Atlantica - 01.05.2002, Qupperneq 70

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Shadow Casting
Imagine standing on the banks of a rushing salmon river, alone, except for a
ring of volcanic mountains and a 14-lb salmon biting on your line. No, it’s not
a dream. You’re fishing the open beats on one of Iceland’s 100 salmon rivers.
To find out where the really big fish are biting, head to the outdoor adven-
ture company Lax-Á and ask for owner Árni Baldursson. If this avid out-
doorsman is not in one of his shops, chances are that he’s already wading
through a glacial river, landing a monster fish.
“We do everything in Iceland with regards to hunting and fishing, but
salmon fishing is our speciality,” says Baldursson.
Speciality indeed. Anglers who sign up for fishing trips with Lax-Á are often
pleasantly surprised with all the fish they land. At the beginning of the sea-
son, an angler can literally drop in his line and the silvery salmon carving up
stream will latch on. But hang on. These are some big fish. EW
i-site VIKINGS & SALMON❍
Jesse Byock speaks excellent Icelandic. An avid student of the
sagas, as a young man he found work on an Icelandic farm
herding sheep in the northern fjords. Now a professor of Old
Norse and Mediaeval Scandinavian at the University of
California, Byock is still a regular visitor to Iceland where he is
currently taking part in an exciting archaeological project.
Byock brings several disciplines to his work, crossing the
boundaries between history, literature, law and archaeology.
His earlier work on bone disease during the Viking period led
him to a study of Egill Skallagrímsson, one of the greatest
heroes of the Icelandic sagas. Byock’s work developed into an
archaeological dig in the Mosfell Valley, in cooperation with
the National Museum of Iceland. Here, he has found evidence
of an entire Viking Age valley system: a series of early habita-
tions that were covered beneath landslides and engulfed by
wind/water-born soils around the year 1000.
In his most recent book, Viking Age Iceland (Penguin 2001),
Byock draws from extensive research into the sagas, as well as
archaeological finds, to explore the first centuries of the “Old
Icelandic Free State” in the period from the 10th to the mid
13th century. The book recreates Viking Age life from the set-
tler’s survival strategies, like the preservation of food, to the
roles of women, farming techniques in a harsh climate and the
development of the Church. Viking Age Iceland is a fascinating
read on who the Icelanders really were and how they survived
daily life on this isolated island. When I ask Byock whether the
Vikings were really such a violent bunch, he smiles. “On our
dig we found a skull of a male around 45 years of age. He had
received an axe blow to his head, with part of the rear of the
skull sliced off from another blow by a sword. I think that says
quite a lot.“ AMB
The Real Vikings
Professor Jesse Byock’s deep interest in Iceland’s Viking heritage has led him on excavations in Iceland and
to the publishing of his new book, Viking Age Iceland.
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