We have drawn up a list of demands for the herring; a summons. Both urgent and mystical, as in a summoning up; bringing to the surface. Incorporating various learnings from the past few weeks it provides Siglufjodur with some strategies for re-awakening the herring stocks. They are a culmination of our work here.
With our exhibition tomorrow, today was the final opportunity to gather herring drawings from residents.
There are many in Siglufjodur who remember the herring days, but in putting pen to paper interpretations are varied. Perhaps this reflects a fading recollection; or maybe a creative re-imagining. Many were hazy on the positioning of fins. Many spoke of the scales.
Last night we dreamt we were fish. Fish with many fins, tacked on in strange places. Almost like an amalgamation of all these drawings.
After seeing a live herring in the harbour the previous Saturday, we allowed ourselves some hope that there might be herring in the fjord. This afternoon we were invited on a fishing trip, perhaps this was our moment.
We went out at 2pm with Orlygur in his Faeroese fishing boat, and after rowing to the harbour to fetch some gasoline, we motored towards the open sea. We stopped near the small lighthouse on the other side of the fjord and took out our lines. Orlygur had brought old-style angling hooks which attached to wooden reels that we, as novices, jerkily lowered towards the seabed. Once the hooks were settled Orlygur taught us to pull them up a metre or so, and then start tugging hard, every few seconds, to catch a bite. So we sat tugging our lines. Suprisingly, after only a few minutes, we felt a bite, something big. We started to reel it in, up and up. Then the end of the line arrived to the surface. Something had cut clean through the line, the large metal hook was gone. Something big indeed.
Then, moments later, our line tugged again. We pulled it in quickly. This time there was something. We spun the reel up. Then we caught another. After 10 minutes we had three generous-sized cod. Herring were not forthcoming, but we had something – a marine connection; at least with the fish that currently keeps Siglufjordur afloat, if not its historical half-cousin. We sailed back to the harbour with grins and the north-west wind on our faces.
That evening we learnt, with some difficulty, how to fillet and skin the fish. We were left with cod enough for three days. We cooked a cod dinner for ourselves and Kristjan, with flour batter, lemon and Icelandic potatoes.
We´ve collected traces of herring, from different products and situations we´ve encounted over the last few weeks. From herring in bottles, to fish oil, to a swab from the crate where the fresh herring was found – here they are. Mounted on paper.
Today we sighted our first fresh herring in Siglufjordur – our efforts to summon the herring seem to be paying off!
Fishermen from around the country gathered here for a competition to see who could catch, by hand, the biggest fish. The boats went out at 5am and started arriving back at the harbour at 2:30pm. The type of fish didn´t matter so all sorts of interesting species were being offloaded. Prizewinning specimens were placed in blue plastic bags to separate them from the main catch. The winning fish weighed 15kg.
Of more interest to us (and also hidden inside blue plastic) was a herring. It was unwrapped for a few seconds, flashing like a blue jewel in the sunlight, and held up for us to photograph. Fresh from Siglufjorder´s own waters.
We have been eating smoked herring every day. Through ingestion we link ourselves to herring, becoming one with what we are seeking. One packet of smoked herring, the first packet we were given, remains untouched. By virtue of being named the ´last herring´ and also being the first herring in our quest this particular fish seemed special. We have kept it aside. We have fetishized it, attributing powers to it that perhaps it doesn´t have. Through our diet and newly acquired knowledge and experience, we now feel initiated enough to incorporate it back into our mission.
Today we performed incantations over this packet. Slipping into fish skins we summoned the King of the Sea in person. Can this packet of Egils síld bring herring to these waters once again? 
Here are a series of film stills, drawn on fish skin. Telling the story of fish skin. The top 4 images are from 1930s footage of the herring girls, here in Siglufjordur. The second set are from our own adventure over the past couple of weeks.
As materials, and as symbolic devices, fish skins have many interesting properties and applications. In the last couple of days we´ve moulded them, sewn them, drawn on them and worn them. 
