You might already have guessed it, but let’s confess it openly: I am a “country collector”. I cannot resist an opportunity to discover, even briefly, a new country. So, when my travel agent proposed me to replace a direct flight from the US to Paris by a cheaper flight with a short connection in Iceland, I seized the chance, but I added a few hours to the stopover times. Just enough to rent a car and explore the Reykjanes peninsula during the outbound trip and Reykjavik, the capital city, on the way back.
Of course, I only could get a glimpse of some of the country landscapes. Since it was the end of June, the sunset was just before midnight and sunrise just after 3am. During my nocturnal loop on the peninsula, I encountered more birds and Icelandic horses than inhabitants. I crisscrossed long stretches of black basalt. Here and there patches of purple flowers were bringing some color. Elsewhere the steam from geysers was adding drama. I drove through a few fishing villages or small harbors, surprised by the absence of people in the street despite the daylight. I stopped to walk towards lighthouses marking the coast’s ruggedness. Despite my sweater and my rain jacket, I was shivering, so close from the summer solstice. I also walked around a few churches and their cemeteries.
By chance, I stopped at the church at Hvalnes, a very nice structure built from black rocks by an Icelandic farmer and ship owner at the end of the 19th century. This church and its cemetery play a central role in the movie adapted from the novel « Jar City » written by Arnaldur Indriðason (the novel was published in the UK under the title “Tainted Blood”). It was the novel I had just downloaded as an audiobook and that I was listening to as I was driving during my night tour.
I am not very familiar with Scandinavian crime novels, but I really enjoyed this book, one of the first works by Indriðason to have been translated abroad. Inspector Erlendur, together with his younger colleagues, Sigurdur Óli and Elinborg, investigates Holberg’s death, an old man whose head was hit by an ash tray, without any apparent motive. At the same time, he must deal with his daughter, Eva Lind, a drug addict, who is pregnant and reproaches him to have been an absent father while begging for his money.
Erlendur discovers that the dead man has a past, a past in which he will dig with his surly obstinacy. About 40 years ago, Holberg was accused of rape, but had been left off the hook because the policeman in charge thought that the victim had been “looking for it”. Later, that woman committed suicide after her 4-year-old daughter’ death following an unexplained illness.
Was Holberg the child’s father? Did he rape other women? Erlendur finds an old picture of a gravestone at the back of a drawer in his apartment. He contacts the rape victim’s sister, locates the grave and decides to reopen it to proceed to a new autopsy (in the movie by Baltasar Kormákur, the tomb is in the Hvalnes church’s cemetery). The autopsy reveals that the girl’s skull is empty and that her brain is missing. Where did the organ go?
The novel then leads us in the dark meanders of a project – an actual one – of codification of the Icelandic population’ genes, a very singular genetic pool. The objective of this controversial project was to facilitate research about genetic diseases affecting Icelanders. But wouldn’t this data base open the door to abuse? Beyond the crime novel, written with talent and suspense, « Jar City » offers a genuine reflection on filiation and genetics. Indriðason’s novel gave me in a few reading hours broader perspectives on Iceland’s society than the short hours I drove looking at the fascinating ruggedness of the island’s landscapes.
