Synopsis:
Four friends. One night. Not everyone will come out alive.
When a deadly snowstorm strikes the Icelandic highlands, four friends seek shelter in a small, abandoned hunting lodge.
It’s in the middle of nowhere and there’s no way of communicating with the outside world.
They are isolated, but they are not alone . . .
As the night darkens, and fears intensify, an old tragedy gradually surfaces — one that forever changed the course of their friendship.
Those dark memories could hold the key to the mystery the friends now find themselves in.
And whether they will survive until morning . . .
Review:
Four old friends meet for a reunion. Ármann, a former guide who now owns and operates his own tour company, has organized the gathering, suggesting at the last minute that the group embark on a ptarmigan hunt in the remote Iceland highlands across the country from Reykjavik. The plan is to go to an isolated location and disconnect from everything — except each other — for a bit. Daniel grew up in Iceland, but has spent some years living in England, studying acting and then trying to establish himself in the theater. Unfortunately, although he believes his friends think he has hit “the big time,” he survives by waiting tables. But he’s definitely not fooling all of them. He does not know how to shoot, but agrees to participate in the hunt and let Ármann teach him. Helena is an engineer working for a start-up company and Gunnlaugur is a lawyer.
They set out in the morning with only provisions for the day, not even taking sleeping bags with them. The weather quickly grows ominous. Soon they find themselves attempting to navigate a full-fledged blizzard, walking single file through the “whirling whiteness” that leaves them in darkness. Because of his expertise as a guide, the others find themselves with no option but to trust Ármann to lead them to safety. They must keep moving to avoid freezing to death. Ármann claims he knows of an old hut, one of the emergency refuges that are scattered on the highlands, where they can take shelter and wait out the storm, so they trudge along single-file. Daniel brings up the rear, behind Helena, cold and struggling to keep up with the others. It does not help that he is severely hung over because whenever the friends meet up there seems to be an exorbitant amount of alcohol involved. And the prior night was no exception.
At last, they reach the hut, but the door is locked, they are miles from the nearest house, and their cell phones are useless because there is no signal. Ármann manages to break open the key box with his gun, extract the key, and gain access to the hut. Daniel senses “an indefinable smell of danger in the air, among the thickly falling flakes, but he can’t work out where it had come from.” As soon as they open the door, Daniel’s fear is confirmed. There is a man sitting in the corner of the hut, holding a shotgun. He remains seated, staring at the group, his eyes wide open and unspeaking. He does not react or respond to the group’s arrival. “Perhaps the eeriest aspect of it all was the stranger’s stillness. He was almost like a living corpse, only his open eyes revealing that he was fully conscious and watching them.” He is a terrifying presence.
As the storm continues to rage outside, the four friends begin quietly discussing how best to approach the situation. Who is the man in the hut? Why is he just sitting there staring at them? Is he in a state of shock as a result of some sort of trauma? Is he dangerous? Do they dare occupy the hut along with him? Do they really have a choice, considering the severity of the storm?
To tell the tale, Jónasson employs third-person narratives set forth in short, crisply drafted rotating chapters, each of which is focused on one of his four characters. He presents their backstories and explains the characters’ relationships, revealing the ways in which their lives have been intertwined for years. Notably, Daniel was surprised to learn that Gunnlauger would be joining them for the reunion because in recent years, he, Helena, and Ármann have tacitly agreed not to invite him due to his “darker, more difficult side” that has been revealed with time.
Gunnlauger, however, considers the other three his best friends. He works for a medium-sized law firm in Reykjavik and has given up on the hope of keeping pace with his colleagues. He failed his medical exams twice so his father insisted that he attend law school, but he has no passion or flair for the law. He also has been unable to maintain a relationship with a woman for more than a few weeks, and has long “had a thing for” Helena. He is well aware that she does not feel the same way about him and, in fact, mercilessly teases him about his love life. The night before they head out on the hunt, he has his first drink in two years, which takes Helena aback because his troubles with alcohol are well-known. Gunnlauger has been receiving ominous letters from an anonymous sender and suspects they may be coming from one of his three friends.
The night before they head out, Helena has “a feeling of disquiet” and dreams of Vikingur, their friend who died “cold, exhausted, abandoned and alone” five years ago. She still misses him terribly, and is haunted by her belief that he suffered before he died of hypothermia under suspicious circumstances.
