

The Professor works through the night and up to three in the afternoon, trying to find the key to the code. The young man is about to destroy the parchment, when, all of a sudden, Otto bursts back in again, causing him to put the paper down. Arne Saknussemm'īut chooses to conceal the truth from his uncle out of fear that he will actually follow the writings instructions. 'Go down into the crater of Snaefells Jökull, which Scartaris's shadow caresses just before the calends of July, O daring traveler, and you'll make it to the center of the earth.

In the meantime, Axel accidentally cracks the code, which says: It is written in a code, which the Professor becomes obsessed with cracking, trying out a few ways with his less interested nephew. The two stumble on a parchment supposedly written by Arne Saknussem, an Icelandic alchemist of the sixteenth century. The book begins with Professor Otto Lidenbrock coming home early and in a rush from a trip to a bookshop and calling his nephew Axel into his study, purely delighted by an old book written by an Icelandic chronicler of the twelfth century, Snorri Sturleson.
