Saga - 1990, Qupperneq 132

130
HAUKUR SIGURÐSSON
Summary
Icelandic fishermen used squid, mussel, and many other kinds of fish as bait
for the hand-line and the long-line. Herring seemed to be most attractive to
the fish but seamen often thought that by using such a delicious bait the fish
would find other bait repulsive. Fishermen thought that fish would leave the
fishing ground when no herring could be seen. They also considered the
long-Iine hazardous and local people in various places of Iceland made
agreements late in the 19th century as to how, when, and where to use it.
In the first half of the 19th century people in England began preserving
food by immersing it in salt and ice. Then in America ice-houses were built
with thick walls and heavy doors. Nevertheless the ice used to melt until the
cold inside the houses was better isolated from the heat outside. It was in
Canada in the 1880's that Isak Jónsson, later the pioneer builder of ice-
houses in Iceland, got to know how ice-houses were constructed and used.
From Canada ísak wrote to Tryggvi Gunnarsson, then the director of
Gránufélagið, the biggest lcelandic commercial company, but four years
later the Director of the National Bank of Iceland. Now Gunnarsson became
interested and two Icelanders, the before-mentioned Isak Jónsson and
Jóhannes Nordal, were encouraged by him to come from Canada to Iceland
in order to build ice-houses. In 1894-95 the first Icelandic bait ice-houses
were erected, the ice-house of the Ice Company of Faxaflói and that of the Ice
Company of Mjóifjörður in the eastern part of Iceland.
Before mechanization most ice-houses in the countryside were built with
thick walls of stone and turf with saw-dust or hay between layers. In towns
and villages the walls were of timber covered with thin iron. Usually the ice
was taken from ponds near the houses. If it was thick it was cut in rec-
tangular cubes and brought on sledges to the ice-houses. Where ice was not
available snow was used. In most ice-houses boxes or shelves were along the
walls with freezing-pans for ice, salt, and herring, which froze into lumps in
the pans. Beside the ice-houses there were ice-stores where ice was kept to
be used for freezing.
Ice- or snow-cellars, which were smaller than ice-houses, could also be
found, mostly employed by farmers fishing as well as farming.
The Norwegians had built ice-houses from about 1860 but mainly for pre-
serving salmon before exporting. In 1898 the Faroese learned from the Ice-
landers how to construct ice-houses for keeping bait.