These experiments have yielded little in terms of our mission, except for the realisation that once fish is dried it loses its fishyness and becomes something else. The essence of a fish lies elsewhere, perhaps in our bottle of Omega-3 oil or somewhere in our salmon lined stomachs.
What´s been more interesting, in the context of our quest, is hands on immersion in wet fish. To acquaint ourselves with herring we´ve explored the history, stories and the culture of herring. In drying and working fish skins we´ve been getting physical; embodying fish, experiencing it phenomologically. Working with wet fish links us to the herring girls. Makes a new link between us and the herring era. We documented ourselves collecting, cleaning and drying the fish. Comparing our actions with videos from the herring museum, it´s curious to see the parallels.
Until the early 1980s, RUV broadcast a sailor’s programme every Thursday at 1.30 in the afternoon, playing messages from the sailor’s families and musical requests. On Thursday 20th of August 2009 we searched the airwaves for any residue transmissions. Perhaps we salvaged some evidence that would help us.
In the early part of the C20th a fishermen in Siglufjorodur undertook a mission to collect all the local names for the landscape in the Siglufjordur region. After some years of walking and speaking to local farmers, all during his breaks from fishing, he collected around 1400 different names for mountains, valleys, lanes and flats. During the first decade of the C21st three Siglufjordur residents collated his findings onto a website, www.snokar.is, for contemporary walkers and folklorists alike to scrutinise.
This recording was made this week and features eight residents of Siglufjordur of varying generations reciting the names of the landscape, as transcribed by from eight farms neighbouring Siglufjordur town. The original documenting of the names were an attempt to preserve an oral body of knowledge into a written one. The speakers intone the old names, transforming the landscape from text back to sound. The piece is intermittently accompanied by a wordless performance of a local folk song about the mountains.
After being here for two weeks, searching for herring and herring traces, we finally made it to the only herring-related factory left in Siglufjordur – Egilssild. Egilssild produce smoked herring for domestic and overseas markets, and also package smoked salmon. The building is a long, corrugated metal structure next to the harbour. We struggled to find the door, succeeded, and a voice on the other end of the buzzer system invited us in.
After taking off our shoes, we are learning this is usual in these temples of fish, we entered the main factory. It was empty. We heard some machines buzzing and smelt fish. In the office a voice was talking on the phone, we waited until it had finished. This was Hannes, manager of the factory, and grandson of the original founder of Egilssild (Egil´s Herring), back in 1919. Hannes gave us some of the history of the company. It was originally based on the other side of the fjord, next to the tiny airport, then the only way in and out of Siglufjordur bar the sea, and Hannes said the fish were stored in the snow for lack of fridges. The herring are currently smoked by heating lamps in rooms walled with stainless steel.
We continued talking, stopping only so Hannes could disappear into various large fridges, from which he would bring us fish. After 20 minutes of chat, Russia is a huge herring market apparently, we had four packets of smoked herring and two 1kg packets of salmon. Hannes, jokingly we assume, said we could come back next week when we need more.
We are collecting herring, creating a new shoal.
The plan is to get everyone in Siglufjordur to draw a herring. Maybe this collective act, as well as being a poetic recreation of what is no longer, will draw out real herring from the ocean.
Will people participate? If they do will there be a difference between those who worked in the fishing industry and those who didn´t in terms of knowledge? And will this type of knowledge even be present in drawings?
After sampling several streets in Siglufjordur there have been a range of different reactions, mainly bemusement and amusement, mixed with interest and cups of coffee. And very varied drawings. Infused with personality. 
Siglufjordur looks different every day. When we walk around we are sometimes sure we´ve discovered a new street, improbable in a town of 1000 people, but the light catches us unaware. The landscape moves backwards and forwards like a stage set on wheels. In the sun the mountains recline, yet when the fog drops the mountains fall back and the world ends on the corner of our street.
