It was mind-numbingly cold.
Although Daníel was well bundled up in layer upon layer of wool, with a thick down jacket over the top, it didn’t help: the cold still found its way inside, piercing him to the bone.
He wondered if his travelling companions were suffering similar torments but didn’t dare ask in case it made him sound weak, just kept his head down and ploughed on, buffeted by the wind and driving snow. He couldn’t see the surrounding landscape, couldn’t tell what kind of terrain they were crossing; his whole world was reduced to a swirling whiteness and the vague shapes of figures moving ahead.
He had lost track of the time but it felt as if they had been walking for hours since the storm blew up, although probably it had been closer to an hour. No one had said anything for a while now. They were all doing their best to keep going, trying to stick close together and follow Ármann’s lead. Since he knew the area better than any of them, all they could do was trust him when he said there was an old hut ‘not too far away’.
The way he put it didn’t exactly inspire confidence.
Despite growing up in Iceland, Daníel had been living in Britain for a number of years, first as a student at drama school, then trying to make a living on the stage.
This reunion trip with his old friends had been on the cards for a while. Ármann had offered to organize it, then, at the last minute, suggested they swap their planned visit to a holiday cottage in the south-west, within easy reach of Reykjavík, for a ptarmigan hunt in the remote highlands on the other side of the country instead. He assured them that he’d been on countless game-shooting trips in the eastern highlands and that there could be few better ways of cementing their friendship. When the message arrived, Daníel had been so busy that he simply hadn’t had time to raise any objections. He didn’t have a gun licence but Ármann had offered to teach him to shoot. ‘There’ll be no one there to see us, so you’ll get a chance to bag a few birds, don’t you worry.’
But as soon as they made their first foray onto the moors, everything had gone wrong.
They didn’t even have their luggage with them, only provisions for that day, though they had their shotguns, of course, since that was the whole point of the exercise. Daníel had suggested leaving the guns somewhere to lighten their load and coming back for them later, but this had not gone down well.
He tried to soldier on, reminding himself that he must on no account lose his concentration. There was a tacit agreement among them to put their faith in Ármann and trust that he would get them to shelter.
Sure, Daníel was freezing, but hopefully the worst of the chill would be banished once he was safely indoors, out of the elements. He tried not to dwell on the thought that they didn’t even have sleeping bags with them, and that the wretched hut they were trying to reach apparently didn’t have any form of heating. No electricity; no way of getting warm. Still, at least it would provide some shelter.
As if the cold wasn’t bad enough, deep down the fear was growing that they were lost; that Ármann’s sense of direction wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. If this turned out to be true, Daníel wouldn’t just be worried, he’d be scared to death. There was no chance of their finding their way back to the lodge. If the storm continued with the same violence, they would have no choice but to stop somewhere and wait it out, but without tents or sleeping bags there was a danger they might freeze.
He couldn’t see a bloody thing.
Of course, Daníel remembered storms from his youth, but nothing like this, and his years in Britain’s gentler climate had softened the memories, making him forget what the cold was really like. The blizzard they were experiencing now was more brutal than he would have believed possible. And it seemed incomprehensible to him that it could be so dark in the midst of all this whirling whiteness. Could the early November dusk have fallen already? Surely they hadn’t been out here that long?
He was terrified he would lose sight of the person immediately in front of him. They were walking in more or less single file, with him bringing up the rear, and it was taking all his strength to keep up. He knew that the others were more experienced at coping with conditions like these, or at least Ármann and Helena were. They had both been eager for the hunt; not just eager but excited. Daníel had never shot a ptarmigan and now it didn’t look as if the weather gods were going to give him the chance even to see one; not today, at any rate. He wasn’t actually sure he’d ever tasted ptarmigan. When he was younger, perhaps.
All of a sudden, he noticed that Helena, who was second to last in the line, had stopped just in front of him. Then Daníel saw through the thickly falling flakes that the others had come to a halt. Had something happened?
Ármann called back to them but Daníel couldn’t hear through his woollen hat and the thick hood of his down jacket.
Helena turned to him and said something but he still couldn’t make out a word. He loosened the drawstring on his hood and pushed it back from his face.
‘What did you say?’ he shouted.
‘Ármann says it’s here, just round the corner. At least, he’s pretty sure,’ she said. Pretty sure was not what Daníel wanted to hear right now and, for the first time, as his exposed ears stung with the cold, it came home to him that they really could die of exposure out here. He could quite simply freeze to death in this snowy waste. His thoughts flew to his girlfriend in London. As far as she knew, he was on a harmless adventure tour with his Icelandic friends, though, to be fair, she had warned him against it, asking whether it wouldn’t be more sensible to go on a trip like that in summer rather than in the depths of winter. She’d had a better instinct than he did for the potential hazards in his native country.
No, he mustn’t think like that. He was with a good group of people and together they’d find a solution. He had to keep these negative thoughts at bay. They never did any good, as he knew from bitter experience.
He had been staring into the void, into the falling snow, but now he glanced back at Helena. She smiled at him and seemed to be waiting for him to start moving again.
‘Ready?’ she called.
He nodded and drew his hood back up.
The group set off again and Daníel waded through the drifts, thankful that he was wearing a good pair of boots.
But he couldn’t stop his mind from conjuring up worst-case scenarios. If anything happened, he thought, if anyone got ill, they would be completely screwed. No one in the group had any medical experience.
They had each trodden their own path in life. Helena was an engineer and worked for some start-up that was making waves – according to her, anyway. Gunnlaugur was a lawyer and Ármann a guide. Well, he didn’t actually want to call himself a guide any more, not since he’d set up his own tour company. These days he must be richer than all the rest of them put together. There seemed to be no let-up in the growth in tourism, and, if you believed Ármann’s tall stories, he was making money off just about every visitor who came to Iceland.
