Jon

Jon is an elderly farmer whose years of silence about a wartime glacier search turn him into a crucial link between Kristín’s present danger and the buried history of the aircraft on Vatnajökull Glacier. At his farmhouse, he identifies Ratoff as the expedition leader, recalls the first search under Colonel Miller in 1945, and reveals the promise that kept him and his brother Karl quiet. Objects preserved in his home—a photograph, letters, a German uniform jacket, and a damaged metal case—make his memories tangible, while the papers in the case point toward Operation Napoleon.

Identity and Background

Jon is introduced as an old farmer living at the foot of the ice cap. During a whiteout, Kristín and Steve run from their jeep to his house; Jon is waiting in the doorway, a stooping figure in jeans and felt slippers. Inside, the dim living room holds family photographs and bookshelves behind thick curtains. The heating is high, and the air carries the strong smell of the stables. These details place him within the working life of the farm, rather than presenting him first as an official or an investigator. His thick, callused hands, slightly bow legs, and strong features softened by age likewise register a life shaped by physical labor.

His interest in the war began as a shared enthusiasm with Karl, especially for aircraft. Karl knew the types used in the war and recognized the wreck as looking like a Junkers. Jon’s knowledge is therefore grounded in local observation and family interest, not in military authority. That distinction matters: he can identify what he saw and recount what Miller told him, but the explanation he was originally given for the search proves to be only one part of a larger history.

The Present-Day Encounter

Jon receives Kristín and Steve after they have driven through a blizzard that has become a complete whiteout. The soldiers’ equipment has already been moved up to the glacier, and drifting snow has erased their tracks and tire marks. The storm removes visible traces of the military presence just as the visitors arrive to ask about it. Jon brings them into the house and, after putting on coffee, quietly says that he has heard about the shooting in Reykjavík. His attention is on Kristín as he invites them to sit; he recognizes that the danger has followed her from the city.

Kristín tells him that her brother is dying on the glacier after American soldiers took him and threw him into a crevasse, that his rescue team found him, and that the friend with him is dead. She also accuses Jon of having helped the soldiers over the years. He is surprised by the accusation: in his understanding, his silence was a promise kept, not evidence of complicity in the current violence. The exchange forces the old secret into the open under the pressure of a present loss. Rather than beginning with a full account, Jon first supplies the name of the current expedition leader: Ratoff. Kristín recognizes it immediately as the name she and Steve have been seeking.

Miller, Karl, and the Glacier Search

Jon distinguishes Ratoff from Miller, whom he describes as a colonel in the American Army who led the first expedition in 1945. When Steve asks who Miller is, Jon explains that the aircraft on the glacier is, in his view, more likely German than American. He remembers it flying low over the family home at the end of the Second World War before vanishing into darkness; the family knew it had gone down. Miller had told Jon and Karl that the plane carried dangerous biological weapons, a virus developed by the Germans, and that it had to be found urgently. At the time, the explanation was enough to make the brothers help. Jon’s account thus shows how the original search recruited local assistance through a claim of immediate danger.

Miller’s repeated visits also reveal a more personal reason for his persistence. Jon says that the brothers did not understand the intensity of the search until Miller told them about his own brother. Miller would present his visits as summer vacations, stay with the family for as long as a week or two, and go up to the glacier. He returned every three to five years, though more than thirty years had passed since his last visit; the family had heard that he had died. Jon retrieves a photograph Karl took of Miller and yellowed thank-you letters addressed to the brothers after Miller’s stays. These keepsakes preserve a relationship that continued across long absences and explain why Jon’s assistance was bound up with personal loyalty as well as the official reason he had been given.

Jon says that he and Karl kept their promise to Miller and never told anyone what they knew, even after Karl died. That silence lasted for years, but it does not make Jon’s knowledge complete. He can recount the crash, the first expedition, and Miller’s explanation; he can also produce physical evidence left by the wreck. His account is a testimony built from memory, trust, and objects, with gaps that the unfolding investigation must still confront.

The Chest and the Unfinished Revelation

Jon’s house holds more than family photographs and correspondence. He lifts a tattered German uniform jacket from a chest, presenting a material trace of the German presence associated with the crash. He also rummages for a small metal case, uncertain whether to call it a box or a case. Scratched and dented, with a handle, a lock that has clearly been tampered with, and rust eaten through in places, it bears the marks of long exposure and damage. Jon says he found papers inside and has not removed anything.

The documents are badly ruined by years of alternating heat and cold. Their typewritten letters have blurred, and the sheets fall apart when anyone tries to separate them; only an occasional word remains legible. Kristín can nevertheless tell that they are in German, and one surviving portion bears the words “Operation Napoleon.” The discovery changes Jon’s role in the scene: he is no longer only the local guide who helped Miller search, but also the custodian of a damaged record whose surviving name raises new questions. The contrast between the confident, human detail of his memories and the fragmentary writing in the case gives the revelation its force. The old farmer can open the chest and show what endured, but the papers themselves remain incomplete, leaving their meaning unsettled.