Iceland review - 2014, Qupperneq 65

ICELAND REVIEW 63
wait for the first view of the white sails on
the horizon and announce ‘the French have
arrived!’” Berglind recounts.
While the fishermen waited for the cargo
ships to arrive and unload their catch, or if
the weather was bad, they would head on
land. With little variety in their meals—
they ate mostly cod and potatoes—they
were hungry for something different. Food
wasn’t the only thing the fishermen had
on their mind. Taking a bath, after weeks
or even months of going unwashed, was
the first thing they often did. “Some of
the older people here still remember the
smell—they stunk,” Berglind says.
Next on their itinerary was meeting the
local women. Naturally, the Frenchmen
stood out. “The children used to stare at
them. They really looked different, short
and sturdy with their brown eyes,” Berglind
explains. The fishermen walked around
town, attended the local dances and—much
to the chagrin of the local men—picked up
Icelandic women.
Falling in love with a foreign fisherman,
though, was taboo. Traces of the love affairs
can still be seen, Berglind reveals. “You only
need to look around you to see that some
people here don’t at all look Nordic, with
their brown hair and brown eyes ... but it’s
not really something that we talk about.”
Shared heritage
So much of an influence was the French’s
presence in the town that a new hybrid
language, ‘Fáskrúðsfjörður French,’ was
born, using Icelandic words with French
endings and vice versa. Two Icelanders in
Fáskrúðsfjörður were, however, known to
have spoken fluent French: merchant Carl
Tuliníus and doctor Georg Georgsson,
both of whom also served as the French
consul in Iceland.
While relations between the local women
and foreign men were not discussed open-
ly, residents of Fáskrúðsfjörður today are
proud of their history, as are fishing com-
munities in France. Fáskrúðsfjörður holds
the Franskir dagar (‘French Days’) fes-
tival each July while in its ‘twin town’ of
Gravelines, just south of Dunkerque, the
Icelandic festival Fête des Islandais is held
each year in late September. Signs of his-
torical ties with Iceland are also visible in
Gravelines’ museums and restaurants as
well as in those in Paimpol, once known
as the ‘City of the Icelanders,’ Icelanders
being the term for the French fishermen at
the time. Both towns named a street, Rue
des Islandais, in their honor.
The French, however, didn’t only sail to
Fá skrúðs fjörður but also ventured to other
villages in Iceland as well as to Reykjavík. As
a result, the French built another hospital
in Vestmannaeyjar (the Westman Islands)
and a third in Reykjavík.
And it wasn’t just French fishermen who
came to Iceland. English, Basque, Dutch
and Belgian fishermen were among those
to venture to Icelandic waters, and some
of the communities from which they came
also commemorate their journeys through
exhibitions and festivals. Some of these
fishermen were buried on Icelandic soil,
while a few of the survivors stayed on to live
in the country.
If everything went well, though, as sum-
mer arrived and the fishermen’s long sojourn
came to an end, they headed south to sell
their catch in Portugal or Spain before final-
ly returning home. Eventually, the lucrative
cod fishing in Iceland came to an end. In
1901, vessels were banned from fishing
within a three-mile zone of Iceland. When
World War I started, conscription reduced
the number of fishermen and many of the
sailing routes were made unsafe. In 1922, a
ban on the use of seine nets came into place,
resulting in the French catch from Iceland
being halved. In 1938, the last ship from
France made its voyage to Iceland.*
SourceS:
Fransmenn á Íslandi museum in Fáskrúðsfjörður,
East Iceland.
Le Grande Pêche des Français sur les bancs d’Islande
(2014) by Pétur Gunnarsson.
Les Pêcheurs Français en Islande : trois siècles de cam-
pagnes, mythes et réalités (1989) by Elín Pálmadóttir.
The National Fishery Museum Navigo in Oostduinkerke,
West Flanders, Belgium.
Three French cabin boys in Fáskrúðsfjörður in 1911. Some of the many ships in the harbor
at the time can be seen in the background.
History