Ahhh, this is such a good game. It’s so moody and atmospheric; it moves very quietly but there’s a stark sense of tension throughout. The plot is classic Nancy Drew, and the puzzles didn’t make me want to stab myself in the face. What a high note for this series to go out on.
(I mean, presumably this isn’t the “last” game, since Midnight in Salem is supposed to come out next year, but…LOL. L O L.)
We open with a creepy shot of a dock, and a ship arriving. It plows right into the dock, everyone screams, and then we cut to Nancy’s room.
She’s received a letter from Dagny Silva, who was referred to Nancy by Moira Chisholm. Not sure we want to accept a job via the lady who sent our mother to her death, but okay. I’m just saying, Moira’s judgment seems flawed. Anyway, Dagny is a “treasure hunter”, and her latest job was to restore the Icelandic ship the Heerlijkheid with her business partner, Magnus Kiljansson. The ship is central to a festival in the town of Skipbrot, so after they restored the ship, Magnus planned to sail it into town to a chorus of ooohs and ahhhs. After the festival was over, Dagny and Magnus were going to search the ship for treasure and hopefully get paid.
But the ship arrived…empty. SPOOKY! Nobody was on it, and Magnus has disappeared. Dagny thinks he found the treasure without her and split, and she wants us to track him down. Nobody can run from the long arm of Nancy Drew! So, off to Iceland we go.
We arrive in Skipbrot, which looks like a small fishing town, maybe. Dagny said she would meet us in town, so let’s talk to her.
Dagny is immediately all salty that she had to wait out in the cold for us. Well, damn, Dagny, you could’ve waited inside. She suggests that we can call her “boss-lady” or “my queen” or “Dagny,” if we REALLY have to. I love Dagny. If she and Deirdre Shannon were ever in a game together, I would die of happiness. (I mean, I think they would hate each other, but I would love it.)
Nancy is uncertain what to do in the face of Dagny’s amazing lack of respect for her, so we move on to the mystery. Dagny snarls at us to find her evil backstabbing partner before she loses it and sets the town on fire. Nancy clutches her pearls all, “You can go to jail for that!” and Dagny’s like, “No, that was a metaphor.”
Anyway, I’m guessing from the context here that Magnus is Icelandic — possibly from Skipbrot itself — and Dagny isn’t. Magnus was in charge of the ship-rebuilding project, which Dagny offered to sponsor in hopes of getting at the treasure on board. She and Magnus went in on the plan together and were planning to split the earnings from the treasure. But now Magnus has disappeared, and Dagny assumes he’s taken the treasure with him. It’s not really made clear if he and Dagny worked together before this.
Dagny tells us that Magnus disappeared sometime before the ship crashed into the harbor. This means something must have happened while he was on the ship. Everyone thinks he drowned, but Dagny is suspicious: Magnus was a sailor, and if there’s anyone you’d think wouldn’t drown, it would be him. I mean, for a really long time, they explicitly didn’t teach sailors to swim, but — whatever. I’m assuming someone from an island knows how to swim.
(Haha “Island” is “Iceland” in at least a couple of languages. I crack myself up.)
Anyway, since we’re operating under the assumption that Magnus split with the treasure, finding him will also find the treasure, and vice versa. Well, at least they tried to make “Nancy Drew gets called somewhere to solve a mystery and ends up hunting for treasure instead” plausible this time. So in order to find Magnus, we have to investigate the ship. Dagny bitters that the ship is controlled by a woman named Elisabet — Dagny paid for the ship, but it’s technically the town’s property, so Elisabet gets to decide who boards and who doesn’t. She definitely does not like Dagny. Hey, Elisabet, how do you feel about nosy teenage detectives, though?
We’re all caught up to speed, so that’s it for Dagny. As Elisabet has physically removed the ship’s gangway, and isn’t going to just let anyone rock onto the ship — especially not anyone associated with Dagny — we’re going to have to ask some guy named Soren to help us out. So let’s explore the town and find him.