Ármann boasts about his success, which Daniel chalks up to an inferiority complex and Gunnlauger resents, secretly hoping that Ármann’s business will fail and they will find themselves on more equal footing. Ármann was not a good student, and after graduation got involved in selling drugs but he got himself sorted out and now operates a thriving business. Helena has always looked out for and taken care of him. These days, he seems to be married to his job after a long relationship ended.
Eventually, they decide that Ármann and Gunnlauger will remain in the hut while Daniel and Helena head south to another hut that is equipped with a radio they can use to summon help. Ármann estimates that, given the weather conditions, they should be able to hike there and back in about an hour. Ármann tells them to leave their guns, and Daniel has “a horrible premonition that there is something out there in the darkness . . . more dangerous than anything his imagination could conjure up . . . ” He is convinced he is “heading to his certain death.” Nonetheless, he and Helena strike out on their own, leaving Ármann and Gunnlauger with the mysterious man.
Outside is an entertaining and imaginatively-conceived story about betrayal and retribution. He places his characters in an extremely dangerous geographic location and proceeds to reveal numerous reasons why they neither believe the stories they tell or trust each other. And with good reason. Over the course of their long friendship, they have learned a great deal about each other and various incidents have caused them to develop resentments and hold grudges. They still try to impress each other by appearing to be successful and popular when, in fact, each of them has experienced some form of failure and committed heinous, unforgivable acts. They are all harboring dark, explosive secrets and within the group there are concealed alliances that evolve and shift as the story proceeds. Eventually, Jónasson reveals that the invitation to get together for the weekend was issued with more ominous intent than some of the group realize. But they will figure it out.
While entertaining, there are two aspects of Outside that keep it from being a truly first-rate thriller. The characters’ histories and relationships are interesting, but none of the characters are likable or have any immediately apparent redeeming qualities. They are all manipulative, phony, and self-involved, and they only interact with the others in service to their ulterior motives and need to feel better about themselves and their own lives. There is not a single character that readers can take into their hearts and cheer on. They are all pathetic and reprehensible. Perhaps that is the point Jónasson wanted to make.
And the book ends abruptly without bringing the story to a satisfying resolution. It may be that Jónasson plans a sequel, which would explain why the story suddenly falls right off a literary Icelandic cliff. Regardless, the conclusion is jarring and unsettling. Again, that may have been a deliberate choice made by Jónasson.
Despite those shortcomings, Outside is engrossing and fast-paced. It is also richly atmospheric which heightens the dramatic tension, and amplifies the paranoia and palpable fear his characters experience as they confront with their past mistakes and mortality on the Icelandic highland. And, as noted, the story is populated by interesting, if irredeemable, characters, some of whom meet fates they clearly deserve, providing readers some satisfaction.
Excerpt from Outside
Daníel
Ármann, who had offered to drive, was the life and soul of the party as usual, doing his best to keep them entertained during the journey, but the series of amusing stories he reeled off met with indifference from his passengers. It wasn’t the fault of the stories, it was just that there was a time and place for everything and this wasn’t it. Daníel was dead tired as well as hung-over from the night before, and the others seemed similarly subdued. In the end, Ármann had lapsed into silence. No one else spoke, the radio was off and the only noise now was the roar of nailed tyres on the rough gravel road. Outside the windows the treeless landscape rolled past, bleak, grey and forbidding, only the high moors in the distance touched with white.
As he stared sleepily at the view, Daníel reflected how little he knew about the east of his own country. He had a hazy idea of a fjord-indented coastline and a reindeer-haunted wilderness of mountains and moors inland. A controversial hydro-electric dam. The region was associated in his mind with hardy farmers, fishermen and hunters, a world away from the urban sprawl of Reykjavík where he had grown up, though it was only about 350 kilometres as the crow flies.
They had taken it for granted that Ármann would see to everything, as always. He had shouldered responsibility for the entire organization of the trip, finding a time that suited everyone, and booking flights, a rental car and accommodation. Somehow Daníel had fallen in with all his suggestions, even the absurd idea of a ptarmigan shoot. The plan was to fly out to the east on the Friday, spend Saturday and Sunday morning shooting on the moors, then head back to town again on the Sunday evening.
