• Arnaldur Indridason’s Icelandic mystery novel Kältezone (The Draining Lake)

• Siegfried Lenz’s satiric collection Die Erzählungen (The Stories)

• An oil lamp (his house has no electricity or running water)

• A candle and a box of matches

• A pipe and some mild tobacco

• An 18th-century German physicist’s journals in three bound volumes, which Trinks found in a box of modern books he purchased at auction in Sweden

• A street performer’s advertisement, found in one of the journals: “He takes a pot of scalding oil, and throws it by great ladles full directly at the Ladies, without spoiling their cloaths, or burning their skin.”

• A thermos of black tea