First we find this flyer for snowmobiling through Skipbrot’s ice caves. The flyer is like, “The snowmobile company takes no responsibility if you go out on a snowmobile and get attacked by a wolf or an angry Eastern European skiier.”
In the center of town is this crow’s nest. The plaque tells us that it was an original part of the Heerlijkheid, which was removed from the ship. Nancy muses that other parts of the ship might have also been removed and scattered around. We can climb up into the crow’s nest and see the whole town, which honestly is kind of a lot of nothing, so we climb back down.
Soren works at the Skipbrot Cultural Center, so we go there next. He sounds very slightly British, or maybe that’s just because he likes to express his enthusiasm for Icelandic history by talking like a novel from the 1930s. We tell him that we’re here to check out the ship, but Elisabet won’t let anyone board. Soren says, “Oh, dear, how highly unusual. Elisabet is a rose, truly, but she does have thorns.” He promises to take care of it.
We can then ask him about the cultural center, and he’s all, “I say, old chap, Icelandic history is just fascinating! I endeavor to find the truth of ancient shipwrecks and writings from a bygone era! O, how many mysteries there are to discover!” Hey, solving mysteries is Nancy’s job, Soren. Soren adds, “Also I have swords.” Apparently he’s both a historian and an archaeologist; he did his doctorate on Viking history at Harvard, and now he’s basically a front desk guy at a cultural center in a small town. Soren is #relatable. Apparently he’s from Skipbrot? He adds that he’s one of the few people to travel in this town, and bitters that the rest of the townsfolk should try it sometime.
“I guess that’s why you don’t have much of an accent,” Nancy says. “Oh, quite, indeed, pip pip,” Soren says. Maybe not that last part — but it sounds like he was going to say that, in my defense.
We ask if he knew Magnus, and Soren says that they knew each other, but they didn’t talk. He doesn’t know very much about Magnus at all, although he’s mostly worried that if someone successfully set Magnus up with a pair of cement boots, someone could do it to Soren. “I’m already disliked,” he tells us. Damn, Skipbrot townsfolk. I mean, Soren is deeply annoying, but killing him is a bit much.
We can then ask about his research, which opens the door for Soren to start nerding out all over us. He tells us that he researches shit like axes and swords, because the Vikings were really into giving people sharp things for all occasions in life. Apparently there are a lot of archaeological sites around Skipbrot, which gives Soren lots of places to go digging for sharp things. He tells us that his favorite weapon is an axe that hangs on the wall; he uses it to knock icicles off the roof. Hee.
We can explore the gift shop — look, we can buy Soren’s sweater! Maybe it will turn us into a nerd like him. There’s a door that leads to Soren’s desk, but we can’t go in there yet.
There’s a knot display, and of course the second we look at it, Soren’s like, “Oooh, do you want to do my job for me?” So let’s set up the knot display. It’s pretty easy, we have to arrange the knot instruction images in the correct order to form the completed knot seen at the beginning of the row. When it’s done, we can look more closely at the display: we find a card for the “Ancestors’ Festival”, and when we flip it over, it says “Gunpowder.” HMMM.
There’s also a couple of other displays we can look at, like this one that asks us to label all the sails on a tall ship. Okay, no offense to Soren, but the Skipbrot Cultural Center is basically Whale World, except it’s about Iceland and fishing instead of the Pacific Northwest and whales.
On a corkboard, we see a flyer for the Ancestors’ Festival, which is apparently the event that the Heerlijkheid was meant to be a part of. A note indicates that, since the Heerlijkheid was ruined when it crashed into the dock and all, the festival has been postponed. Does that mean we won’t get to be there for the Skipbrot karaoke competition? 🙁
We also find a petition to…stop…Magnus and Dagny from…descecrating Skipbrot’s cultural history…by restoring the Heerlijkheid…somehow? It’s not clear. Some guy called Gunnar is big mad about the festival and Magnus and Dagny’s involvement, and he’s like, “I will fight to keep everything the same way it was forever, to save Skipbrot from tourists!” Okay, in fairness: fuck tourists. I know we need their money and everything, but damn, can they walk faster than molasses in January? Anyway. The petition only has Gunnar’s signature, so I have Nancy sign it out of guilt. “I’m a political force to be reckoned with!” she says. Hee. Nancy, we’re literally working for Dagny right now. She’s so two-faced. (Says me, the person who made her sign the petition.)
