We can clearly see the sawlike marks left by the shark’s teeth on the bone and fat. The hook is stuck through a tendon in the joint so it lies right next to the bone. I had assumed the shark would crush the whole thing if it took the bait. But it didn’t. And that’s why the shark wasn’t hooked more firmly. That’s why it was able to pull free or simply let go. That’s why we’re sitting here, not saying a word. I tell Hugo about my mistake, and he just gives me a pensive little nod without a hint of blame.
After the initial disappointment has subsided, we decide not to consider the episode a defeat. Instead, we will view it as a sign that we’re doing things right. Not many people have been on the verge of catching a Greenland shark on their very first try. All we can do is rebait the hook and toss it back into the water.
Down there, underneath our pontoons, our monster is swimming, waiting to be fed. Several hundred yards away, toward shore, a boat is anchored. It’s filled with happy youths enjoying the glorious weather. The girls jump into the water, which is cold, but it’s never going to be warmer than it is right now. If they knew what was staring up at them from the deep as they splashed around, they would rush back on board. One of the girls is wearing an orange swimsuit and probably doesn’t know that the colors yellow and orange seem to provoke sharks to attack. Australian divers and surfers never wear gear in those colors.
—
We get no more bites that day. Or the next. On the third day we let the baited line stay out there all night. The following morning the whole thing is gone, as if sunk into the sea. Both floats are probably far out in the ocean, dragged off by some invisible force, either by the current or by a Greenland shark. It would be pointless to go looking for the floats. Even if we had all the time in the world and an unlimited supply of gasoline, the chance of finding them would be close to zero.
Three days later we’re on our way back across Vestfjorden. We’ve written off the floats and chain, along with the fishing line. But out in the middle of Vestfjorden, in poor visibility and high seas, we practically run right into them. The whole length of line and chain is there. Only the hook and shackle, the U-shaped steel clamp fastening the hook to the chain, is missing. That’s incredible. It shouldn’t be possible for a clamp, firmly fastened with a pair of pliers, to come loose. And it would take tremendous force to snap it in two. Yet one of these two things must have happened. At least that’s what we tell ourselves. But the truth is, it was amateurish for us to leave the baited line out here overnight. Local fishermen confirm this. The current is so strong that it will take everything, if given enough time.
—
Our boat carves a white V across Vestfjorden. Out in the ocean a small rainbow forms a portal. It’s tempting to set course toward it, just to drive through. But we’re not hunting rainbows.
The mirage line, where the sky meets the sea, is suddenly obscured, creating optical illusions. Several small islands out there seem to be much closer, floating above the glittering sea. The sun is burning the edges of magnesium-white clouds far to the west. It has rained, and we can see individually delineated local showers pouring down way off in the distance. The sun isn’t visible to us, but it casts its light around and in between the rain, in some places looking like gigantic spotlights slowly sweeping across the surface of the water. Where we are, the world seems cleansed and filled with mirrors. The colors are oyster shell and slate.
12
As we approach Engeløya, great shoals of Atlantic mackerel splash around us, no doubt feeding on zooplankton. Hugo isn’t interested, and he snorts scornfully when I suggest catching a few to put on the barbecue. Like so many other northerners in Norway, he detests this type of fish. He can’t stand the taste. He has tried to prepare mackerel in numerous ways, but it hasn’t made any difference, no matter what recipe he uses. So far Hugo hasn’t discovered any surefire method for removing the mackerel taste from mackerel. He says I’m welcome to catch a few to throw on the barbecue later, as long as he doesn’t have to be anywhere near.
