It is 1977 in the middle of summer, and my extended family has met at the farm called Fossatún in Iceland. My uncle Sturla and his family lived there. In the field by the farm there was an old road that went up the hillside to the west and at the end of it stood an old summer house, which was Hills End. This summer house had been moved from the town of Akranes in 1960 by my grandfather and placed there as a guest house. This house was then used a lot by guests to stay in during the summer and was a meeting place for travelers as well. On that summer day in 1977, my father’s family had all met at my uncle Sturla’s farm and held afternoon coffee for everyone in Hills End. And so it happened, that while having coffee and conversation, another guest came to the house. A man walked up to the house and continued along the kitchen window and passed the corner of the building to the house, as if he were about to walk up to the front door and walk into the house. Everyone saw the man and assumed that he would knock on the door or just walk in. But no one came through the door, and the people waited. Someone said: “Wasn’t someone coming?”. One person got up and opened the door but found no one there. “Where is the man?” they asked. Nothing was found of him, and no one saw him walking back down the road. The man literally disappeared. My grandmother Guðný, who had worked on the farm as a young girl, was informed of this incident. She asked what the man had looked like. She was told that he had been an older middle-aged man, a bit chubby and with a hat on his head. My grandmother said that it was old Janus, he was a good man and that there was nothing to fear. She told us that Janus had hanged himself in the rafters in the barn, back in 1928.