Daníel liked them all well enough; that wasn’t the issue. He was fond of them, in spite of their flaws. The problem was simply that whenever they met up it was generally to celebrate something – a birthday, a wedding – and on those occasions the booze always flowed freely. But he hadn’t been sure he’d be able to cope with spending a whole weekend in their company, especially with no alcohol to smooth things over. He was certainly stone-cold sober now. Which was just as well, of course. But he remembered that Helena had stuck a bottle of brandy in her backpack, so at least they’d have something to warm themselves with and help calm their shattered nerves once they’d made it to the hut.
If they made it …
At that moment he saw a dim shape ahead.
Had they arrived?
His friends seemed to be slowing down and he allowed himself to hope.
Yes, it looked as if they’d found some sort of hut, however inadequate, out here on the wild moors.
Ármann hadn’t let them down.
Daníel felt a rush of relief, as though he’d been saved from certain death. He pushed back his hood again to try to hear what the others were saying.
They were all wearing head torches and the beams darted here and there, competing to light up the hut through the driving snow. Daníel thought it was painted red, like one of the old sæluhús, or emergency refuges, that dotted the Icelandic highlands, but it was hard to be sure in these conditions. Anyway, at least it was shelter from the wind and weather, which was all that mattered now.
Gunnlaugur was standing by the door and appeared to be trying to open it, but it was taking its time and Daníel could feel the cold biting harder with every second that passed.
‘The door – uh – it’s sticking,’ Gunnlaugur called in a despairing voice. He seemed completely out of place here, battered by the savage elements.
‘Let me try.’ Helena pushed him aside. ‘It’s only locked.’ Her voice was calm. It took a good deal to throw Helena off balance.
‘What, locked!?’ Daníel exclaimed. ‘Isn’t it supposed to be an emergency refuge?’
‘Some huts are kept locked,’ Ármann replied. ‘There should be a key box here somewhere.’ He directed his torch at the wall beside the door and, sure enough, there was the box, but it looked as if a code was needed to open it.
‘Do you know the code?’ Daníel could feel his heart beginning to pound. He had to get inside, into shelter.
‘No, I don’t,’ Ármann said. ‘I didn’t know we’d be coming here. Let me think for a minute…’
Daníel moved closer. ‘Shit. We must be able to break it open?’ He took off one glove and attempted to tear the box off the wall, but it wouldn’t budge and now he was acutely aware of the merciless cold. Hastily he pulled his glove back on but he’d already lost most of the feeling in his fingers. ‘We need a tool of some sort.’
‘Can’t we just break a window?’ Gunnlaugur asked, his teeth audibly chattering.
Ármann gave him a look. ‘Break a window? And try to sleep in sub-zero temperatures tonight? Good luck with that…’ His tone was acid.
‘We must be able –’ Gunnlaugur began, but Daníel interrupted:
‘Why the hell’s the hut locked? Aren’t these refuges supposed to be for people in our situation? We’ll die of exposure if we can’t get in!’
‘Calm down, Daníel,’ Helena said. ‘No one’s going to die of exposure.’
Once again, tensions were rising among the group.
From the moment he’d stepped off the plane Daníel had started regretting his decision to take part in this weekend trip, and the feeling had grown steadily worse. He would have given anything to be at home in his little flat in London with his new girlfriend. She was an actress too, fifteen years younger than him, and, at twenty, already more successful than he was, though he wouldn’t admit to this in anyone else’s hearing.
‘Should we try calling – try our phones?’ Gunnlaugur asked.
‘We’re in the highlands with no signal, Gunnlaugur,’ Ármann said flatly. ‘We’re alone here. Miles from the nearest house – the nearest person. We need to face up to the fact and sort this out ourselves. No one’s coming to rescue us – or not any time soon…’
‘It’s a bloody pain that there’s no phone signal here,’ Daníel muttered, more to himself than to the others.
But Ármann heard and replied: ‘We were aware of that. I mean, wasn’t that the plan? To be in the middle of nowhere together and try to switch off for a while? That was the whole idea, wasn’t it?’
Helena intervened: ‘Knock it off, guys. Look, we need to open this door, then make ourselves comfortable and get some brandy down our throats. So can we concentrate, please?’
‘It’s a pretty flimsy door,’ Gunnlaugur pointed out. ‘We could probably…’
‘We’ll break open the key box. We won’t do anything stupid. Then we’ll buy a new box to replace it. End of story.’ Ármann took the shotgun off his back.
Daníel jumped. It wasn’t that he was actually expecting Ármann to shoot anyone; it was just an involuntary reaction.
‘No need to worry, mate,’ Ármann said with a grin, but Daníel had the odd illusion that his words were charged with meaning. There was an indefinable smell of danger in the air, among the thickly falling flakes, but he couldn’t work out where it had come from. His imagination must be working overtime.
Ármann raised the butt of the gun and started hammering at the box, again and again, until it came loose, then kept on bashing at it until finally he extracted the key.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘It worked. Now we can relax.’
This struck Daníel as grimly amusing in the circumstances. How could they relax when they were miserably cold and far from home?
Ármann put the key in the lock and, after a brief struggle to turn it, opened the door. They were met by pitch darkness.
‘Well, let’s get inside.’
Helena didn’t wait to be told twice and almost pushed past Ármann.
Gunnlaugur followed behind, in no apparent hurry. Daníel patiently awaited his turn. At times Daníel wondered if Gunnlaugur was only half alive, he seemed so out of it.
Copyright © 2021 by Ragnar Jónasson.
English translation copyright © 2022 by Victoria Cribb
Excerpt from Reykjavík copyright © 2023 by Ragnar Jónasson and Katrín Jakobsdóttir.
