The house has the mountains at its back, a little round-shouldered, not the grandest place, just solidly built. But the wall on its base of whitewashed stone casts a shadow over Marita. She crumples a little around that red, 5thudding flesh. Now she pinches some colour into her lips. Tries a smile.

The village has awoken. The church bell is calling out across the fjord. From the harbour and the houses people are dribbling towards the church at their customary Sunday trundle. But one person is defying the current, marching, almost, in the wrong direction. Marita sees him. She doesn’t smile. Their paths cross with quick, swift steps. Then, suddenly, afterwards, she finds herself about to giggle.

The man is exceptionally short-legged, even for one of the Vágbingar. He trots on, heading for the foreland west of the village, a fishing rod slung over his shoulder like a rifle. Whereas most people fish with hand lines, Red Ragnar has procured this strange contraption, and now he doesn’t fish with anything else. In the village they say he’s never short of a bright idea.

Ragnar, Abbe’s big brother, is an unskilled joiner like his dad. He’s the village’s only—or certainly its most ardent—communist.

That he never sets foot in church except for christenings and funerals goes without saying. And although he grudgingly forgoes paid work on Sundays, he refuses to waste a whole day on thumb-twiddling and religious piffle.

‘If the fish weren’t allowed to bite,’ he apparently once said, ‘then Jesus would pull out their teeth himself.’ 6

Now he’s reaching the lake on the flat stretch of land between the village and the west-facing rocks. The fishing rod gives an elastic twang. He stomps along beside the grey and quiet water on his stubby legs. His face is closed, the heavy brows drawn down.

Ragnar is shorter and stockier than his siblings. Darker, too. His beard is jet black, and curly chest hair bristles all the way up to his collar. They say he’s really the son of a Spanish sailor who lost his way and ended up, roundabout, on the island, creating all sorts of fuss. Among other odd bits of gossip it’s rumoured that his mother was carried off in the pureness of her youth, vanishing into the mountains and returning home with a changeling in her belly.

It’s true that Ragnar has a head full of strange ideas, and that his big, masculine face possesses a beauty certainly not inherited from his father. The heavy features are a touch anxious now. He turns them up, against the wind.