Shark Drunk

by Morten Stroksnes

  I once asked Hugo when he came closest to drowning. He told me a story I’d never heard before. When he was about twelve years old, he and a friend rowed out to a small islet in Steigen, just to explore it. While they were on the far side of the islet, the tide took away their badly moored boat. Hugo swam after it, but the current was strong and went in the wrong direction. The little empty boat was transported out to sea faster than Hugo could swim. He was closing in but not fast enough, and suddenly he was too far from shore to be able to return. His powers were drawing to a close, and he stopped the chase, totally exhausted. He was preparing to meet his Maker when something gently touched his foot. Hugo caught it. It turned out to be a rope. Not just any rope but the long rope hanging from the boat. With the last of his energy, he was able to reach the boat and pull himself aboard.

  In Norse mythology, the goddess of the deep sea was called Rån or Ran, meaning to rob. With her net she would catch—no, steal—drowned seamen. Rån was married to Ægir, brother of the wind and fire who wore a crown of seaweed and ruled over the oceans. Their nine daughters represented the nine waves of the sea and were named accordingly. According to the Old Norse poets, a boat that sank would disappear into Ægir’s jaws, while Rån took the crew to her deep-sea realm. Ægir ruled over both calm and stormy seas. He brewed the mead of life from Balder’s blood, and his goblet refilled of its own accord. For the Vikings, Ægir symbolized prosperity, but not merely because he had access to unlimited amounts of mead, or because he and Rån lived in a golden palace. These luxuries were just a tangible manifestation of something else: the unfathomable wealth of the sea.

  —

  Our boat is what folks in the old days might have called a floating coffin. At least we’re wearing flotation suits. And that’s a good thing, but only to a certain degree, as Hugo explains when I nonchalantly ask him about our clothing. He emphasizes that what we have on cannot be considered a survival suit, and then he stuffs a piece of cooking chocolate into his mouth. Whenever he goes out in a boat, he always takes cooking chocolate and hazelnuts along. They are essential items, serving as emergency food rations. One side effect of his botched stomach operation is that he sometimes runs out of energy. All his strength vanishes, and he can literally no longer stay on his feet. This has happened only a few times but always at the most inauspicious moments. The last time, he was out hunting rabbit in the wooded area behind his house on Engeløya. He came crawling home, making his way on all fours over the grass and up to the porch, dragging his rifle behind him. Sweat poured off him, and he couldn’t utter a word, but Mette realized that he needed to eat something. In the kitchen there was a platter of herring, and in ten minutes Hugo downed eight pieces of bread topped with smoked herring. A normal meal for him would be one sandwich.

  Sometimes even a survival suit isn’t enough. A couple of years ago, the body of a man floated into Svolvær harbor. He turned out to be a fisherman from Melbu who had gone missing a while back. Wearing a survival suit, you can stay alive for a long time, depending on the season of the year and what you have on underneath the suit. I wonder what the man was thinking when his fishing boat was about to sink and he put on the suit. He probably assumed everything would be fine. But that’s not how it turned out. Presumably his fingers got too cold, so he was unable to pull up the zipper the last inch. Water quickly seeped inside the suit, and he was doomed.

  It’s a fine line between life and death. At about the same time as this incident, a sixty-six-year-old fisherman was out in his boat when he developed engine trouble. The anchor failed to grab hold, and the current began carrying the boat straight toward the rocks. The fisherman was only wearing ordinary clothes and a life jacket. But before he went into the water, he somehow managed to put in an SOS call on his cell phone and gave his approximate location to the emergency operator. His boat was now very close to the rocks and about to be smashed to pieces. A strong wind was blowing. It was fourteen degrees Fahrenheit and pitch-dark when the fisherman had to throw himself into the ice-cold water. After the waves had pulled him under several times, he finally managed to scramble up onto a small, slippery rock and hold on tight. Twenty minutes later a Sea King rescue helicopter from the 330 Squadron in Bodø arrived. Using spotlights, the crew was able to locate the fisherman. They lowered a rescuer down with a basket to get him. By then the fisherman had lost all feeling in his fingers, and the rest of his body was also going numb.

