The Guardians of the Covenant

by Tom Egeland

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

In the year 1013, Viking warriors raided an Egyptian tomb and unknowingly stole the greatest secret of the Old Testament. When a quirky archaeologist finds ancient Viking parchments containing runes and riddles, his mundane life is changed for good. These codes lead him on a quest for clues in mysterious places, from Egyptian tombs to antiquarian bookshops. Powerful forces are against him, but he manages to unveil a religious cover-up with potentially fatal consequences.

Release date: June 25, 2009

Publisher: John Murray

Print pages: 496

Sample

NORWAY, AD 1070

THE OLD Viking looked out through the small window of his cold cell in the monastery at the foot of the mountain. He coughed. A huge bank of fog was rolling in from the sea, but he could not see it, as he was almost blind. Down by the water’s edge, the seagulls were screeching around the rotting carcass of a seal caught between the rolling rocks and seaweed. He coughed again and bent his arthritic fingers round his quill.

Odin, grant me strength.

My hands, they shake. My gnarled fingers resemble more the claws of an eagle. My nails are scabrous and broken. Each breath is a rattling wheeze. My eyes, which once could see a buzzard high beneath the clouds, or a flag atop the mast of a ship over the horizon, are now prisoner to an eternal mist. Only when I bend close to the page can I discern the faint scribblings of ink. I hear the nib of my pen scratch across the parchment and recognise the smell of tannin. So it is, to suffer the slow death of old age.

Brage, grant me the hand to put down my memories on this whitened hide. More than forty years have passed since my lord and king, the man they called Óláfr hinn helgi, or Holy Olav, was struck by a sword at Stiklestad. I was his squire and friend. Still I see him standing before me, fearless and firm in his belief, as Kalv dealt him that fatal blow. He found his god, my king.

To please my lord, I let myself be baptised in the name of the White Christ. But through all the years, I have, in secret, never ceased to worship the gods of my ancestors. I did not dare confess my betrayal to Olav. In secret I paid homage to Odin and Thor, Balder and Brage, Freyr and Freyja. My own gods, who have protected me throughout my life. What has the White Christ done for you, my king? Where was Olav’s god when he fought so valiantly in the name of the Lord at Stiklestad? My own gods spared my life. They have let me live so long that this miserable frame of mine is failing. My bowels are rotting. My flesh hangs loose from bone and joint. The gates of Valhalla have never been opened for me. And yet a doubt gnaws at me: why did they not let me die in battle? When Olav and I were but young lads and sailed with the Vikings, I looked death in the eye in distant realms. But never did the Valkyries come to take me. I can taste still the thirst for blood and feel the frenzy that seized me when we neared foreign shores. I envisaged the treasures that awaited us, the fear in our enemy’s eyes, the pale breasts and thighs of the women we would ravish. We fought bravely, as our fathers and their fathers before had taught. How many did we kill? More than can be counted on a thousand men’s fingers. In my mind, I can still see the eyes of the men that I killed in the service of Olav, my king. We captured men and women whom we sold on as slaves and whores. We burned houses, lay villages to waste. That was our way.

But in later years, Olav struggled with his conscience. He prayed to his god for forgiveness. His god did not respect the honour of battle. But when this god’s servants folded their hands to him and begged, he smoothed over the sins that had tortured them so. Hypocrisy. I do not understand this fork-tongued god and his holy son. Therefore I still make sacrifices to my Odin and Thor. And to Bragi, the god of poets and skalds. They call me Bård the Skald. Not one of my songs has been written down; they live on the lips of others.

I have lived here in this monastery some twenty years now, and they treat me well. They hold me as a saint, for my closeness to King Olav and the Egyptian, Asim. Both now rest in Asim’s secret tomb, together with the treasure and scrolls that only he could read.

For those twenty-five years, from when we were but lads until the life seeped out of him under the punishing July sun in Stiklestad, up there in Trøndelag, I stood steadfast and loyal by my king. I am old now. I have my mind set on writing down – on the best parchment to be found, with a stripped quill and the finest ink – a secret from the life that I shared with my king. Before I die, I wish to tell the tale of a raid to the kingdom of the sun and the temple of strange gods.

Again, the old man looked out of the window. The monastery was swathed in sea mist. The seagulls were silent. He peered down at the words he had written. Runes filled the white parchment in symmetrical lines. He struggled to his feet and shuffled over to the window, where he leaned his elbows on the ledge, and stared into his memory. The salty sea air took him back to his youth, when he stood at the prow of the Viking ship, Sea Eagle, together with King Olav, their hair blowing in the wind and their sights set on unknown kingdoms.



