THE GIRL WHO DIED

Jónasson transports a Reykjavík teacher to a job in faraway Skálar, where she falls under the spell of the place. It’s not a good spell.

“Teacher wanted at the edge of the world” announces the advertisement that lures Una, barely scraping by in her humdrum job, to the Langanes Peninsula at the northeastern tip of Iceland. The town has a population of 10, two of whom need a teacher. Upon her arrival, Una settles into the attic in the house of Salka, whose daughter, Edda, 7, is one of her pupils. The other girl, Kolbrún, is two years older and a good deal harder to reach, maybe because her mother, Inga, is standoffish and her father, the fisherman Kolbeinn, is an indiscriminate flirt. But the girl who gradually comes to overshadow both Una’s pupils is Thrá, who died 60 years ago but who repeatedly, wordlessly appears to Una—and perhaps to other villagers as well, even if they won’t admit it. When one of her two students marks the end of their Christmas concert by collapsing on the church floor and dying of liver failure, Una feels her status in Skálar crumbling, a process that swiftly accelerates when she calls the Reykjavik police to tell them that she’s recognized the missing Patrekur Kristjánsson as someone who turned up at Salka’s door looking for Hjördís, who owns the local guesthouse. So why won’t Salka back up her identification? Why does fishery owner Guffi, the closest thing to a power broker in town, threaten her over what she’s done? And what does all this have to do with the long-dead Thrá?

An atmospheric, authentically shivery ghost story with criminal trimmings.