  Only a week before I arrived on Skrova, an elderly man was found drowned near the island’s eastern inlet, with his empty pleasure boat circling nearby. He’d been out fishing, and for some unknown reason he fell out of the boat.

  Fishing is without a doubt Norway’s most dangerous profession. No one knows exactly how many fishermen have drowned during the Lofoten fishing seasons, which started long before Harald Fairhair united Norway during his reign as king from circa 872 until 930. But to give you an example, in 1849, more than five hundred fishermen were reported drowned in a single day when a violent storm suddenly took hold. Over the course of any season several thousand people could lose a father or husband, and in those times, a primary breadwinner.

  If we combine the official records of the Lofoten Supervisory Force for the years 1887–96, we find that 240 fishermen drowned as a result of “shipwreck.” According to reports, the main reason that boats sank was because they were either deluged or capsized by a big wave.6 It’s the primordial equation—almost a mathematical given. Overloaded boat + big wave + cold water = drowning.

  I begin to muse aloud. “Just think how many fishermen have drowned during the Lofoten fishing season over the years. Five thousand? Twenty thousand?”

  Hugo considers this for a few seconds before replying.

  “And who knows—maybe a Greenland shark came along and gulped some of them down as they struggled in the water.”

  I scan the sea. As long as there are other boats nearby, we’re safe, I remind myself.

  “So what do you say? Looks like we might have enough, don’t you think?” Hugo asks me.

  Half the boat is filled with skrei. We have to wade through the fish every time we move.

  “Are you sure?” I say sarcastically as I bail water and skrei blood out of the boat, using an old paint can that Hugo has designated for the purpose.

  “Let’s pull up the bait line,” says Hugo.

  I check my cell phone. It’s running out of juice, but the battery will probably last another hour. I’ve taken off my mittens to bleed the fish, and my fingers are slimy and ice-cold. Even though it’s nowhere near five degrees Fahrenheit, like it has been the past few days, it’s still freezing. My phone slips out of my grasp like a bar of soap and lands in the bloody bilgewater. It could just as well have fallen into water twenty-five feet deep. Hugo checks his own phone. It still has a little charge left.

  The waves are now higher than when we set out. There’s no doubt about it. The translucent, almost crystal-clear day begins to change its appearance. Hugo peers out at the open ocean, his gaze lingering a bit on the horizon. It looks as if a curtain has been pushed aside, and thick cigar smoke is trickling in our direction. Hugo starts up the outboard motor and sets course for Skrova.

  “It’s going to snow,” he says. The motor coughs as it attempts to pick up speed. The boat is so weighted down that it seems like we’re hardly moving.

  A few minutes later heavy, wet snowflakes begin to fall. We’re far out in the fjord, in the middle of what’s called a rennedrev, a combination of stormy weather and snow.

  Our safe and familiar points of orientation—Skrova and the surrounding islands—instantly blur. The Skrova lighthouse isn’t much help now. The world has turned monochromatic. A snow squall darkens the sky. Everything seems to close up around the boat like a sack being laced up.

  “This is not exactly great,” says Hugo in that odd understated way of his, putting emphasis on the last word, as he continues steering the boat more or less blindly. He knows that even if we veer off course, t
here’s still a long way before we approach the deadly skerries and shoals. On the back side of Skrova, which is where we’re headed, there are places among the reefs that are particularly treacherous—in Norwegian, such places are called støvelhav, or “boot sea,” because of how shallow they are.

  For a moment visibility drops to zero. Then we catch a glimpse of an island. But which one is it? It feels as if they’ve started moving, shifting shape and position between every crack we see. Over there I thought I caught sight of Lillemolla, with its sharp peaks, or was it the top of Skrova? Now, in that same direction, I see what looks like a small islet, but I don’t recognize it at all. The world is in flux, distorting perspectives, as if viewed through the glass of an old windowpane. If Schoenberg’s works of music were transformed into images, they might resemble this counterpoint scene.