THE VATICAN, AD 1128

THE FACE of Cardinal Bishop Benedictus Secundus appeared waxen in the light of the smoking oil lamp. He threw a pile of parchments on to the table and fixed the archivist with gimlet eyes: ‘Why has this manuscript not been given to me before now?’

‘Your Excellency! The Coptic document was one of the countless manuscripts confiscated by the Vatican over a hundred years ago. They have lain untouched in the vault ever since. That is, until Prefect Scannabecchi ordered that the documents be tidied and catalogued. The Coptic manuscript is one of many that were recently translated. We had no idea . . .’ The archivist hesitated as he looked from the cardinal bishop to Clemens de’Fieschi, the Pope’s trusted knight, who stood like a shadow in the half-dark. ‘. . . what the nature of the text was.’

‘And who was responsible for the Coptic manuscript?’

‘An Egyptian, Your Excellency . . .’

‘Ah, I should have guessed.’

‘. . . a certain high priest . . .’

‘Hah!’

‘. . . by the name of Asim.’

‘And where is the original manuscript now?’

‘As far as we know, the papyrus scrolls are in . . . Norway.’

The cardinal’s eye flickered, perplexed, as he sought to understand.

‘Noruega,’ the archivist repeated. ‘The land of snow. To the far north.’

‘Noruega.’ The cardinal bishop was struggling not to lose his temper. ‘How did a collection of holy scripts fall into the hands of those . . . barbarians?’

‘We do not know,’ the archivist whispered.

‘I am certain there is no need to explain how important it is that the original is returned to the Vatican?’

‘That is why I asked for an audience with Your Excellency.’

The cardinal bishop turned to Clemens de’Fieschi: ‘I want you to go there, to this country . . . Noruega. . . and to find the original!’

Clemens de’Fieschi stepped into the full light with an elegant bow.

‘Your Excellency,’ the archivist interrupted, leafing through the parchments until he found what he was looking for, ‘the directions given by Asim the Egyptian are only approximations . . .’

‘Find it!’ the cardinal bishop cut in, with his eyes pinned on de’Fieschi. ‘And bring it back.’

‘Your Excellency,’ de’Fieschi responded with a nod. The swish of his cape made the lamp flames flicker. They heard his footsteps retreat down the corridor and then the slam of the door.

‘De’Fieschi must find the original!’ the cardinal bishop exclaimed, more to himself than the archivist. ‘If this manuscript should ever fall into the wrong hands . . .’

‘It must never happen.’

‘Not a word! Not a word to anyone!’

The cardinal’s eyes ran over the archive shelves that went from floor to ceiling, full of parchments, manuscripts, documents, letters and maps. He folded his hands and with the words ‘O Lord God, help us to find the papyrus manuscript’, he left the archivist alone with his fear and the smoking lamps.



ICELAND, AD 1241

ON THE night they came to kill him, he stood out in the yard for a long time, gazing at the stars. Something ached inside him. A premonition. He shivered in the cold northerly wind. He had sat in the outdoor hot spring for an hour, before drying himself and getting dressed again. The steam from the hot spring glittered in the moonlight over the roof. The glimmering sheen made him think of the Northern Lights. He pulled his fingers through his grey beard and kicked a withered tuft of grass with his boot. How he loathed the icy-cold feeling that had penetrated his very soul. He had so much left to do. His age did not worry him yet; far from it, he was still as spritely and quick as a lamb. Ah, well. A shooting star flared across the sky. Was that an omen? he wondered. He filled his lungs and held in the frost. Somewhere on the farm a dog barked. A horse snorted in the stable.

The world fell silent again.

‘Well, well,’ he mumbled to himself. ‘Well, well, well.’

He went inside and mounted the stairs with the creaking seventh tread. Closing the bedroom door behind him, he sat down heavily on the bed, on the sheepskins that the maid had shaken and folded. And so he fell asleep, with his clothes on, and his head leaning against the coarse timbers of the gable wall.

Horses neighing.

Loud shouts.

A wooden gate opening, creaking, slamming shut.

Someone calling out a name. His name.