The northerners’ contempt for mackerel has a long tradition. People believed this fish, with a pattern on its back that looks like a human skeleton, ate the bodies of the drowned. Even further back in time, it was thought the fish also ate people who were alive. Erik Pontoppidan (1698–1764), who was the bishop of Bergen, speaks of the mackerel as a type of Nordic piranha. “Like the shark,” the bishop writes, the mackerel shares the propensity for “eating human flesh, seeking out those who swim in the nude, so the person will be quickly devoured if he falls in a school or shoal of mackerel.” To underscore this claim, Pontoppidan recounts a “deplorable incident” when a sailor, perhaps sweaty after hard physical labor, wanted to take a dip in Laurkulen harbor (present-day Larkollen, south of Moss in southern Norway). Suddenly the merry sailor disappeared, as if something had yanked him under. After a couple of minutes he resurfaced, his body “bloody and gnawed, and swarming with mackerel that refused to be chased away.” If the man’s comrades had not come to his rescue, the sailor would have “without a doubt” suffered a very “painful death,” Pontoppidan asserts.36
—
In sheltered waters we stop between the islands of Lauvøya and Angerøya. There we catch a small cod, throw it back into the water, and then sit down to wait for the eagle, which has a nest at the top of the mountain, to come and sink its claws into the half-dead fish floating on the surface. We can see the eagle, but it doesn’t dive for our bait the way it has done so many times before. A seagull flies over to us. Its body looks smaller than the cod’s, but with effort the gull swallows the fish whole. The bird’s belly is now so full it fails to take flight. Sometimes we bite off more than we can chew.
Autumn
13
The next time I fly north, the birds have migrated in the opposite direction. It’s early October, and a silence has settled over the land. The trees, bushes, and plants are retreating toward their roots, getting ready to go dormant before the snow and frost arrive. A heavy, dark tone hovers over inland Norway. The lakes will soon turn white, and the valleys will fill with snow. Near the shore, and in the sea, it’s a different story. There life reawakens when the water gets colder and storms whip up the waves. The crabs move faster, the flounder get more brazen, the pollock are firmer, the shellfish taste better. We’re approaching the winter fishing season in northern Norway.
—
Again Hugo and I cross Vestfjorden from Steigen to Skrova. This time the sea is black as ink and possessed of a restless agitation. The light has dimmed, the cloud cover reaches down almost to the water. Hugo navigates in a zigzag pattern, meeting the waves from the side or the back, so he can surf as much as possible. In spite of the unnafuringen, which is what Norwegian fishermen call this maneuver when they swerve to avoid the worst of the head waves, it’s an unpleasant crossing.
As we approach Skrova, Vestfjorden shows us a little of its power. The sea is cold and raw, the rain lashes the whitecaps, which crash onto the shore with muted roars. The sea and the sky are not calm, separate entities, as they were the last time we were here. Today they form one continuous, churning motion. The Lofoten Wall isn’t visible until we’re only a few nautical miles away. Hugo steers the boat between the skerries and islands to enter Skrova harbor.
The bad weather continues over the next few days, keeping us from going out to sea. Instead, I help Hugo with some of his chores, which tend to pile up when you’re in charge of numerous wooden buildings encompassing tens of thousands of square feet.
Aasjord Station consists of two large buildings. The main building, which stands on the seaward side, has three stories totaling at least ten thousand square feet. Behind the main building is another building almost equal in size, and it too has three stories. Next to it stands a one-story cutting shed. The main buildings have been used as a fish landing center, cod-liver-oil mill, saltery, fishing gear storeroom, and dried fish warehouse.
The three buildings are connected, almost in the same way as the
Holy Trinity is—meaning they are one being and yet individual entities. Inside, you hardly notice when you move from one structure to another. After visiting so many times, you’d think I’d know every nook and cranny, but that’s not the case. Every time I leave the beaten track inside the main building, I discover some room or attic space, maybe even entire sections, that I’ve never seen before. It’s as if the fishing station is inexhaustible and will always have an undiscovered room to offer. And by the way, the island seems to be the same way. Each time I take a walk on Skrova, I end up in places I didn’t know, discovering a new sandy beach or an old German bunker atop an inaccessible hill.