We also find some pictures detailing the history of Skipbrot, and we find out there are a bunch of ice caves near the town. That definitely sounds like a place we’ll be exploring later.
Okay, that’s finally it for the cultural center. Let’s go see if Soren’s managed to talk us into Elisabet’s good graces yet.
The gangway’s down on the ship, so that seems like a good sign. But first, let’s poke around the dock. We can go down this ladder and find ourselves in a dinghy; Nancy will note that it’s in good shape and wonder who owns it. Sadly, we can’t try to sail off into the night just to see what would happen.
Alrighty, let’s talk to Elisabet. The first thing she does is snap at us that she doesn’t know who we are, and if we’re here for the festival, it’s canceled. Damn, Soren, did you tell her anything, or were you just like, “LOL if you can put the gangway back that’d be cool, bye.” Apparently the answer to that is yes; she tells us that she wasn’t expecting Soren to send someone else on his behalf. She bitters that she knows Nancy is a tourist, and Nancy’s all, “Excuse you, I am a VISITOR.” Elisabet wants to know if we’re working with “that snake of a woman”, aka Dagny. Snake jokes in 2015! This series was ahead of its time. Anyway, Nancy says that we’re just here to look for Magnus. Elisabet warms up a bit at the mention of Magnus, and tells us that she runs the Missti Skip pub in town, and she knew Magnus — “Or I thought I did, anyway.” Intriguing!
We tell her the current theory that Magnus made off with the treasure, and Elisabet snarks that Magnus would never have been able to find the treasure, since he was COMPLETELY OBLIVIOUS to all things, like hidden treasure and blonde Icelandic pub owners. Apparently he lived up in a cabin in a mountains. Nancy asks for a snowmobile key, which Elisabet hands over surprisingly easily — but she warns us that tourists steal them every year, so she’s WATCHING US. I can’t be insulted. Nancy loves to steal shit; it’s true.
Let’s explore the ship! There’s a door right off to Elisabet’s side, but she’ll bark at us to get away from there if we try to go in. We can still get into the ship by walking up a level and going through the doors there, so let’s do that instead.
The ship is really beautifully designed, and we poke around the main hallway, cargo hold, and main cabin. In the main cabin, we find a bunch of Magnus’s personal effects. There’s a map of Iceland, and a picture of him and Elisabet — “They look really happy,” Nancy notes. Heh. Do they? I guess Elisabet isn’t actively glowering, which is good enough for her.
On the shelf, we find this box, and we have to press down all the “wooden sections” to get the box open. Aren’t they…all wooden? Yes, yes they are. So basically we have to get all the triangles pressed down, and I don’t know why she didn’t just say that. Anyway, so pressing one will depress some of the others, so you want to click on the triangles in the right order to get all of them depressed. Woo! This triangle is depressed, and this triangle is depressed, and I’m depressed! We’re all depressed!
The box pops open, and we find letters from Magnus and Elisabet. Well, Elisabet wrote letters; Magnus mostly wrote notes back. Apparently they were having communication issues, which Elisabet was trying to solve by writing long letters while they were apart. She tells him about trying to get the Ancestors’ Festival together, and how apparently Soren is micromanaging the hell out of her, which hurts Elisabet’s feelings, as she knows he doesn’t “trust [her] anymore.” HMMM. Magnus is just like, “Damn that’s crazy.” He keeps pushing her to loan him a “langspil” from the Missti Skip.
We poke around on Magnus’s desk, and we also find these instructions for a puzzle that we’ll get to later.