They had slept off last night’s pub crawl, more or less, but in spite of that Daníel hadn’t felt up to doing any of the driving. He was still recovering from the bumpy flight out east in the small plane, with the bad coffee and the powerful stench of fuel, none of which had helped his hangover. Now he was sitting in the back with Helena. To give Ármann his due, he’d hired a good car; a big off-roader with plenty of leg room. The combination of a comfy seat, warm air from the heater and smooth suspension was causing Daníel’s eyelids to droop. All he really wanted was to sleep until they reached their destination, as he knew that if Ármann and Helena had anything to do with it, they were bound to have another late night.
They had made the most of their evening in Reykjavík yesterday, hitting the town in style. Daníel had appreciated the chance to catch up with the latest changes, as he hadn’t been home to Iceland in two years and the city had undergone a transformation in his absence. New restaurants had appeared in place of some of his old favourites and the harbour area was unrecognizable, dominated now by luxury apartments and a five-star hotel. More new hotels had opened or were about to, and the down-town area had a more cosmopolitan feel to it than ever before. He had even found a jazz bar near the parliament building, something he would have associated more with New York than Reykjavík.
The restaurant they’d chosen had been one of the recent additions, and so had the bars and clubs on their crawl, and the city centre had been buzzing for a Thursday night in November. The weather had been beautiful too, with clear skies and chilly temperatures, and the forecast was for more of the same in the east of the country over the weekend, colder though, with the possibility of a bit of precipitation thrown in.
Every time Daníel came home, he realized it took him longer to acclimatize; he found the cold a little harder to bear and had less patience with the wildly unpredictable weather. But he didn’t want to risk losing face in front of the others and be told that he was going soft in the UK. In this, as in so much else, he felt his acting talents were being tested to the limit. It was vital never to let the mask fall, whether in relation to the cold or his career.
They were almost certainly under the impression that he’d hit the big time in Britain. Which was the way he wanted it. True, the drama school where he’d done his training had been a decent one, if not quite as prestigious as he implied, and after graduating he had focused on the stage and secured roles in some good plays. Few of them had made it to London, though; they were generally productions put on by touring companies doing the rounds of the provincial theatres. Still, he’d had three roles in plays in the West End; twice as an understudy – in neither case had he got to perform – and once in a walk-on role. The wages were paltry, of course, and he survived by working in restaurants on the side, but in his friends’ eyes he was a star abroad, making a pretty good living. This was the role he would have to play this weekend and he didn’t actually mind it that much.
‘Have you really never killed anything?’ It was Ármann who broke the silence.
Although Daníel knew the question was directed at him, he decided to ignore it.
‘Daníel, have you never killed anything?’ Ármann persisted.
‘No, I can’t see the point, to be honest,’ he replied, having to raise his voice to be heard over the rumble of the tyres.
‘There’s something about it, you know. Something rewarding. I don’t know quite how to describe it. Hunting for your own food. It makes you feel self-sufficient, in touch with nature.’
Daníel shrugged, though Ármann wouldn’t be able to see as he had his eyes trained on the road ahead.
‘I’m quite happy just to eat the food. That’s more my scene.’
‘Come on, don’t be silly, you’re going to shoot some birds,’ Helena said, smiling at him. ‘Something’s got to die before we finish this trip.’ Her smile held a quality he found oddly unsettling. All this talk of shooting and death had got to him, although he had been well aware that the aim of this trip was to hunt game, in addition to being a reunion, of course.
‘Maybe. Sure, I’ll have a go. But you’ll have to keep my birds as I wouldn’t dream of taking them back to England with me. I’d never get them through Customs, for one thing.’
‘You wouldn’t know how to cook them, anyway,’ Gunnlaugur muttered, so quietly that Daníel almost missed it.
He had been rather taken aback to learn that Gunnlaugur would be joining them. He was part of the gang, of course, but in recent years, on the rare occasions they got together, there had been an unspoken agreement to leave him out. Daníel got on fine with him; after all, they’d known each other since they were kids, but Gunnlaugur didn’t quite fit in. He had a placid temperament, most of the time, yet there was a darker, more difficult side to him too, as they had discovered over the years. Daníel just hoped he wouldn’t display it on this trip. It wasn’t as if Gunnlaugur had anything attention-grabbing to contribute to the conversation either, since his interests were limited and dull. As far as Daníel could work out, he seemed to spend most of his time alone at home watching TV.
‘You don’t shoot much yourself, do you, Gunnlaugur?’ Daníel asked.
Gunnlaugur was never called anything else, despite being saddled with such a long name: none of the usual, affectionate short forms like ‘Gulli’ had ever stuck to him.
