Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.04.2017, Blaðsíða 48

Words: Mark Asch
Photos: Mark Asch and Larissa Kyzer

A herring might not be suitable
for cutting down the mightiest
tree in the forest, but don’t un-
derestimate its power: for much
of the 20th century, herring
proved it could make or break a
whole community. The Herring
Era Museum, in Siglufjörður, cel-
ebrates the years, roughly from
the turn of the century through
the late 1960s, when this minia-
ture port at the apex of the Tröl-
laskagi peninsula, about an hour
and fifteen minutes’ drive north
from Akureyri, was Iceland’s big-
gest boom town, swollen with “the
silver of the sea.”
The Herring Era
Museum, spread
out over five build-
ings opposite Si-
glufjörður’s work-
ing harbour, was
opened to the pub-
lic in stages begin-
ning in the early
1990s, fol low ing
decades of stop-
start planning and
preserving by local
groups. The roots
of the museum can
be traced back to
the tail end of the herring era it-
self, when stocks were on the de-
cline, but still providing herring
to export to Europe and North
America in the form of food; fish
meal for feed and fertilizer; and
fish oil, for use in all manner of
household products, from floor
wax to hair cream.
On the ground floor of Róalds-
brakki, a grand, deep-red wooden
structure built by a Norwegian
merchant in 1907, the novice her-
ring historian is introduced to the
decades when herring were still
plentiful in Iceland’s North Atlan-
tic waters, and Siglo’s catch made
up one of the biggest portions of
Iceland’s biggest economic sector.
At the peak of the herring era, the
town’s population would quadru-
ple every summer; in newsreels
from the 1930s, you see the sheer
poundage of glimmering writh-
ing masses hauled up from the
ocean, spilling out from the nets,
like coins scooped up from a jar in
your cupped hands.
Matching bowties
In photos, trawlers are anchored
in the harbour, rows deep, and
the shore is dense with people.
The town’s famed “Herring Girls”
hunch over long benches on the
piers that used to stand across
from the museum,
beheading, gutting
and salt-packing
fish in the midnight
sun. Herring Girls
worked whenever
a trawler returned
to port; local moth-
ers would leave out
t he nex t couple
meals for their kids
and hustle down to
work alongside the
town’s daughters,
and migrants from
all over. The rest of
the time, Siglo was
swinging: on one wall on the first
floor of Róaldsbrakki are black-
and-white photos of the town’s
combo bands—spiffy in their
matching bowties—and tattered
dance cards from the local hotel
ballrooms.
Upstairs are several dormito-
ry-style rooms, re-created by the
museum staff with items sourced
from local Herring Girls and their
descendants, many of whom were
still alive to be interviewed by
the museum. Wooden bunk beds
are filled with movie magazines,
Clark Gable and forgotten Scan-
dinavian heartthrobs beaming
from the covers; with gramo-
phones, transistor radios, hair
rollers, sewing kits and flimsy
plastic sunglasses. A dispassion-
ate appraisal of the available his-
torical evidence can only lead to
the conclusion that the Herring
Girls’ style game was extremely
on-point. Shirtwaist dresses from
the 1940s hang from rusty hooks
behind doors, sufficiently well-
preserved that you could wear
them out. And no wonder—you
imagine these young women,
flush with herring-scented cash
in a hardscrabble Icelandic village
north of 66 degrees latitude, inac-
cessible to the rest of the world by
road until 1940. How could they
throw away the nicest thing they’d
ever bought?
Living dioramas
The display keeps going, room af-
ter room. A hot-plate kitchen, a
men’s dormitory, storage in the
wings of the attic, rubber boots
and rain slickers hanging from
pegs. Back downstairs, an office
with old file cabinets, vintage
t y pew riters and adding ma-
chines. The cumulative effect is
similar to what you experience
in local folk museums all around
Iceland, an almost overwhelm-
ingly dense mix of preservation
and junkyard, permeated with
nostalgia. The Herring Era Muse-
um displays a very high percent-
age of its total artifacts at any one
time—perhaps a social necessity,
after all its neighbors raided their
attics for its collection—but the
set-dressing is never careless, and
the living dioramas are contex-
tualized with extensive historical
information.
And then there are more build-
ings! A whole fish factory, powered
by its own coal-fired generators,
with chemistry lab for testing fish
byproducts, bespoke machin-
ery, and a huge, fearsomely cork-
screwed melting vat. Last is the
boathouse—complete with a per-
fectly restored trawler, with decks
you can scramble over, and almost
a dozen more smaller craft, all laid
out within a circular pier, complete
with corrugated-tin fisherman’s
shacks. One pays tribute to a local
seaman and evangelist, “Gústi, Man
of God,” who, we’re told, “would
preach on the little square in the cen-
ter of Siglufjörður. He seldom had
many listeners, except when started
storming against the great enemy,
Communism. Then he would take
a short break from the gospel and
swear mightily.”
The museum (sild.is) is open daily
from 10:00-18:00 daily June, July & Au-
gust; 13:00-17:00 daily May—Septem-
ber; and by appointment year-round.
SHARE & PHOTO GALLERY:
gpv.is/sig05
The Silver Of The Sea Distance from Reykjavík438 kmHow to get thereFollow Route One to Akureyri, then turn northwards to Siglufjörður.
"Imagine
these wom-
en, flush
with herring-
scented
cash in a
hardscrabble
village."
48 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 05 — 2017
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