We turn and see this other desk, to which Nancy says, “An antique desk, and it’s in pristine condition! Time to break it open!” She’s finally becoming self-aware, guys. Soon she’s going to break free from this game and take over. Anyway, the desk is locked with a puzzle, so I’ll do it later.
In the closet, we find a bunch of pins, which we promptly steal. We also find another puzzle on the inside panel of the closet, which we’ll come back to later.
Outside, we do a bit more exploring and find this thing, which Nancy calls the original helm. I mean…no idea how she figured that out, but sure, that sounds right. She notes that it’s missing its decorations.
After that, we go up to the wheelhouse, and we can look in the Captain’s Log up here. The log indicates that only Dagny and Magnus have radio keys. Also, Dagny keeps calling the sails “those canvas things.” Heh. I love her. So, who is more likely to give us their radio key: a missing dude, or a cranky suspect? Actually, probably the first one (let’s just steal his stuff, Nancy! He’s not even here to stop us!), but we’ll hit up Dagny later anyway.
That’s all that’s pertinent in the wheelhouse for now. Let’s go up to the crow’s nest and take a look at Skipbrot. We can turn around and look out at the sea — it’s pretty dark out, but the sky subtly shifts with Aurora borealis lights. It’s a really pretty effect and very atmospheric. Anyway, up in the crow’s nest, we find some drawings stuck to the mast, which we steal.
This puzzle is kind of like not-Sudoku. Instead of every row and column being filled with numbers 1-9, every row and column has to add up to 9. We can also switch between dark and light squares, and each row and column should have 3 light and 4 dark squares.
We grab a random key — labeled the “lighthouse key” in our inventory — and we also find Magnus’s diary. He’s hella emo about the way his life is going: he sails boats for private clients who always want to go to the same spots, his relationship with Elisabet is falling apart, and he’s not at all processing his grief over the death of his dad. Magnus frets that he alone knows the truth about Skipbrot and Elisabet’s family — say what? — and he wants to make things right with her. He thinks “Lawrence’s treasure” will fix everything. Ugh, Magnus, material goods never fix anything. Go to therapy instead. Over the past few weeks, Magnus has been putting together the location of the treasure — but he’s also heard strange noises on the ship and suspects that he’s being followed. Spooky!
His diary also tells us how to solve the puzzle in his closet, so we can start on that now. We find two pieces of paper in the back of the diary, and Nancy will note that Magnus must have been in the middle of solving the puzzle himself. I’m sure he won’t mind if we steal his work. Dude has bigger problems right now.
So the lock consists of entering a bunch of numbers hidden around the ship. The first one is the number we saw on the mast (86). The second one can be found by finding the words listed on the page in the rows and columns.
After all the words are found and filled in, we can put the piece of paper with the cutouts over the page, and we get this scramble of letters.
There’s this antique map of Iceland — apparently belonging to Captain Lawrence, the OG captain of this ship and he of the hidden treasure — hanging on the wall. We place the pins from the closet on the letters from the page, and get the number 14. Nancy will note that this is one of the numbers Magnus was looking for.
So we have the numbers, but they’re tied to sounding depth numbers on a tidal depth chart. We need a locator compass to actually find the numbers on a map, which will reveal the actual combination. We found half of the compass on Magnus’s desk, but we need the other half, so we’ll come back to this.
Poking around a bit more, we find a copy of the “Santa Fe Gazette”, with a headline about the treasure on the Heerlijkheid. Dagny’s left a note attached to the newspaper, asking Magnus if he was the one to leak this to the press. “I hope you realize that it’s going to take a lot of dough to make this disappear,” Dagny’s note gripes. Nancy muses that Dagny must be trying to keep a low profile — maybe that’s why she called us instead of the police.
The next place we want to go is in the cargo hold. The lid of one of the barrels can be lifted away, and we find this note from Dagny inside. She writes that the festival went “horribly.” I’m confused. Did the festival already happen or not? The game makes it sound like it’s been postponed on account of the ship being wrecked and Magnus being missing, but sometimes people talk like it’s in the past. Whatever. Dagny worries that the town is going to get nosy about her — she’s letting Soren hold on to her luggage for now, but she’s changed her phone password (to “Scuttlebutt”) so he can’t get into it. Unless, you know, he were to find this paper that you just left lying around, DAGNY.