‘Not really, though I’m not a bad shot,’ he replied. ‘Dad taught me and my brother. He taught us to fish for salmon too. As a matter of fact, it’s his gun I’ve brought with me.’
‘A trusty old friend, eh?’ Helena said.
‘Yes. But it’s only for my use. I’m not lending it to anyone else. Just so that’s clear.’
For a moment Daníel thought his old friend was joking, then he realized Gunnlaugur was deadly serious. Of course, he’d never been much of a joker.
‘Keep your hair on,’ Daníel said. ‘No one’s going to take your gun off you.’
‘I only meant, seeing as you’ve come along without a weapon of your own.’
‘I’m only –’
Helena interrupted. ‘I’ve got a bottle of brandy with me. Ármann, you’ve brought some booze too, haven’t you?’ she asked, though she presumably knew the answer. It was a nice try at changing the subject, Daníel thought, but perhaps not the most tactful topic to bring up in the present company.
‘What do you think?’ Ármann grinned round at her.
Daníel leaned back and closed his eyes. If only he could have closed his ears too.
He shouldn’t have let himself be talked into coming on this trip.
It was doomed to be dire. He would just have to grit his teeth and try to get through the weekend in one piece.
Gunnlaugur
‘I thought you said we were staying in a hunting lodge?’
Gunnlaugur tried to keep the aggrieved note out of his voice, though he was anything but satisfied with the facilities. He wanted to let Ármann know he was unimpressed but without sounding like a whinger, so he tried to strike a bantering tone.
‘Gunnlaugur, mate, this is a hunting lodge,’ Ármann replied. ‘Have you never stayed in one before?’
‘Of course I have. Dad and I used to fish Haffjardará every summer. This isn’t in the same class. But don’t get me wrong; it’s fine.’ Privately, though, he felt it lacked the character of the more traditional lodges; it was all a bit too modern and soulless for him.
‘Perfectly fine,’ Ármann retorted.
Gunnlaugur had taken a look around inside. There were six bedrooms, all of them a bit basic, but he supposed he would just have to make the best of the situation.
They were relaxing in the living room after supper. Ármann had offered to cook that first evening, producing grilled steak and red wine to accompany the meal. Gunnlaugur had appreciated the steak, though it had been a bit overcooked, but he’d decided not to complain. He hadn’t touched the wine.
His gaze was drawn to the window. It was pitch black outside and for a moment he felt a twinge of unease. Of course, he was among good friends – Daníel, Helena and Ármann were his best friends – but there was something about this place, the isolation and unrelenting darkness, that got to him. He had lost track of exactly where they were, having fallen asleep on the long drive here from the airport, and knew that, should anything go wrong, he wouldn’t have a hope in hell of being able to retrace their route. The November night had made him acutely aware of how helpless he was, how totally dependent on his friends.
He had the uncanny sensation that the blackness outside was pressing in on him. Winter trips into the highlands just weren’t his thing. He preferred fishing trips in summer; standing thigh-deep in a river, wrestling with a salmon in broad daylight and decent weather. He had learned to shoot, that was no lie, but it was a long time since he had last handled a gun, and he didn’t want to have to ask for help when the moment came. Didn’t want to show any weakness. It would work out – it had to. After all, how difficult could it be to bag a few birds? His dad had always said that the hardest part was that first shot, feeling the kick of the gun, reconciling yourself to the act of killing. Once you’d got over that, the rest was easy.
‘How on earth did you find this place?’ he asked.
Ármann gave him a look and took a sip of his drink. He was on gin and tonic, like Helena and Daníel. Gunnlaugur was sticking to soda water.
‘This place?’
‘I mean the lodge.’