Behind the fishing station, up on the steep slopes, there are two other small buildings: the Red House (Rødhuset) and the White House (Kvithuset). To help out, I stack up posts that have been used for the fish-drying racks on the slope. In the meantime, Hugo does some carpentry work on the Red House. Hugo and Mette are planning to move into the Red House when it’s ready. Spending the winters in the huge, drafty main building holds no appeal. Hugo is installing insulation in the Red House, making a thorough job of it. He is also replacing the walls, the roof, and the floors. At the back he’s building an annex that will be their bathroom.
He has already finished working on the White House. It’s an authentic old fisherman’s house from the early nineteenth century and considerably older than the fishing station. Hugo grabbed this house from the jaws of demolition a few decades back, before he even owned Aasjord Station. Now he has put up new board siding, replaced the windows, added insulation, put on a tar paper roof, built steps and a porch, and installed an old wood stove. From the windows on both the ground floor and upstairs, you have an unobstructed view of the bay. He used vintage glass, which gives the outdoors a blurry, distorted, and vaguely dreamy appearance, almost like being under water. When he pulled off the old paneling on the second floor, he discovered the walls had been insulated with newspapers from 1887. He decided to preserve them by coating them with varnish.
Instead of telling Hugo how impressed I am, I take on the role of a pedantic building inspector as he shows me around inside the White House. I walk with my hands clasped behind my back as I ask him why he did such and such when it might have been better, maybe even smarter or more in line with regulations, to do things some other way. It takes Hugo a couple of minutes to realize I’m joking, and then he sends me off to carry posts.
Since I’m not of much practical use at Aasjord Station, I find it best not to squander a good chore like this by finishing it too quickly. Better to make it last for a while so I’ll feel like I’m being handy.
After a short while I go inside the station, and before I know it, I’ve stumbled upon a room I’ve never seen before. On a shelf I find a bunch of newspapers, yellow with age. I pick up one of them, lean against a windowsill, and start to read an issue of Nordlands Framtid from September 8, 1963. At the top of the densely typeset front page, it says: “Norwegian naval vessels bomb Å in Lofoten with high-explosive shells.” That sort of headline can’t help but pique my interest, so I keep reading:
During firing practice carried out by naval vessels near Lofoten on Sunday, an error led to a number of shells falling on the community of Å on the island of Moskenesøya. It’s a miracle that no one was killed or seriously injured. A shell hit an outbuilding in the middle of the village and exploded, and shrapnel penetrated halfway through the timbered side of a residence five meters away from where the family was eating dinner. Twelve to fifteen other shells swooped right over the heads of people in the little fishing village, and many had to dive for cover in the ditches while the onslaught lasted. Four shells struck the village itself, while eight others landed among the fishing boats in the harbor. When the outbuilding exploded, three ten-year-old girls were walking past on the main road just 15 meters away. They were only slightly injured by shrapnel, which scattered in a 50-meter radius. Lamps and bookshelves in the nearby home fell off the walls, and a table toppled over in the living room. Less than 30 meters from the site of the explosion, five cabs carrying about 20 tourists had just stopped to take in the view, but no one was hit by shrapnel.
The sheriff was immediately notified, and the telegrapher at Sørvågen radio finally made direct contact with the destroyer Bergen and was able to stop the bombardment before any lives were lost.
That’s the Norwegian navy for you. They had huge areas devoid of people at their disposal, yet they still managed to fire shells into the middle of the little fishing village of Å, which is surrounded by wilderness at the remote western tip of Lofoten. It had to be an accident. If the navy had actually tried to hit that small target, they probably wouldn’t have been able to.
A copy of the newspaper Nordlandsposten from January 24, 1964, also contains dramatic news. In a lengthy letter to the editor, under the headline “Broomstick Murder,” Halvdan Orø takes to task a man who used a broomstick to kill an otter. “A broomstick of such poor quality that it breaks in half during the killing is not a proper weapon, and one has to ask whether the death of this otter might be characterized as animal abuse.”
