Hrafn.

Hrafn's valley has one single road to the rest of the island, the Fjarðarheiði pass, and it closes in winter: sometimes a day, sometimes three weeks. He learns the weather forecast by heart at six in the morning and checks his tires twice before setting off, even in June. If the pass opens, he goes up. If it doesn't open, he goes up the next day. «Þetta reddast», he says, which in Icelandic comes out roughly as «it'll sort itself out»; in his mouth it isn't optimism, it's arithmetic. Winter, besides, is his good season: he gets up earlier, fixes leaks, and comes back from his route in a better mood than he's in come August.

The mailboxes in the valley freeze shut from the inside, and the metal seals itself after a night of rain and wind. Hrafn went down to his father's garage one day, grabbed a rod, put it to the blowtorch and bent it until it looked right. Out came an ugly, crooked hook with a loop at the tip, and he's opened half the valley with it. It lives in the right-hand pocket of his coat and he doesn't lend it to anyone. His father, Bjarni, opened that same pass for twenty winters with the snowplough; now he welds other people's odd jobs and still checks the forecast at six, out of habit.