The sounds wove themselves into his dreams. His eyelids twitched. Then, in an instant, he was wide awake. He leapt up, and had to hold on to the bedpost to keep his balance. He heard shouting and barking outside. He looked out through a peephole. The farm was crawling with armed men. In the midst of them, he saw Gissur in the light of the torches. His face stiffened. Gissur! In a moment of rashness, he had allowed his daughter, Ingibjørg, to be wed with that worthless dog. Was it this knowledge which had been eating him? He and Gissur were bitter enemies. But this? Yet what more could you expect from a coward who ran errands for the Norwegian king?

His heart was thumping, but he did not want to feel his fear. Death would not come on such a night, he thought to himself, such a peaceful, starry autumn night.

He opened the chest that stood by the wall and rummaged around among the heavy clothes until his fingers found the lock of the secret drawer. The lock snapped open. His hands closed around the parchment scrolls. These must never fall into the hands of Gissur and the Norwegian king! He stowed the scrolls carefully under his homespun jerkin before sneaking down the narrow stairs and into the outside gallery. Under cover of dark, he skirted the walls of the buildings until he came to the house of Arnbjørn the Priest.

The priest was sitting up in bed, with his sheepskin pulled up to his chin. He heaved a sigh of relief when he recognised the chieftain. ‘Who . . .’

‘Gissur and his men!’

‘Gissur!’ The priest crossed himself and tumbled out of bed. ‘You must hide! I know where! In the cellar. In the storeroom there . . .’

‘But first you must swear to help me!’

The words had a strange ring to them. Calming. Imperious. Bold. He pulled out the parchment scrolls. ‘Arnbjørn, heed my words closely!’

Arnbjørn’s mouth was half open. His breathing echoed his pounding heart. ‘I am listening.’

He handed him the parchments. For a while, they both held the vellum scrolls.

‘If I am no longer living by daybreak, Arnbjørn, you have a mission. A mission that is more important than your own life.’

The priest nodded in silence.

‘You must, in secret, take these parchments to Thordur the Stammerer.’ He fixed the priest with his eyes. ‘And you must never say so much as a word about it. Never! Not a word! To anyone! Do you understand?’

‘What should I say to Thordur?’

‘He will understand.’

Thordur was the next Guardian on Iceland. If there was anyone on this earth that he trusted, it was Thordur the Stammerer, his brother’s son.

He let go of the scrolls. ‘Guard them with your life! Even if someone should gouge out your eyes . . .’ The priest gasped and took a step back. ‘You must never give the scrolls to anyone or tell that you have them, or even that you so much as know about them! Can you give me your oath, Arnbjørn, in the name of God?’

The priest hesitated for a moment, no doubt while he considered the prospect of having his eyes gouged out. Then he answered: ‘Of course!’

‘I trust you, my friend. Peace be with you, Priest Arnbjørn!’

With these words, he turned on his heel and went out into the night. The dark was cold on his skin. He heard the shouts of Gissur’s men as they scoured the farm, the neighing and pawing of the horses, the baying of the dogs and angry protests from the farm folk, who were aggrieved by the men’s behaviour. He opened the trapdoor behind the tool shed that led down to one of the passages in the cellar. He had to crouch as he ran down the narrow passage in the pitch dark, with his hands on the stone walls to feel his way. After ten or twelve metres, he ran straight into a wooden door. Damnation! He fumbled for his keys, opened the door and entered the storeroom. The air smelt of corn, mould and yeasted mead. He squeezed in behind some barrels of corn that stood against the wall. He knew they would not give up until they found him.

When they found him, there were jubilant cheers as they kicked the barrels aside and dragged him from his hiding place. In the light of their torches, he could see that there were five of them. He recognised Arni the Bitter and Simon the Knot. But Gissur was not with them. The coward.

He then saw Arnbjørn the Priest in the dark passage behind them. ‘My lord,’ shouted the terrified priest, ‘they swore they would show you mercy.’

‘So be it,’ he said, so quietly that the priest could not have heard him.

‘Be silent, priest,’ Simon the Knot demanded.

‘Gissur has promised to spare your life!’ Arnbjørn continued. ‘He said there could be no reconciliation if he did not meet you . . .’ He fell quiet as he realised that he had been fooled into betraying his chieftain.

One of the men laughed.

‘Where are the parchments?’ Simon the Knot demanded.

‘Where have you hidden them?’ Arni the Bitter shouted.

Who did they think he was?

Simon the Knot thrust his face up close. ‘You know that we will find them, old man! Even if we have to pull down the farm, timber by timber!’

And so they carried on. Until they lost all patience.

‘Strike him!’ Simon the Knot said to Arni the Bitter.

The warriors looked at him.