The landscape around the town has its own personality. It´s moods are infectious. Some days the mountains are completely obscured by fog, depressed and hidden. We feel the same. When we first arrived the mountains glowed purple in the midnight sun and we slept with an awareness of sun in our dreams. The moods of the mountains are reflected in the water in the fjord. We´ve been filming it, capturing variations in light, time of day, weather, building up an abstract portrait. Siglufjordur is on the North Atlantic Coast, so waves come into the fjord, but muted by their journey down the bay. The reflections have a special quality in terms of movement and colour. From a certain angle the water stops looking like water and starts looking like a magic eye book in motion, or a detuned tv. Here´s an example of what we mean.
We climbed another mountain this weekend, with Orlygur, his son Hrafn and Gulny´s cousin. Every walk is has a narrative, a character. This one just went straight up, a scramble to the peak which only took an hour. The views from the top were incredible, we could see 150 km in either direction, across to the Western Fjords and way over to the Eastern Highlands. In UK terms, this view is like standing in Birmingham and seeing both London and Manchester. This weekly conquest of mountains seems to suit our quest.
By car there is only one way in and out of Siglufjordur, and that´s via a tunnel at the north of the town. Interestingly, this tunnel was built in 1967, at exactly the same time the herring disappeared. Could this be another piece in the jigsaw?
Pre-1967 Siglufjordur was a town of men, boats and herring. Geographically enclosed. No holes in the landscape. Perhaps the tunnel opening unbalanced the natural order of things. Allowed things to ´fall out´, like men and then the herring. It certainly seems that once the tunnel opened, resources left Siglufjordur like water from a plughole.
In 2010 a new tunnel is due to open connecting the South of Siglufjordur to the main Akureyri route. Maybe this will unblock things, or rebalance the landscape, and resources, including herring stocks.
Past the herring museum, on the southern banks of the fjord, is a small cod processing factory. We´ve wandered past on a few occasions and have always been fascinated with the array of fish entrails piled up in the plastic crates outside. One has fish heads, another tails and a third contains thousands of fish skins. Today we decided to act on our curiosity, and we knocked on the door of the factory. The very helpful manager said we could help ourselves to the skins, so we carried two bucket loads back to Herhusid.
Aided by Kristjan, we cleaned and then pinned the skins onto sheets of thick cardboard and waited in the watery sunshine to see what would happen. We have been told that fish skins take days to dry properly, and require extensive pinning to prevent them from curling back around the absent fish. However, after a few ours in the sun, the skins dried. The underside of the skin seemed to act as a natural adhesive, sticking onto the cardboard, so the expected curling didn´t happen.
So now we have 100 dried fishskins, and our studio smells of Arctic beaches. If we can work with the cod, will this bring us ´closer´ to the herring? Can cod, transformed, beckon its fishy cousin? Or, through some alchemical process, will it transmute directly into the King of the Sea?
An inspiring artist to mention here is Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva, who works site specifically and with animal products, often with the skins or offal of chicken and cattle. Check her out at http://www.elpihv.co.uk/
We found a picture of Harry Belafonte amongst the possessions of a herring girl. It seemed significant. This debonair islander, his being Jamaica, nestled amongst the cheap perfume and fish knives. The rise and fall in his record sales almost exactly match the rise and fall in the numbers of herring caught at Siglufjordor. His career nosedived the same year the herring stopped coming. Are the two in some way linked? Perhaps Harry Belafonte is somehow responsible for the disappearance of the herring; as his record sales grew so did the herring harvest, when his sales fell the herring adventure ended. During the 1950s, his music was popular amongst the young of Iceland. Perhaps his sentimental songs of fishermen going out to sea, leaving behind heartbroken girls, had some some resonance in this other island in the sun.
We are concerned here with sympathetic magic, James Frazer´s over-arching theory of magic related to materiality and objects. The premise is that, if a result follows an action, then that action must be the cause of the effect. If I pray for rain, and it rains, then my prayer is as likely a cause of the rain as any meterological explanation. So, if Harry Belafonte reappears in Siglufjordor, would the herring return?