Dagny’s also sketched a disc of some sort that looks vaguely plot-important, and says that she saw Gunnar — he of the angry petitions to never change anything about Skipbrot ever — using it as a coaster. Dagny thinks it has something to do with the Heerlijkheid.
“Update: Gunnar has taken to calling me ‘minke.’ Looked it up and it’s a type of whale. Cannot wait to get out of this town.” Hee.
Up on the bow(?) of the ship, we can get a good look at this puzzle on the mast(? lol I’m as bad as Dagny). Okay, according to the walkthrough, it’s called a figurehead. We can’t do anything with it yet, though.
Now that we’ve read Magnus’s diary, when we go back to the wheelhouse, Nancy will look at the maps and recognize them as sounding charts. We’ll come back to these when we have the compass.
Let’s chat with Elisabet! Hey, girl! We know your relationship with Magnus was falling apart, and also your family is probably in shambles! Quick, ask if her mom is dead. Just kidding, we only ask to see what’s behind the door that she won’t let us go through, but she refuses to tell us. Nancy keeps pushing until Elisabet yells at us to go away. We can just back up and click on her again, though, to keep the conversation going. We can ask if she knows anything more about Magnus, and she’ll huff that she doesn’t. There are a couple of options that we can try to get her to talk; I choose, “The sooner you cooperate, the soon he gets found.” Elisabet sighs and tells us that Magnus is “keenly obsessive,” and his current obsession is the ship. Elisabet thinks he wanted to find the treasure so that he could have his own boat and leave Iceland, because he didn’t like being a captain for tourists. Fair enough.
Elisabet gives us a piece of paper with a diagram on it, and tells us that Magnus left it at her house. He tried to get it back from her after they broke up, but she hid it from him to be petty.
And now, we can finally leave the ship. Back on the dock, we find a fish..stand..thing, and we can pick up a newspaper article lying here. It’s yet another article about Gunnar, who apparently threw a fit at a town hall meeting about the Ancestors’ Festival. He also threw a bottle at Soren for organizing it. That’s a bold move when you consider that Soren has like three axes just chilling on his wall.
We also find a hook, which we take for reasons. Then we go back to the Missti Skip, which we can explore a bit. We find a book about how to modify the melody inside a music box, and then we can go upstairs to sleep. The time of day in this game isn’t really clear — it’s hella dark out, but it could also just be because this is Iceland. Part of this game revolves around taking the dinghy out, so the “sleeping” function is just used to switch between low and high tide, and to allow enough time to pass for suspects to show up.
So let’s go to sleep, and when we wake up, we can meet our final suspect. The pub of the Missti Skip is a few steps down from the main entrance of the inn. As soon as we walk in, Gunnar will greet us, and we finally get to meet him in person. Try to throw a bottle at us, Gunnar! Nancy’s been hit in the head so many times, we won’t even feel it!
Gunnar tells us that he lives at the Missti Skip. I’m sure Elisabet loves that. Nancy immediately asks if he’s a sailor, because he’s like a walking stereotype of a salty fisherman. Gunnar said he was one, but the sea chewed him up and spit him out, and HE’LL NEVER SAIL AGAIN! And he bets we’ve never sailed at all, because we’re not tough enough to handle the ocean. Whatever, Gunnar. Call me when you’ve done a Sudoku puzzle underwater while scuba diving in the Caribbean.
Okay, well, that was awkward. Let’s make it more awkward by asking about his missing fingers! Never change, Nancy. Gunnar says that it’s a long story, which he is all too happy to tell us anyway: so one day he was out on his boat, when one day, he saw a giant squid. He was all ready to stab it, so he pulled out his fishing spear a little too fast — but that’s not how he lost his fingers. Then the squid bit him (not how he lost his fingers either), and then a shark bit him (or that). OH MY GOD, GUNNAR. He actually lost his fingers in a wood shop accident.