  Our boat is weighted down like an ice-coated tree branch right before it snaps. All of us will eventually die, but those who disappear at sea are truly gone, suddenly and forever. As if sunk into the sea, becoming part of it. Long ago I had a friend, or rather an acquaintance, who got his foot tangled in the line while the trawl net was on its way down into the deep. His body was never found. That was thirty years ago, but I still think about him. My great-great-grandfather drowned at sea, but that’s not a family tradition I’m eager to continue.

  —

  The deep, salty black sea rolls toward us, cold and indifferent, lacking all empathy. Detached, merely itself. This is what the ocean does every day. It doesn’t need us for anything, it doesn’t care about our hopes and fears—nor does it give a damn about our descriptions. The dark weight of the sea is a superior power. Many have been in this situation, ever since some of our overconfident ancestors set a hollowed-out tree trunk in the water and paddled off on languid waves, only to venture out too far, where the currents were stronger than their arms or paddles. Or maybe, like us, they were surprised by a storm. All of them must have felt the same cold shiver when they realized the sea is truly without sentimentality or memory. Whatever it swallows is gone, becoming food for the fish, crabs, and annelid worms, for the lamprey, hagfish, flatworms, ringed worms, and all the parasites of the deep. To be drowned and embraced by the eternal, indeterminate All.

  When God wanted to punish Jonah, he sent a huge “fish” to swallow him. Jonah cried for mercy as the depths of the sea surrounded him from all sides. Inside the belly of the whale the water reached up to his neck and seaweed encircled his head. But the Lord merely wanted to teach Jonah a powerful lesson, so He made the whale bring him up from the realm of the dead and spit him out on land. Fear turned Jonah into a faithful believer in God. Even Islam respects the whale for this reason. In the Koran, it says the whale that swallowed Jonah is one of the ten animals that will enter heaven.7

  —

  It’s a real williwaw! I remind myself that in the old days, fishermen were always getting caught in this sort of situation. And in boats that may not have been any bigger or more seaworthy than ours. They used sails, and yet these gritty and skillful men always mastered the conditions. But wait a minute—that wasn’t what they did at all! No, they drowned by the hundreds, nearly every single fishing season, at precisely this time of year and in this same area. In Skrova there is an old local song about the sea opening its treasure chambers so generously:

  But suddenly it turns in furious anger

  demanding what it had given, plus interest.

  Oh yes, all that is left may be only

  scraps of what was once a boat.

  The sea can give, but it can also take;

  the crew remained in their wet grave of kelp.8

  I give Hugo a surreptitious glance. He doesn’t look worried. On the other hand, have I ever seen him look worried when he’s out at sea? At least he’s not still wearing his headset. What happens now if the currents displace a wave so it merges with another one to form a swell double in size—a breaker, in fisherman’s terms?

  The bottom of the boat is completely covered with skrei, their gills—or toknan, as Hugo calls them—still moving. When the fish swim around, they make certain sounds. Cod, for instance, utter grunts or issue a series of deep tones, reminiscent of Morse code patterns. We can’t comprehend their language, but these dying skrei seem to be telling me something.

  Beneath us in the dark, the water moves restlessly over the sandy bottom and smooth rocks. Even the starfish on the seafloor have to hold on tight. The fingerlike fronds of the sea girdle shift back and forth, swaying like tall grass in a strong wind. The halibut is in control, moving calmly down to deeper waters. On the bottom it slips into the sand, like pulling on a dressing gown, and settles in. Spawn of cod, pollock, haddock, herring, and mackerel try to steady themselves in the restless kelp. The Greenland shark, semi-blind, lies in the dark, so deep in the water that it hardly notices what’s happening on the surface.

  Hugo reduces speed and asks me to keep a lookout. As long as we can’t see anything and the boat continues to be carried forward by the current, we have a problem. To move in these waters we need to keep track of the many shallows and skerries, but we have basically no idea about our position. Hugo, of course, is fully aware of this. For him the sea is something different than it is for me. He’s much better at reading the fleeting glimpses of visibility. And even though he can’t see land, the ocean is not a uniform, undifferentiated element with no identifiable features. Every position at sea is like a location in a landscape—a place—with unique currents, specific conditions on the bottom, various shallow areas, and other significant features. But you need skill, and at least some visibility, to see them.