Why did the fish disappear? Was it really due to overfishing? Perhaps they are hidden? Or were hidden?
We´ve been looking at the work of artist Steingrímur Eyfjörð. For the 52nd Venice Biennale he created a work “The Golden Plover Has Arrived” for the Icelandic Pavilion. Often working with socio-psychological questions of folkloric character, one element of this exhibition concerned the hidden-people of Iceland, known as the huldufolk.
The huldufolk are a genus of mythical beings that have dwellings all over Iceland. Not to be confused with elves or trolls, the huldufolk are to-scale, human size, yet invisible to all humans except those with keen intuition. They live in a parallel Iceland that exists, more or less, as a version of the world 300 years ago. Huldufolk have no mod-cons and live a simple, rural existence. However, for all their homely appeal, they can be quite mischevious. Many sympathisers of the huldufolk say you should never look for something you´ve lost, as the huldufolk have probably stolen it, and it´s therefore impossible to find.
Perhaps the herring were stolen, becoming hidden themselves. Perhaps great shoals of unseeable fish await some kind of rescue from the world of elves, trolls and hidden people.
We located this verse on the internet apparently used if you are looking for something you´ve lost. It´s a plea to the huldufolk not to hide the lost object, which has no value compared to what the huldufolk already own.
Hulda, mulda, tulda.
You have yours, give me mine.
Because yours is better than mine.
Perhaps it will work as one of our summons. We´ll shall see.
PS Here´s an interview with a state huldufolk medium, Erla Stefansdottir
http://signy412.wordpress.com/2008/08/26/lifsin-min-erla-stefansdottir/
There many variations on herring; fresh herring, pickled herring, salted herring, herring salad. At the height of the herring adventure Siglufjordor had the largest processing factory in Iceland, generating tons of herring meal and herring oil everyday (it now stands empty, used as storage). The meal was used as animal feed, as is most herring fished nowadays, and the oil in numerous products, from Brylcreem to Nivea moisturiser. It was also used in the manufacture of bombs in WW2 by both the British and Germans, but details remain vague. We set out to investigate current variations on herring, and collect as many as possible.
First stop the fish shop. It´s impossible to get fresh herring here in town, but maybe we´d get some good advice. Closed until 17 August.
Next stop Egils Processing Factory. Unable to find an entrance.
Third stop the supermarket. Evidence in bottles and jars, and omega 3 oil, but impossible to tell from the beauty products.
Equipped with pink pickled herring and a bottle of fish oil we returned to the studio. If we couldn´t find beauty products perhaps we´d make them ourselves.
Recipe for herring oil soap:
One can of lye; fish oil 41/2 pounds; water 3 pints; lye solution 80ºF; oil 100ºF. Stir well for about 10 minutes and then allow to stand with occasional stirring until combination is complete, then transfer to the moulds.
Today we were willing recipients of generosity, yet again. We were invited by Orlygur and his family on a hike to the summit of one the larger mountains that hang over the town.
We were picked up at 1.30pm and driven by pickup truck to meet the rest of the family. We were soon knee-deep in lupin bushes and heading towards a wide stream which we traversed without too much glacier water getting in our boots. This was a real hike. We were at the back for much of the ascent; kicking our city shoes in the damp dirt. But we knew this was a remarkable walk from the first moments. The land here undulates and transmogrifies with each step. The village slipped away and we were in a green, pillowed landscape speckled with wild-flowers and uncountable rabbles of butterflies. The sun was beating on us and we soon stripped our jumpers down to t-shirts.
As we ascended the ground shifted and the blueberry bushes made way for heather, then, drying out more, exposed martian stone and dust. Within an hour and a half we were level with the remaining patches of snow left on the mountainside. We began to feel the altitude, forcing our jumpers back on. We skidded across a large expanse of snow, it crunched in white-noise under our feet. Then the ground was all hard stones, some with metallic mossy rust reflecting on it. We stopped for lunch and Orlygur told us how, in the Herring Days, one of the fishermen was given the task of collecting the names of all the significant landmarks in the area. He laboured for a number of years, talking to farmers and shepherds. He collected over 1000 names for peaks, passes and valleys. There were more he couldn´t find, which are now forgotten.
