Ármann Valur Ármannsson is an Icelandic scholar and proof-reader. Most of his life he has read texts by other people but now, when he’s into his sixties, he has started to wonder if he should maybe focus on his own writing. The only published work by him is a 218 word text that his friend, the composer Markús Geirharður, set to music he wrote for a voice, strings, and radio waves. The work was published on a record but was not widely know, as it was a very progressive and unusual work of art. The text is also remarkable for the fact that possibly – in fact it is very likely – there is important information regarding an unsolved mystery with a disappearance, which happens to be the most famous case in Icelandic criminal history, the Case of Geirfinnur. Ármann wrote the text after eaves-dropping in on a conversation between two men in the restaurant/discotheque Klúbburinn in November 1974, two days before Geirfinnur disappeared. No-one aside from Ármann and Markús knows anything about the real meaning of the text, not even the singer who performed it on the recording. But important information is no longer exciting when it is out in the open. And who better to judge the importance of suspense than the proof-reader?
