Of course he could. He had assured his editor of that many times during his job interview. English, German, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, but not Kalaallisut, the Greenlandic language, although it had been a job requirement.
‘Yes!’ the photographer exclaimed as his massive camera clicked away. ‘Bloody amazing.’ He turned and looked at Matthew, wide-eyed. ‘Do you think my pictures will be in all the foreign newspapers?’
‘To begin with, yes.’ Matthew nodded lightly without taking his eyes off the ice beneath them.
‘Will they credit me?’
‘We’ll make sure they do,’ Matthew said. ‘But first let’s just find out who he is, shall we?’
‘This is insane,’ the photographer exclaimed, ignoring Matthew’s last words. ‘I’m gonna be world-famous. Holy shit, it’s insane! Yes!’
There was a jolt as the helicopter bumped against the ice. Matthew felt it sink as the wheels pressed into the belly of the heavy red body for one long second. It was his first trip in one of the big Air Greenland helicopters and, if his editor was to be believed, he might as well get his nerves and his stomach used to it, as many such trips awaited him—especially in the winter, when fixed-wing aeroplanes were often grounded by fog, storm, ice or thick snow.
None of that mattered right now. They had landed and were about to see the first Norseman mummy ever found. Dried out and preserved by the frost and the arctic air. Matthew could already visualise the headline: The iceman from the past. The last Viking. He tried to decide what would sound best in English, and how much drama he could inject into the story. A killing would be good. The last Viking, wounded and dying alone on the ice. That sounded intriguing. The last Viking. Left behind. Dying from his wounds.
3
The reflection from the ice was so bright that Matthew was almost forced to shut his eyes as he climbed through the helicopter door and made his way down the short iron ladder that had unfolded below his feet.
They were surrounded by a piercing whiteness more intense than anything he’d seen before.
The magic, however, was ruined by the still noisy rotors, which continued to chop the air into pieces above their heads with heavy, monotonous thuds.
One of the men signalled to the pilot, and soon the blades slowed as the engine was switched off. The din from the engine faded to a turbine-like drone before this tiny spot on the edge of the vast ice cap lay in deafening silence once more.
There had been three other men and a woman on board the helicopter. All were from Denmark originally, but as far as Matthew had gathered, they were now working at Ilisimatusarfik, the University of Greenland, except for one of the men, who was from the museum where Matthew had seen the Inuit mummies.
‘Hi, are you the reporter?’
Matthew looked around and saw a police officer who, in contrast to the group from the helicopter, looked Inuit.
The photographer was also Inuit. His name was Malik. He had been leaping about on ice and rocks ever since he could walk, and he was one of the few people from the newspaper Matthew had made friends with.
‘Yes,’ Matthew said, still with his eyes almost closed. ‘I’m supposed to write about the man found out here.’ His fingers instinctively sought out the wedding band that he no longer wore.
The police officer nodded. ‘He’s over there, but that’s not why I’m asking.’
‘So what is it?’
‘You mustn’t touch him, but I’m sure you’ve already guessed as much.’ He turned to Malik. ‘And you keep your distance—are we clear?’
‘Why?’ Malik demanded. ‘I mean, he’s frozen solid.’
The police officer shrugged and nodded in the direction of the archaeologists from the helicopter. ‘It’s their call.’
‘But it’s all right if we take some pictures and write about him, isn’t it?’ Matthew said, hoping that the archaeologists might hear him and invite him to join them. ‘This is big news, and we want to break the story before everyone else comes up here and steals our thunder. The whole world will want to know about this.’
He could see that his words hit home with the young police officer.
‘What did you say your name was?’ Matthew continued. ‘I want to be sure I spell it right in my story. After all, it’ll also go out in English.’
The officer pressed his lips together, but then he nodded. ‘Ulrik Heilmann. With two n’s.’ He gestured briefly to the photographer. ‘I went to school with Malik.’
‘All right, Heilmann with two n’s,’ Matthew confirmed, and looked at Malik. ‘Could you please take some pictures of Ulrik for the paper?’
Malik looked back at Matthew with his eyebrows raised, and then across to Ulrik. ‘But I thought we—’
‘Sure, sure, but we need the basics in place first,’ Matthew interjected. ‘We don’t want to miss anything.’
Before Malik had time to protest, Matthew turned to Ulrik again. ‘So can I write that you found him?’
‘Well, some hunters discovered him and contacted us at the station, so they’re the ones who found him.’
Matthew looked around. ‘And have they left?’
Ulrik nodded, his eyes big and round. ‘Yes, they’ve headed further up the ice to look for reindeer. Enok is getting married soon and they’ve gone hunting for meat for his wedding.’
‘Enok?’ Matthew echoed.
‘One of their cousins,’ Ulrik said with a shake of his head. ‘It’s not important. Only they were keen to move on.’
‘There aren’t many reindeer out here,’ Malik whispered to Matthew. ‘But they might come across a lost musk ox—you never know.’
Matthew looked at Ulrik. ‘It’s simpler if we write that you found him, but that you were acting on a tip-off from some hunters. It’s better that it’s your name in the paper when the calls start coming in from abroad. You’re much easier to track down than…’ Matthew looked across the fjords and the mountains, ‘…three hunters out there somewhere.’
Malik’s lens caught the now beaming officer, who nodded to himself before he turned to the small cluster of archaeologists and the museum curator, who had gathered around a long, brown cocoon of old fur.
Matthew craned his neck but could see nothing but the brown fur. His thoughts were still juggling different headlines in Danish and English, and all the media attention he would soon be getting.
He shook his head and stamped his feet on the glittering snow carpet. It felt solid, and yet when he stomped hard his feet would sink in. The heat of the sun was intense—he could feel it nipping at his skin and tightening his face. The snow was porous and coarse-grained. Summer snow. Its density increased with every centimetre it went down. That was pretty much all he knew about glacier formation. Eventually the pressure grew so great that the snow was compacted into ice. Several kilometres of it. Over the years the cloudy ice became clear as the purest crystal.
He looked up again. There was a dark crack in the ice cap not far from them. ‘Did you find him down there?’ he asked Ulrik, pointing at the crevasse.
Ulrik nodded with a smile, then his face fell. ‘They’re saying I shouldn’t have touched him before they’d had a chance to secure the discovery site, but we thought it was a dead hunter.’
Matthew smiled. ‘Of course—how were you to know? I’m sure they understand.’
Ulrik shrugged. ‘Perhaps… I hope so, anyway. It wasn’t until I’d brought him up and had a proper look at him that I realised how yellow he was and how the skin on his face and feet had dried up like a hide that’s been stretched out and hung up in the wind.’ He unzipped his black uniform jacket, took it off and draped it over one arm.