We reached the summit of the mountain after four hours and peered down at Siglufjordor, like looking at the ground from the wrong end of a telescope. The way down was quicker. We just marched directly downwards. Our knees bared the brunt as our eyes were dazzled with the view. With every 100 metres descended, in a matter of minutes, the ground never seemed to get closer. Only when we reached blueberry bushes again, momentarily feasting, did the mountain curve round to meet the land, and we were back in Siglufjordor.
We then had a warming dinner at Orlygur and Gulny´s house and talked about fish and art and all manner of things.
Here´s some sounds from the mountain.
Yesterday we were invited by Kristjan, our neighbour, and co-facilitator of Herhusid, to the Fish Festival in Dalvik. Our quest floundering, it seemed like too good an opportunity to miss.
Occurring every year, it´s a central part of Iceland´s Summer Festival circuit. Kristjan relayed to us a news broadcast that claimed, by the morning of the festival, 1 in 10 Icelanders will be driving to Dalvik. Thats 30,000 people.
The big draw of the festival is free food. The town prepares a feast of fish, and visitors can sample as much as they desire. In reality you sample as much as your can stand queueing for, but we still left satisfied. The festival operates like some kind of potlatch. And it works; Iceland holds Dalvik in high regard. Even the President was there, a white-haired man with a portly assistant (surely not a bodyguard). He said hello to Kristjan, we nodded and smiled.
The food on offer was impressive. We necked whale sushi, endless trout fillets, a bowl of Thai fish soup and some very salty herring. Yes, herring. Sadly we only counted four unprocessed samples on the whole site. We asked about buying some fresh, but that was apparently impossible. Again we were pointed East.
Over a pint of beer Kristjan gave us some good advice on romance. As I hope not to take it, I´ll just pass it on:
A woman needs three men in her life.
The first should be handsome, talented and ballsy. She should bear his child.
The second should be rich, sensible and conservative. He should raise her child.
Then, when the child has left home, the third man should be a friend, because he´s the one she´ll spend the rest of her life with.
Whilst said with a twinkle in his eye, it appears this pattern is not at all uncommon in Iceland. Families seem quite complex here. I have no information on how people feel about this behind closed doors, but on the surface the you-don´t-need-a-ring policy seems without upset.
So we left Dalvik sleepy, spent and rich in Omega-3 oils.
Here´s a short soundscape recording of the festival
We visited the Herring Era Museum. Its a beautiful place, devoted to the Herring Adventure. Three converted boathouses tell the story of the glory days, when Siglufjordor hosted up to 10,000 people over the summer months, all working in the fishing industry, and the town was generating nearly half of Iceland´s GDP.
We were both drawn to the recreated living quarters of the herring girls. Thousands worked in the town, gutting and salting the fish, readying them for export. Their dwellings still have grafitti on the walls, declarations to unknown fishermen (”I lov u, luv me tender”) or bizarre eulogies to Iceland, channelled via Harry Belafonte – “Island in the Sun”. Harry Belafonte was a big favourite of the girls, a faded picture of him in his 50s prime was among the possessions on display in one of the rooms. It seemed to have some significance.
We left the Museum confused, the herring were still here, but as memories. Phantom fish on ghost ships. We knew that somewhere out in the Arctic Sea, and further towards Norway, there were now new shoals, the stocks were increasing at last, but they would never be brought to Siglufjordor. Huge factory ships now fish, process and pack the catch at sea.
So, should we summon the herring back somehow? And, if we could, would anyone want them?
