónas Hallgrímsson put it; the farm, Hraun, where he was born, is there…Arriving at Bakkasel, where we shall overnight.





It was almost eight o’clock, and Morgunbladid had still not been delivered. Halldór Benjamínsson opened the front door and looked around for the paperboy. He didn’t want to start breakfast before the newspaper arrived. An eight-inch-thick blanket of snow had fallen during the night, greeting him at the threshold.

“Halldór, dear, your tea is getting cold,” his wife, Stefanía, called from the kitchen.

He closed the door and went back inside. He was tall and slim, with a bit of a paunch. His gray hair, thinning a little, was carefully combed with a part on the right side. He wore spectacles with a thin gold frame. His face usually bore a benevolent expression, though this morning he was feeling grouchy.

“Can’t you read yesterday’s paper, dear?” asked Stefanía.

“I’ve already read it.”

He looked at the kitchen table. There were two teacups and saucers, and plates with toast beside them. A fat teapot stood there, too, with red tea-bag labels dangling from underneath the lid.

He examined the pattern on the china as he bit into his toast. Gold wreaths and braids atop a white glaze—it had been a wedding present from nearly thirty-five years earlier; during the first years of their marriage, it had been used for best times only, but it had long since entered daily use, with another set reserved for special occasions. There were fewer cups than there used to be, though.

“Will you be working for long?” Stefanía asked.

“Probably not,” Halldór replied, glancing at his wife. She was wearing a long bathrobe, but apart from that there was nothing to indicate that she had just woken up. Her blond hair was carefully combed and her modest makeup was in place.

“You remember we’ve got a bridge evening here,” she reminded him.

“Yes,” he lied.

“It’s only once a month and there’s no television tonight anyway,” she said.

“I’ll try and come home early.”

“Since we’re playing here, I must make a cake. What sort would you like?”

“Apple cake.”

“I made apple cake last time. We can’t serve it again.”

“Make something else, then.”

“I’ll make apple cake if that’s what you really want.”

From the lobby came the snap of the lid of the mailbox and a faint thud as the paper landed on the floor inside.

“About time,” he said, rising to get the paper.

He glanced over the front page as he came back into the kitchen.

“Vietnam: Peace Clearly in Sight but No Timeline Yet,” the headline read. He turned the paper over. “Trawls Still Being Cut,” read one headline under the fold, and another said, “Twenty-One Trawlers Out of Action if Strike Goes Ahead.”

Halldór had been a policeman all his working life, and was now a senior officer at the detective division in Reykjavik, in spite of the fact that he had always found the job tedious, and in the beginning had only accepted it as a stopgap measure.