‘I worked out here in the east for two years. I know it very well. After all, I’ve dragged enough tourists round these parts. That’s how I started the company, by –’
Gunnlaugur cut him short. ‘We’re in good hands, then.’ He’d heard this story too many times, in one form or another. How a small-scale operation in the east of Iceland, the germ of an idea, as Ármann sometimes described it, had grown into a company with what must be a turnover of several hundred million krónur. Maybe even a billion? Gunnlaugur had no interest in dwelling on the figures or on Ármann’s success. He himself had slogged through a law degree, not out of any particular interest or aptitude, but only because he had twice failed his medical exams. At that point his dad had told him enough was enough and he should give law a go instead. He had only failed one of his exams on that course, and scraped through his degree somehow. For the last few years he had been working for a medium-sized law firm in Reykjavík, every day the same as the last. There was enough to do and he wasn’t always bored, but it was hard to watch his younger colleagues surging ahead, while he was left behind, stuck in the same rut. All his grafting had earned him was a small house and a car. Ármann, on the other hand, without a qualification to his name, was raking in money at such a rate that Gunnlaugur knew he would never be able to catch up. Not unless Ármann somehow managed to blow the lot. Gunnlaugur was fond of Ármann, but sometimes, after being forced to listen to his endless boasting, he found himself uncharitably hoping that there would be another financial crisis, of some kind or another, and that the tour company would go bust … Then the cards could be dealt out again and perhaps he himself would get a better hand this time.
‘How’s your love life?’ Helena asked. She was in the habit of asking him this every time they met, probably because he had proved so hopeless at holding on to girlfriends over the years. He wasn’t that bad-looking but somehow his relationships never lasted beyond a few weeks. He had been more successful abroad, during his time as an exchange student in Denmark, where he had met a girl who had stayed with him for four whole months. And of course he’d always had a thing for Helena. She was well aware of the fact too, though they’d never discussed it and it would almost certainly never come to anything. No doubt that was why she enjoyed teasing him about his love life.
‘I’m not seeing anyone at the moment,’ he said, striving to sound casual. Determined not to let it get to him. ‘How about you?’
Helena smiled coolly.
None of your bloody business was the answer he read from her expression.
‘Have we finished the lot?’ Daníel waved his empty glass. ‘Ármann, you’re on bar duty this evening.’
Ármann got to his feet.
‘This is such a bad idea,’ Gunnlaugur blurted out, sighing heavily. The wind had picked up outside and even in his thick woollen jumper he was feeling the cold.
Helena looked at him. ‘What?’
‘Oh, sorry, I just meant coming here. We’re stuck in the middle of nowhere, lucky to have electricity and heating, but if anything happened, you know . . . If we . . .’
‘What could possibly happen?’ Daníel asked, still holding out his empty glass, waiting for Ármann to play waiter.
‘I don’t know,’ Gunnlaugur replied. ‘Anything … If we couldn’t get back, for example…’ He felt his claustrophobia flaring up at the thought. ‘If we were forced to walk . . .’
‘We won’t have to walk back,’ Helena said. ‘Don’t be silly, Gunnlaugur.’
‘I just meant, if the jeep broke down, we could all die of exposure,’ he said, then immediately regretted his choice of words. Silence descended on the three of them sitting around the coffee table. Ármann had gone into the kitchen, so perhaps he had missed the last remark.
Gunnlaugur met his friends’ eyes, first Helena’s, then Daníel’s. Neither said a word. He knew it was his fault. He had a habit of doing this, of just coming out with stuff, not stopping to think before he opened his mouth. It was a singularly inappropriate subject to raise among this particular group of friends.
It occurred to him to apologize and take it back, but he couldn’t find the right words, and at that moment Ármann reappeared with the gin bottle in one hand and the tonic in the other.
‘Refill?’ he asked, as cheerful and easy-going as ever.
‘Now you’re talking,’ Daníel said, holding out his glass.
‘Yes, please,’ Helena said, her voice unusually colourless. Gunnlaugur’s foot-in-mouth comment must have got to her.
Ármann went over to her and mixed the drink like a professional bartender.
He was on his way back into the kitchen when Gunnlaugur called out to him. It wasn’t a conscious decision but he said it anyway. ‘Have you got a glass for me?’ The moment the words were out, he wished he could take them back. He was feeling ill at ease and the oppressive sense of isolation wasn’t helping. Maybe everything would be that bit more bearable if only he had a drink inside him. Just a tiny one. ‘Not too strong, though,’ he added, as if that would mitigate his decision.
Ármann stopped and turned sharply. His expression suggested he thought he must have misheard.
‘A glass for you, Gunnlaugur?’ he asked after a pause, his voice carefully neutral.
‘Yes,’ Gunnlaugur replied, a little uncertainly, though he knew deep down that there was no going back now. He could already anticipate the bitter taste tingling on his tongue.
‘A glass for Gunnlaugur,’ Ármann said lightly, as though nothing could be more natural. Putting the bottles down on the table, he went into the kitchen and came straight back with another glass. ‘I’ll leave you to mix it,’ he said.
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