PS Here are some nice videos of the herring adventure in the UK, they mirror the type of going on at Siglufjodor:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nationonfilm/topics/fishing/
On our first day here we walked across the village to find the Siglufjordor Travel Company as we were interested in going on a boat trip. The address turned out to be a regular house on one of the villages residential streets (of which there are very few). The door was open and a friendly man greeted us. He explained that they had sold their boat a long time ago and couldn´t help us with boat trips, but, after we told him of our quest, he told us a little more about Siglufjorfor and its history. After some moments his wife joined us too. We learnt the following:
- It appears the herring disappeared in 1967, and never came back. Stocks have risen since, but the herring ports are now in the East of Iceland. The herring won´t be back in Siglufjordor.
- In the herring days the village girls and the fishing boys used to go up on the hill directly next to the village to get a little fresh air and privacy. The town´s current gene pool was cooked up on the hill´s grassy banks. As the wife noted, “In Iceland, you don´t need a ring!”
After we talked for a little while the husband suddenley disappeared, returning moments later clutching something silvery.
“Here´s the last herring in Siglufjodor. You can have it”
It was a filleted and processed herring, vacuum packed in silvery plastic for freshness. It was fished far from Siglufjordor but packaged in a nearby factory. Here´s a picture.
Traditionally, the journey North, to Iceland, was never just a holiday. Victorian romantics, in search of the old North (everything Victorian Britain was not – pagan, wild, free) journeyed to Iceland. Certainly the voyage was difficult, involving two or three sea voyages and frequently beset with trials; the writer H Rider Haggard was nearly drowned on his way home from researching his own Viking novel, Eric Brighteyes. The Victorian travellers went in search of the Sagas, the semi-mythological accounts of the early Viking settlers of Iceland. They visited the settings of the climatic scenes of battle and glory, searching for some contemporary echo of the epic tales. The Victorian in Iceland was no tourist, they were travellers; every step meticulously researched in municipal libraries, every jolting wave and damp spray of the ocean had symbolic significance, each Northern isle passed – Orkney, Faroe – took them a step closer to greatness. By the time they arrived they were barely distinguishable from the Viking pioneers who settled the island 1000 years before.
Another variety of traveller, more clear-headed and rational in motivation, was the scientist, curious about the island´s unique geology and subterranean life. Instead of books of epic poetry and leather pouches ready for ale and buccaneering, the scientist would be carrying test tubes and thermometers, primed for dunking in bubbling lava or glacial lakes. Whilst occupying entirely separate part of the brain, the scientist viewed Iceland as a kind of promised land, much in the same way as the romantic.
So now we are here, perhaps in the same tradition. Iceland still has a mythological position with regards travel. Its not yet a place to holiday in, even though there are cheap flights and Reykjavik being a European party town. Few people go beyond the capital, and still those who do would define themselves as travellers (or backpackers, hikers, artists), never tourists. Even in recent popular culture, the North, the land of ice and snow, is the place where certain kinds of people ´find themselves´. Superman flies North, to an icy cave, to commune with his ancestors. In Philip Pullman´s Dark Materials, the icy North is where the secrets of dust are hidden. Iceland also has a growing magnetism for those with a weakness for wispy magic; elves, hidden-people and trolls are arguably winning the PR battle against their warrior neighbours, Egil and Ngal, for the hearts of the dreamy European.
So Iceland is still a stereotyped land, an archetype for óld´, ´tradition´ or ´natural´. Its an image that is fed to its inhabitants as much as its visitors, and few complain. The Victorian image of Iceland was swiftly appropriated by Icelandic writers and artists, and it fed into Icelandic culture and self-image. Icelandic art is often concerned with its birthplace, whether it be landscape or conceptual work, and for us, an appreciation of Icelandic art, and poetry and music, is one of our reasons forjourneying; part of our quest.
The other part is the herring.
We came to Siglufjordour seeking herring in the same way the Victorians came seeking Egil. And similarly, we found only memories and signposts; the herring had gone. So, we sought meaning in traces, colouring in history from photos and objects, summoning up these silver fish from sardine tins and hand creams. We are as lost as those C19th adventurers, babbling in broken Icelandic to perplexed fishermen about the glory days, about the time-before-now when things were truly great.