Let’s ask him about Dagny. Apparently “whale” is a compliment from Gunnar; he says that she’s tough and he likes her. He mentions that she was there when the Heerlijkheid sailed in and crashed into the dock because no one was sailing it. On the other hand, Gunnar is not a fan of Magnus at all — although he adds that he doesn’t like anyone. I had a shirt from Hot Topic that said the same thing when I was 13. Gunnar: “Gunnar doesn’t need friends! Already have two: mug and chair.” Heh.
We ask if Magnus ever mentioned the treasure to him, and Gunnar says, “He might have.” We can either say, “Don’t remember?” or “Don’t want to tell me?” I choose the second, because I’m a sassy detective. This pisses Gunnar right off, and he won’t talk to us anymore.
That’s fine by me, because we have some exploring to do! There’s a game we can play by the bar, where we have to match Icelandic words to English words and earn money. Soon I’ll be able to afford that sweater in the gift shop, and me and Soren can match!
Anyway, I was super-pumped the first time I played this minigame, because I studied Swedish for a while — just for fun — and while my Swedish is in no way good enough to hold a conversation, it is just good enough for me to recognize cognates in Icelandic and easily make hella money off this game. It’s a real self-esteem booster.
So I play that game for like five hours because I have no life. After that, we can check out this slide presentation in the corner. It costs 450 kr to watch, so you’ll have to earn money if you don’t have enough. The slides are narrated by Gunnar, and tell the history of Skipbrot: in 1783, a volcano erupted, killing a ton of crops and generally making everyone miserable. Luckily for Skipbrot, a dude named Captain Lawrence crashed his ship, the Heerlijkheid, on their shores that winter, and they were able to live off of his supplies through the winter. Lawrence married the daughter of the town’s founding family, and they had a baby, and everything was chill for a while. The Heerlijkheid was supposedly carrying a treasure — the treasure Magnus is looking for — and the townspeople wanted to get their hands on it. Lawrence told them that it wasn’t on board and he would have to sail somewhere else to retrieve it, and everyone was like, “Sounds fake,” and beat him and his wife to death. Damn. That’s dark. Anyway, Lawrence left only a diary hinting at where the treasure might be, and nobody has been able to figure it out since. Today, Elisabet is the only descendant of Captain Lawrence. Having an animated tourist attraction explaining the grisly demise of her great-great-great-(great?)-grandparents probably explains why she’s so damn cranky all the time.
We turn around and see a stage area with some instruments on it. Apparently Elisabet is set to perform at the Ancestors’ Festival under the name “Elisabet and the Landlubbers.” Hey, Mel Corbalis is one of her backing musicians! I wonder if anyone in this town has seen a mall goth before.
We look closely at this instrument here. The circular thingy raises to reveal a puzzle. Nancy looks at it and says, “It’s subtle, but I see some differences in the halves of the pattern.” Heh. That’s more subtle than Nancy derping, “I have to find the differences in the halves to unlock this door!” like in previous games.
So the goal is to find the differences in the right half. When you’ve clicked on all of them, the panel opens, and we get this black star…thing. Cool beans.
We can pick this card off the wall, which lists the names of the instruments. Ooh, the one that we just did the puzzle on was the langspil! Was the puzzle why Magnus was after it so badly?
There’s a door in the back that says, “Employees only.” Haha, fuck you, Elisabet, I’m going in anyway. We can pick up this canister of gas, which we’re just going to carry around because why not. While we’re in the back room, we hear Elisabet come in and talk to Gunnar. She wants him to help out serving at the Missti Skip tonight, since she has to stay on the Heerlijkheid, and Gunnar is all whiny about how he doesn’t want to, like, do his job. He tells Elisabet to just leave the ship alone, and Elisabet says she can’t. They fight over how selfish Gunnar always is — we just met the dude, but that sounds accurate to me — and Elisabet eventually storms out. Suspicious!