‘Talk!’ Arni the Bitter screamed.

All he felt was a deep peace. The knowledge that his life was over. A rich and dramatic life, that he could not deny. A life not dissimilar to those he had portrayed in the sagas.

‘No one shall strike!’ he said in a steady voice. Eigi skal höggva.

‘Strike him!’ Simon the Knot repeated.

He was not afraid. But he wanted to die with honour. He did not want to leave this life with his face mutilated by axe and sword. A sword through the heart would be more honourable.

‘No one shall strike,’ he said again with authority, and stared his slayers in the eyes.

Arni the Bitter was the first to strike. His sword struck an artery. The blood pumped out with great force. The sap rises in me still, he thought to himself as he sank to the floor. They all started to hack at him. From the tunnel he heard the whimpers of Arnbjørn the Priest. Please let him keep his promise and deliver the scrolls to Thordur the Stammerer, he prayed.

And so the life of Snorri Sturluson ebbed away, bathed in his own blood, surrounded by enemies.



ICELAND, 2007

SIRA MAGNUS is dead. He is floating face down in the hot spring, as if he has just taken a deep breath and is looking for something on the bottom. His shoulder-length hair radiates out like a grey halo in the water. His pale white hands bob on the ripples.

‘Magnus?’

My voice sounds thin and feeble.

His clothes billow on the surface of the water, like seaweed. Coins thrown in by tourists shimmer at the bottom of the pool.

I call his name again. Somewhere a raven caws.

I can’t move. Perhaps I’m just trying to postpone the inevitable – that I will have to pull him out of the hot spring and look into his lifeless eyes.

He did not fall in by accident. The pool is not deep. He could easily have got out.

Someone has killed him. Someone has drowned Sira Magnus.

I kneel down, grab his ankles and haul him out of the water, which smells faintly of sulphur. He is heavy. His clothes are sodden and dripping. When I turn him over on to his side, water runs out of his mouth. I try to find a pulse that I know ceased to beat some time ago. His face is red and bloated. He has lost his glasses. His eyes are wide open. And empty.

‘Oh, Magnus,’ I whisper, ‘what have they done to you?’ Or maybe I only think it. I take his hand in mine. I’m shaking. Water drips from his beard. His clothes cling to his plump frame.

The round pool is surrounded by uneven slabs. Here and there, defiant plants have pushed their way up through the cracks. A gust of wind whistles over the barren landscape.

I let go of his hand and ring the emergency services.

While I wait for the police, I run up to the house to see whether they have stolen the manuscript.

The door has been left wide open. I storm down the hall, through the drawing room and into the study. This is where we sat, last night, studying the fragile parchment. Codex Snorri. A strange collection of codes, texts, maps and occult symbols. It was nearly two in the morning by the time we finally stopped for the night. I remember how carefully he packed the manuscript away and locked it in the drawer of his desk. He kept the key on the keyring that hung from his belt.

The key and keyring are now hanging from the open drawer.

The Snorri Codex has gone.

Someone has stolen the ancient collection of texts.

I can just picture it. They held his head under water. They threatened him. And finally he gave in. He told them reluctantly where the manuscript was. Of course. I would have done the same thing. Some of the thugs had run up to the house. And once they had found the codex in the drawer of his desk, the bastards pressed his head under water as he struggled and fought, until eventually he stopped breathing and was floppy and still. Then they just left him floating in the water, like any other corpse.

In Snorri Sturluson’s hot spring.

The sirens rip through the silence.

A flock of ravens takes wing and disappears over the ridge of the hill in a cackle of complaint. Lögregla and sjúkrabíllin – the police and ambulance – arrive at such a speed that I wonder whether they have raced each other from Borganes, and in fact do not want to stop at all, now that they have got up speed. They obviously don’t know that the call ceased to be urgent hours ago.

I wave the police car and ambulance over, down the track to the pool. Blue lights flashing. The sirens whimper and fall silent, first one, then the other. Through the windscreen, I see their faces: sceptical, expectant, perplexed.

Sira Magnus?

Dead?

In Snorri’s hot spring?

Murdered?

They can scarcely believe it. Reykholt is tucked away in a peaceful corner of the world. The last murder in Reykholt took place some 766 years ago. One night in September 1241, Snorri Sturluson was murdered by Gissur Thorvaldsson’s men, on the instructions of King Håkon Håkonsson of Norway.

At present, I am the only one who knows that there is a connection between the two.