  Neither of us says much, but every once in a while Hugo asks me what I think. Was that Lillemolla we were catching a glimpse of right now? Land and sea still seem to be changing places. He merely asks me for the sake of appearances, because in this situation he trusts his own judgment best. And I put my trust in him too, since I’m completely disoriented. All I can do to help is shout if I see anything right in front of us. When the snowfall is at its heaviest, the flakes make it hard to keep my eyes open. Through narrow slits I can barely see even a couple of boat lengths ahead. The snow is a threatening wall that erases all contours. My biggest worry is not that we’ll strike land, but that we won’t. Because now the wind has picked up, and the waves have too. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly the wind seizes hold of the sea.

  The fourteen-footer seems smaller than ever, and the ocean seems much bigger. The boat, Hugo, and I are stone-cold sober. It’s the sea that’s drunk. How many times have I leaned over the rail to stare down into the abyss? Now it’s staring back at me. In the Skrova song, a couple of lines are devoted to this feeling: “Storms and rough seas are crushing forces / man is but a seed.”

  For once Hugo hasn’t brought along any line or anchor. They’re in the RIB. I ask Hugo if we have enough gas in the tank. He frowns, checks, then nods. He has gone unusually quiet. He’s hyperalert and locked in, almost like he received an anonymous threat and is trying to assess whether to take it seriously or not.

  Sitting in the bow, I get drenched with sea spray, so I decide to move toward the center thwart. My movement shifts the balance in the boat. Hugo always sits in the back with his hand on the throttle of the outsized outboard motor. Just as I’m starting my move, a big wave strikes. The fish crates slide to the back of the boat as the water washes over the stern. Hugo sets his feet against a fish crate and kicks it away with all his might, then hurls himself after it. With so much weight in the wrong place, the boat could have filled with water and gone down in an instant.

  Sheepishly, I creep back to my post at the bow, with no intention of leaving it again.

  —

  It’s still early in the year, and soon it will be completely dark. With this cloud cover, which stretches across the sky, it’s already quite dim. The wind and darkness descend upon us like two allies on a mission, teaming up with the blue-black sea, which is churning around the islets, an
d the underwater shoals that await us. The thick, wet snowflakes are starting to freeze. It must be getting colder where they’re coming from.

  Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream…The fourteen-footer is leaping up and down like a carousel horse. There is a clarity in the sinking water, in the vertical movement taking us down into the ocean. It’s in front of us, above us, inside us. But most of all: below us. Down at the bottom of the dark sea, where the wondrous fish live.

  —

  Suddenly the curtain opens, as if yanked aside. How does the song continue? “Then, through the cloud cover, a ray of light finds / the way to Skrova with joy and hope.” We get the visibility we need. Snow-covered islands with jagged black peaks of granite appear as if in a vision several miles ahead of us, on the port side. Hugo knows instantly where we are. We’ve drifted farther west than we would have thought possible, especially since the wind and sea currents are coming from that direction. If we’d chugged along for another hour, we would have undoubtedly ended up in unfamiliar waters around Henningsvær, or farther west, a long way from Skrova.

  Now everything returns to normal. We keep crawling along as we eat some chocolate and take a couple of gulps of water, without saying anything, because certain situations require no words. Twenty minutes later we arrive in Skrova harbor, in the opposite direction from which we left. The fourteen-footer is still full of skrei. We didn’t have to toss any of the fish out in order to stay afloat. Back on shore, neither of us talks about the trip as any sort of dramatic incident. And maybe it wasn’t. Safely ashore, it becomes a trip I wouldn’t have wanted to miss.

  24

  If you’ve been out fishing in the Lofoten Sea, it’s not just a matter of docking the boat and then calling it a day. Half the job still remains. Now you have to take care of the catch. We set up a cutting table on the wharf, and soon fish guts are flying through the air. Hugo cuts out the tongues with one swift Japanese maneuver.