Well, now Gunnar is probably more pissed at Elisabet than us, so let’s go talk to him again. We ask if he went to the Ancestors’ Festival this year (so…it’s already happened? I’m so confused) and he scowls that he went and gave them his money, but he didn’t like it. My God, Gunnar, at least commit to your boycott. He thought it was hella embarrassing that everyone was running around looking for treasure like chickens with their heads cut off. Maybe not that last part. He bitters that this town used to care about stuff like fish and boats, not money. He blames Soren for turning the festival into a shameless celebration of capitalism, and wants them to go back to the old days. Okay, I admittedly know that feel. I grew up in the Bay Area, and every time we name a building after a tech bro, I die a little inside.
Apparently this year, Elisabet told Gunnar to behave or she would kick him out of the Skip. Gunnar agreed, by which he means that he didn’t wreak as MUCH havoc this year. Nancy asks why he spends all his time here, and Gunnar’s like, “Are you asking if I’m a sad little man who spends all his time here thinking about all the women he’s lost and writing it down in a wimpy notebook? No. Then I would be Magnus.” Heh. Gunnar snarls that he’s like a wild mountain wolf instead. A wolf who sits on his ass all day. Sounds right.
Also, whoops, I forgot something in the back room. We pop in and grab this fish thing from the machine thingy at the right, which shows up as “1/10” in our inventory. So we’ll have to collect more of these.
We pass the kitchen, where we find this note from Elisabet. It looks like Gunnar has to take care of the pub while she’s gone, including serving the customers food. Food serving? Do you think maybe, at some point during this game, Gunnar is going to make us do this job for him instead?
At one of the tables, we find this sheaf of papers, called “The Factually True Adventures of Sonny Joon and Cyborg Nancy.” Nancy says, “Sonny Joon? Haven’t seen him in a while.” That’s a really casual way of saying, “I accidentally followed him around the world for like 10 years, and then I met him in a terrible game and he was completely insane and we decided to collectively forget about The Shattered Medallion.” After a bunch of nonsensical pages where Nancy turns into a dragon, the last page has a bunch of random letters and numbers on it. We’ll probably need these.
(Sidebar: Sonny’s written under one of the illustrations, “Note: Do I have friends? Leading experts say ‘no.’ Double-check.” Aw, Sonny! I want to believe that, despite a rocky introduction, he might’ve turned into a solid phone friend or something if this series had ever found its footing again.)
So we go outside to where the snowmobiles are. We have the key from Elisabet, and we have to fill up the gas tank, which we do with the gas we took from the back room. To the wilds of Iceland!
Just kidding, we can’t go anywhere because we have no idea where the hell anything is. Disappointment 🙁 Okay, let’s just turn around and shuffle back to Skipbrot in shame.
We get a call from Ned. What’s up, Ned! He’s all like, “I’m so excited for our date tonight! I’m so glad that you’re here, in the United States, in Illinois, and we can go out tonight, because we are in the same location, physically.” Nancy tells him that we’re in Iceland, and Ned’s like, “Uh…you know today is our anniversary, right?” Nancy’s like, “…oh.” Heh. Is this not, like, the same thing that happened in the Captive Curse, though? Anyway, Ned’s like, “Okay, I guess I’ll go watch a football game with Burt,” because Ned is not only back in the US, he also apparently lives in the ’50s. He tells us to bring him back a souvenir and adds, “And remember, you can call me any time you want. Hint, hint.” Sometimes, Ned, you make it hard to defend you. After they hang up, Nancy notes in her journal that we should make it up to him by buying him something from the gift shop. Nothing says “I’m sorry for flying to Iceland on our anniversary” like a Fair Isle sweater.
Well, that was awkward. Up next: We go back to the gift shop and finally finish those puzzles. Then we manage to get the hell out of Skipbrot for five minutes, but then we turn around and come right back to do Gunnar’s job for him.
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