SIRA MAGNUS was a priest. He saved lost souls. I myself am an archaeologist and I save the past from oblivion.

Let me take you back a few days, only two days in fact. Let me fast-rewind to Saturday morning:

‘I have found something fantastic, Bjørn!’

Sira Magnus was standing in the sun, smiling and full of anticipation, when I turned into the parking place at Reykholt, Snorri’s old kingdom on Iceland. When I close my eyes, I can still see him in front of me, through the glare of the front screen – excited and very much alive. I stopped the car. Sira Magnus opened the door for me. We gave each other an awkward embrace, in the way men do, too afraid to show the admiration we really felt for each other.

‘Thank you for coming, Bjørn. Thank you. You won’t regret it!’

‘When were you thinking of telling me what you’ve found?’

‘Soon, Bjørn, soon.’

We met three years ago at an interdisciplinary symposium on the chieftain and saga writer Snorri Sturluson. Sira Magnus gave a talk on the similarities between Snorri and Socrates as carriers of wisdom and mediators of knowledge in medieval Iceland and Ancient Greece. I myself gave a paper on Snorri’s difficult relationship with Håkon Håkonsson, who became king of Norway in 1217, following the victory of the Birkebeiners in the civil war.

That is how we became friends.

A week ago, he phoned me and invited me to Iceland. I did not have the time. I explained that I was extremely tied up with the excavation of Harald Fair Hair’s royal farm on Karmøy. But he would not listen. I had to come. He had found something. Something historical. If I had not known him so well, I might have thought that he had lost his marbles. But Sira Magnus was a sensible priest in a rural parish, who seldom lost his composure.

‘So, what have you found?’ With suitcase in hand, I followed a few steps behind Sira Magnus, as he strode down the path that led to Snorrastofa, the research centre attached to the church and museum. He had a very particular rolling gait, as if his legs were slightly too short. Two cars stood parked in the large car park: Sira Magnus’s four-by-four BMW and my hire car.

‘A codex! A collection of documents . . .’

‘About?’

‘Written on the finest, softest calfskin! A handwritten collection of mysterious texts and verse, maps, directions, symbols and codes.’

‘What are they about? From which century? Who wrote the texts?’

‘Patience, my friend, patience!’

Sira Magnus always spoke slowly. In time with the metronome of the soul, as he used to say.

‘But why did you ask me, specifically, to come?’

‘That, my dear Bjørn, is obvious.’

I don’t know whether he meant because I was his friend, or whether he was referring to an incident a few years ago. I was the Norwegian inspector for the archaeological dig that discovered the Shrine of Sacred Secrets, a gold chest that contained a manuscript which gave me some degree of fame within academic circles.

Sira Magnus unlocked the door to the flat for visiting research fellows, where I was going to stay. I put my suitcase down in the hall. Then I grabbed him by the arm of his jacket and pulled him into the sitting room and pushed him down into a chair.

‘There. Now tell me!’

His face, if you took away the goatee and the spindle web of wrinkles, could have been a child’s. With gravity and ceremony, as if he were about to give a sermon, he cleared his throat: ‘Allow your friend to tell the story chronologically.’

‘Oh, get on with it!’

‘It all started about two weeks ago. There was a death in the parish. An elderly, paralysed man. So not unexpected. After the funeral, I was asked to help the family who had looked after the old man, on behalf of the congregation, to go through his considerable collection of documents. The old man was obsessed with genealogy. Family trees. His collection contained everything from reports on recent research to Icelandic family trees and manuscripts. The couple on the farm where he lived are very active in the congregation. Friends of mine. They were his inheritors. They asked me for help when the Icelandic company deCODE, which does gene research for the development of bio-pharmaceutical medicine, asked if they could buy the collection.’

‘What was deCODE going to do with it?’

‘Iceland has the world’s best gene bank. The genealogical history of the greater part of the population can be traced back to the days when Iceland was settled. No doubt, deCODE hoped that the old man’s collection might shed new light on unknown family relations. My old friend, the farmer, wanted an expert to look at the stuff first so that the company didn’t walk away with something that should go to the manuscript collection in Reykjavik.’

‘What did you find?’

‘The collection is unique. Truly unique! Ancient books. Letters. Parchments. Manuscripts. Some were barely in one piece. Maps. Property conveyance documents. Among all the papers I found an overview of the Sturlung family, Snorri’s family tree, from 1453.’

I tried to sneak in a question, but he held up his hand to stop me.