—
With the help of distractions like this, the chore of carrying posts takes me a disproportionately long time. When I’m finally finished, I feel as if I’ve pretty much done my part. I’ve done more reading than lifting, and there’s nothing wrong with my muscles, but Hugo’s the one who has to tell me how to make best use of them. Hugo scratches his head but can’t come up with anything, so he lets me off the hook. Otherwise I’ll just get in the way and delay his own work. To be honest, that suits me fine. I’ve brought along to Skrova a bunch of old books that are of special interest to anyone who wants to know about the sea. This time the magnum opus I’m reading is Olaus Magnus’s voluminous work from 1555, originally written in Latin: Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (A Description of the Northern Peoples).
14
With each day the sea gets more restless. The barometer falls. Out on Vestfjorden a stiff wind whips at the crests of the roiling swells and whitecaps, lifting the water into microscopic drops that fly through the air. From a distance it looks as if smoke is coming off the sea.
Black clouds hover low in the sky, but occasionally openings appear. Then rays of translucent sunlight fall over the island, illuminating and magnifying everything they touch. Sometimes Aasjord Station is dazzling white. Other times it’s as gray as the skeleton of a beached whale.
Then the rain arrives. A heavy, monotonous, dreary rain with no end in sight.
—
Gusts of wind from the west bring the rain. Everywhere in the world the oceans, promontories, straits, islands, and coastal areas are dominated by particular winds. On Vestfjorden, like most of the sea areas in the Northern Hemisphere, the west wind is prevalent. The scientific explanation is that high pressure over the Azores and low pressure over Iceland produce a strong west wind in the North Atlantic.
On old maps the winds were often depicted as having faces. Maybe this was a tradition from antiquity, since the Greek gods associated with natural phenomena led very busy lives. Aeolus, god of the wind, was the son of Poseidon, god of the sea.1 His bulging cheeks were usually his most prominent feature, and he blew the west wind with all his might.
Back when all ships were at the mercy of the weather, the winds were ascribed certain traits, even personalities. Some winds were sly and capricious, but luckily there were people who knew how to control them. In the mid-1600s, the Frenchman Pierre Martin de la Martinière was sailing north as captain of a large ship. The wind subsided, and the ship, having reached an area south of Lofoten but north of the Arctic Circle—near Bodø, in other words—wouldn’t budge. The captain made contact with the local wind conjurers, “children of the wind’s prince,” who were said to be able to summon both storms and calm weather—for a price. A wind conjurer came out to the sailing ship and instructed the crew to tie three knots in a woolen cloth and then fasten it to the ship’s foremast. Wh
enever they needed wind, all they had to do was untie one of the knots. La Martinière was highly skeptical, but as soon as the first knot was loosened, a brisk southwesterly wind filled the sails, taking the ship farther north.2
Today, meteorologists generally use eight different wind directions: north, northeast, northwest, south, southeast, southwest, west, east. In the old days, the wind was divided into sixteen different directions, roughly speaking. Arthur Brox, from Senja, a large island north of Lofoten, recorded thirty local words for various types of wind.3
Some wind terms included details about how the landscape and the wind work together. For example, if there was a strong wind blowing from the south, it was of interest to know how the southern wind would strike a specific local area. Was it a landsønning—a south wind coming from land, which on the northern coast would mean from the southeast? Or was it an utsønning, a more cunning variant for seamen, since it arose out at sea?
A southwesterly wind is the worst kind on Vestfjorden.
—
For the most part the buildings of Aasjord Station have no insulation and breathe with the wind and weather. In a strange way they also seem to be pervaded by everything and everyone who has ever been here. Operations ceased in the early 1980s, so you need to have a keen sense of smell to detect any trace of the millions of fish that have passed through these halls. Yet there are many other lingering traces, as if the buildings themselves have memories and are capable of conveying a vague impression of their own past, surreptitiously and imperceptibly, the way rumors sometimes appear in dreams.
Shark Drunk Page 8