Glimpse - Your Stories from Abroad

I am knee-deep in fish. As they gush out of the nets and into a chute that leads down to the hold, many try to escape, slithering around on the deck until they are caught and tossed below. Times are tough for the Icelandic fishing industry, but you wouldn’t guess it from where I’m standing.

We are five days out of port, on board the research vessel Árni Friðriksson. While I’m interested in the scientific purpose of this expedition—to test a new trawl net that helps target certain species—my real motivation for coming along on this cruise is slightly less technical. Ever since I first went deep-sea fishing with my family in sixth grade and caught a 50-pound halibut (actually my mother caught it, but she let me reel it in), I have cherished a secret belief that I am a natural-born salty sea dog. I convinced myself that I am made to live on the sea, wrestling with gargantuan fish, leaning into the wind as rain lashes my face. All I needed was a chance to prove it.

Unfortunately, that has not been as easy as I had hoped. When I first came on board, the Icelandic crew was friendly enough, but I was a stranger, an American half their age, and not only that, I didn’t know anything about cod-fishing. Perhaps for these reasons, they did not immediately seem to realize that they had a fellow salty sea dog in their midst.

I first began to prove my mettle on the second day. I was standing on the trawl deck. The nets had just been emptied, and one of the men was untangling a chain. There was nothing for the others to do. One of the quieter members of the crew, whom I had thought spoke only Icelandic, came and stood next to me.

“It’s beautiful weather,” he said, smiling. The sky was cloudless.

“Yes, it’s so calm.”

“Are you cold?” he asked.

“No,” I said. I was cold, actually. But a salty sea dog does not reveal discomfort. I removed my hands from my nice, warm pockets to show that I actually liked to expose them to the icy air. He nodded at me, approvingly, then left to help let out the nets.

Well done, Ben! After that, the crew and I weren’t such strangers anymore. One by one, over the course of the day, each of them came to introduce himself and shake my hand.

At lunch, Siggi Guðmundsson, the head cook, handed me a plate with a brown jelly and a slab of tiny pinkish eggs—fresh cod liver and cod caviar. I tried to take only a little, but Siggi insisted that I should have the whole plate.

“Cod has many different uses, it’s very healthy for you,” Siggi said. “People use it all over Iceland. I drank some cod liver oil every day when I was a child. As soon as I stopped, my hair fell out.”

Siggi was convincingly bald.

After letting my hands freeze and eating Siggi’s slimy eggs, I thought I was on track for some serious sea cred (like street cred, except for fishermen). One crew member, however, continued to ignore me totally. Captain Guðmundur Bjarnason was a classic Icelander of the raw-hewn-from-driftwood and steely-blue-eyed variety. When I first came on the ship, I tried to introduce myself, but he simply shook his head and walked away. A nearby crewmember explained that the captain did not speak any English. After that, whenever his gaze happened to settle on me, he seemed to wince, as if feeling a pang for the dignity of the Árni Friðriksson.  

Three days into our journey, I stumbled into the heart of the Árni Friðriksson almost by accident. It was a gray afternoon, and I heard boisterous talking somewhere in the stern of the ship, on one of the lower decks. I climbed down a metal ladder and followed the voices. The first thing I noticed when I stepped inside the room was the blood. Several inches of fish blood sloshed around on the floor, lapping at my feet. The fish poured in from the nets, through the hatches, and landed on conveyor belts. Jón Sigurðsson, one of the sorters, pointed out each new fish species as it flopped off the conveyor belt: skate, lumpfish, gasping cod.

In order to get close enough to hear him, I had to duck under the conveyor belt, which was dripping blood. In case the other crewmembers in the sorting room were watching me, I pretended not to mind when I felt something wet trickling down the neck of my shirt. “I am a salty sea dog. I am a salty sea dog.” I repeated the words over and over in my head, like a mantra. At the moment, I was having trouble convincing myself. I was glad Captain Guðmundur Bjarnason was not around—I was sure he would have been able to see right through me, or at least as far as my queasy stomach.

That was two days ago. By now, on the fifth day, I have caught on to the rhythms of the ship. The grinding of the chains wakes me up at 7 a.m.

Most of the crew of the Árni Friðriksson has worked on commercial fishing boats at one time or another. They are, by and large, seasoned men (plus one woman, Anna, who helps sort the fish), but collectively they have a surprising dignity of appearance. On their off-shifts, they shuck their orange coveralls and don woolen sweaters and immaculate dark pants. After dinner, they gather in the ward room to watch satellite TV (last night it was Amanda Bynes in What a Girl Wants), and if I did not know better I might mistake them for a group of elderly bankers.

Friðrik Guðmundsson, who operated radios for the U.S. Navy for 36 years at the base in Keflavík before it closed, sits down next to me in the ward room. He takes out a pen and a scrap of paper and draws a picture.
 
“Fish have this thing called the swim bladder,” he says as he draws. “It lets them go up and down. The herring let the air in here, and they let it out here.”
    
He marks thick lines at the front and back of his fish drawing.
    
“During the Cold War, in the ocean north of Norway, they put out sonar buoys to listen for the Russian subs. And they heard a strange sound in the water. They didn’t know what it was. They started to call people, experts, to warn them about this strange sound in the water. Well, it turned out it was the herrings farting,” Friðrik chortles. “They could hear them letting out the air. The herring farts!”

The last day of the cruise catches me almost by surprise. By the afternoon, we are into the calm waters of Faxaflói Bay, negotiating the shipping traffic in Reykjavík’s crowded harbor.

One by one, we gather our belongings. The gangway is so steep that it is necessary to back down it, gripping the guidelines with both hands. Captain Bjarnason waits by the top of the gangway. He shakes hands with each crew member as they depart, sometimes pausing to add a little joke in Icelandic.

I linger on deck, partly because I am sad to leave the Árni Friðriksson, and partly because I am still afraid of the captain. Finally I pick up my duffel and head for the gangway. I turn around, duffel slung over my shoulder, and prepare to descend backwards down the slippery planks. I glance apprehensively at the captain.  I’ve come to the disappointing conclusion that between the cold, the blood, and the pervasive stench of fish, I am not, in fact, a salty sea dog at heart—and I’m certain he thinks the same. Not sure whether he can understand, I mumble, “Thank you for the trip. I really learned a lot.”

“Yes,” the captain says, with a sharp Icelandic accent. And then he reaches out and shakes my hand.