‘Just when I was about to pack away all the parchments, I noticed a bulge in the leather holder . . .’ He coughed guiltily. ‘So I cut open the darkened seam to see what was inside.’

‘You did what?’

‘Just listen! In the holder I found an even older text.’

‘You split open the holder?’

‘The parchment collection inside the holder was sewn together like a book. A codex.’

‘To split open something antique is vandalism. And you know that.’

‘I know that I did something terrible, Bjørn.’

‘Absolutely! You should have let a curator open the leather holder.’

‘No, there’s more to it.’

‘More to it? The fact that you cut open the holder is bad enough.’

‘More to the text.’ His focus became distant and dreamy. ‘Something about the words, about the handwriting, about all the geometrical characters . . .’

‘What did you do?’

‘You know that I am an honest and righteous priest!’

‘Magnus, what did you do?’

He looked at me, full of shame. ‘I hid the parchments under my jacket and took them home with me.’ His eyes crawled over the floor to meet mine. ‘I stole them, Bjørn.’

Later that evening, with a chilly wind blowing from the mountains, Sira Magnus showed me the codex. We sat at a cracked table in one of the rectory sitting rooms, a stone’s throw from Snorrastofa.

I could see that his face was distorted with pain.

‘What’s bothering you?’ I asked.

He shook his head dejectedly.

‘Do you feel ashamed that you stole the parchments?’

‘It’s more than that. I . . . nothing. Not now. Maybe another time.’

He took out a box wrapped in brown paper and newspaper from a locked drawer in his desk. He then folded back several layers of paper, before handing me the manuscript. The collection of parchments was remarkably intact. I ran my fingertips over the golden tan leather. ‘What is it?’ For some reason it felt right to whisper. With great care, I opened the codex. The first five pages were written in runes. Then I came to a section with paler leather and Latin letters. Three symbols were scratched into the leather: an Egyptian ankh, the rune tiwaz and a Christian cross.

The next page showed two maps of southern Norway and western Iceland.

And a pentagram.

‘Sacred geometry,’ Sira Magnus said.

That was all we needed.

‘To be honest,’ I said patiently, ‘I have never really understood whether sacred geometry is a myth or a science.’

‘Or something in between . . .’

‘You’re the priest.’

We had had a guest speaker at university who had managed to convince even a diehard sceptic like myself that our ancestors were influenced by ancient Greek and Egyptian concepts of maths, astronomy, geography and geodesy, the discipline that underpins cartography. With the help of satellite pictures and maps he had shown how medieval sacred sites and landmarks were positioned in accordance with geographical, geometric and mathematical patterns.

All the same . . .

Sira Magnus leafed back a few pages to the Latin letters and pointed at the handwriting.

‘Look! This script is called Carolingian minuscule. It’s what our modern letters are based on. A milestone in calligraphy.’

I gave him a look that I knew would be irritating, especially as it would be magnified by my thick glasses. Sira Magnus pointed to two tiny letters at the bottom of the page and handed me a magnifying glass.

‘Do you see those two S’s?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then perhaps you can understand what I’m talking about.’

But I, unfortunately, had not understood a thing.

‘S.S? Combined with Carolingian minuscule? Bjørn? You still don’t get it? S.S: Snorri Sturluson! The Latin letters were written by Snorri!’

Astonished, I looked down at the text. The wind complained and whistled around the corners outside.

‘The text was written by Snorri, personally,’ Sira Magnus continued.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Isn’t it incredible, Bjørn?’

If Sira Magnus was right, the codex would be a historical sensation. A piece of world history. Snorri handwrote hardly anything. He dictated. Surrounded by a host of scribes, Snorri composed his opus of sagas and myths about Viking kings and Old Norse gods. Scholars are still arguing whether an addendum in the margin of an Icelandic máldagi, a written agreement, was handwritten by Snorri himself or one of his scribes.

‘The fact that Snorri himself has handwritten parts of the text, and not left it to his most trusted scribes, must mean that the content is extremely sensitive,’ Sira Magnus said.

‘But why would Snorri mix his own parchments and texts in with an even older manuscript, written in runes?’

‘Well, if I knew . . .’

We leafed back and forth through the parchments with great care.

‘What is the text about?’

‘Instructions. Rules. Prophecies . . .’

He turned back a page and found an old Icelandic text:

The High Priest Asim declared that a time will come when the GUARDIANS will bring THE HOLY ONE back to his resting place, under the sacred sun, in the sacred air, in the sacred rock; and a thousand years will pass; and half of thi