It became fashionable to collect fossils, even among enthusiastic amateurs. Some of the discoveries came from extinct species like mammoths, dinosaurs, and giant reptiles from the sea. Or trilobites and ammonites, a subclass of Cephalopoda (today’s octopuses and squids) that had shells resembling coiled rams’ horns and existed in thirty to forty thousand different types before they went extinct. Especially all the strange teeth that were found caused concern. Some looked like shark teeth, but they were much too big. Was it possible that giant sharks and other prehistoric creatures could still be found in the ocean deep, as living fossils?
For a long time the question of the earth’s age continued to be a philosophical and theological issue. But in the nineteenth century more people became aware that the earth was, in fact, infinitely older than everyone had believed. This meant that almost the entire history of the earth had been played out without us being present. This was not something that was easy to accept, since it represented a radical break with the religious worldview. The earth couldn’t possibly have been created a few thousand years ago over the course of six days. Suddenly it looked as if human beings had entered the scene recently, after other species had existed for many millions, maybe even billions, of years.14
—
We’re used to viewing the earth’s geography and the location of the continents as static. But from a geological perspective, that is far from the truth, and Lofoten is one of many examples offering proof. A billion years ago, the landmasses that would become Scandinavia were located close to what was the South Pole. Or, to be more precise: Scandinavia was located where the South Pole then existed, because the poles have also moved around, even traded places with each other.
Scandinavia was part of the primordial continent Rodinia, which, after several hundred million years, broke up into many smaller continents. One of them is today called Baltica. Over the course of several million years it joined with Laurentia (North America and Greenland) to form the temporary supercontinent of Euramerica. When these two continents drifted toward each other and collided, mountain chains were created on either side. Laurentia and Baltica drifted apart again, and in the process a new ocean was formed. This happened not once but twice.
And so it continued. Three hundred million years ago the landmasses on earth gathered into one connected continent called Pangaea. Two hundred million years later, Pangaea also broke up into pieces. At the end of the sixteenth century, the Flemish cartographer and geographer Abraham Ortelius noticed something striking. If you move the east coast of South America toward the west coast of Africa, the two parts fit together like pieces of a puzzle. But as late as 1912, when the German polar researcher and geophysicist Alfred Wegener published a groundbreaking work on continental drift, the Pangaea theory was still considered highly controversial.
Molten rock from the earth’s core spewed up, hardening over the primordial seas to create new land. The continents drifted around on the earth’s crust like unmoored ships. The Ice Age pressed them together like the first floor of a collapsed high-rise. The earth’s plates broke apart, smashed together, traded places, and wandered on, frequently with large pieces of other continents attached, as collateral damage.
—
Vestfjorden is not a classic fjord. It’s a sediment basin. Beneath us there are many miles of soft, sedimentary rock.15 During the last Ice Age, when the ice sheet was miles thick and covered more of the Scandinavian Peninsula, some peaks of the Lofoten Wall still stuck up above the ice cap as what’s called nunatak, or glacial islands. In fact, the wall was responsible for the ice being steered southward.
The Lofoten Wall is partly composed of the oldest and hardest types of rock on earth. They were formed at the same time as the first single-celled animals arose in the sea. But other parts of the Lofoten Wall consist of much younger remains from the collision between Laurentia and Baltica. Over the course of millions of years, the continents were forced toward each other, rather like elevator doors, except that they didn’t stop when they encountered resistance. Instead, they crushed each other, so that the mountain masses rose up and were shoved from one continent to the other.
That was how the mountain chains like the Himalayas, the Andes, the Rockies, the Alps, and the jagged coast along Lofoten, Vesterålen, and Senja were formed.
—
By the way, the work of the Roman author and naturalist Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79) is the first known source in which our part of the world is called Scandinavia (Scadinauia). It means a torn up, dangerous, or damaged coast. It was the damage from the big glaciers, which gnawed the land to pieces and made it what it is, with fjords, islets, and archipelagos. And hardly any place is more beautiful than Lofoten—depending, of course, on the eye of the beholder.
Even the Lofoten Wall is not eternal or immutable. And yet it may well be the closest we’ll ever come to that.
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The evening is so lovely that we decide to go out on Vestfjorden. The mountains are reflected in the water, something that hasn’t been seen in months, according to Hugo. He claims the area always has fantastic weather whenever I come north. It’s not true, of course, but I tell him I’ve got connections among the descendants of the wind merchants, and some of them are still in the business of conjuring the weather. Hugo laughs.
“You don’t believe me? They told me the magic works even if you don’t believe in it, so what you think doesn’t make the slightest difference,” I say.
We keep our voices low as we talk, as if the fish might be listening. That’s how quiet it’s been all day. But now we can see that something is happening in the west. Restless and agitated movement is almost always noticeable out there among the sky, clouds, wind, and sea—a permanent drama that we always observe from a distance, because when we’re in the midst of it all, visibility drops to nil.
Shadows slide across the gray, filtering clouds overhead; the light is refracted as if through the bottom of a bottle made of colored glass. Darkness will soon seep in from the east, and what is decidedly the greatest wandering on our planet is about to begin. Every single night billions of tiny creatures, such as krill and various types of plankton, as well as millions of squid, rise up from the ocean deep to the nutrient-rich water of the surface. At dawn they drift back down to the dark.
Considering the time of year, Vestfjorden has been amiable and accommodating for half a day. But out here the weather has a short fuse. The wind is often strongest when the tide rises in the evening, as if it comes in with the water. In a matter of minutes Vestfjorden can fill with poppel, as some fishermen say when they want to describe sharp waves created by currents and winds moving in opposite directions.
We need to head back. But first Hugo tells me a story. In the 1970s, after he came home from Germany, Hugo played in a Tromsø band called Nytt Blod (New Blood). With its prog rock vibe and its over-the-top stage shows, the group was very popular. A big concert in Tromsø was supposed to open with the lead singer hanging naked from a cross.
“Not only that,” says Hugo, “but the stage was supposed to be covered with smoke, and then the singer would slowly become visible as the smoke lifted.” But the smoke machine short-circuited all the electrical equipment, and the singer ended up just hanging there in front of hundreds of audience members while the band was unable to play a single note. Finally he shouted: “Don’t just stand there! Get me down from this bloody cross!”
And by the way, the band held their practice sessions in the Åsgård mental hospital.
—
Hugo nods and starts up the motor. After a moment he can tell that something is wrong. The outboard motor, which had been in the shop for repair, doesn’t have the power it used to have. The sound is more muted, and he notices a burning smell where he’s sitting in the stern. The repair work clearly wasn’t successful. We manage to get back to Skrova, but we’ll have to take the motor to the shop again, and it isn’t even on the island. This is more than a little annoying, since we have everythi
ng ready so we could spend several consecutive days fishing for a Greenland shark, and under extremely favorable conditions.
On the other hand, I’m not in a hurry. I haven’t even bought a return plane ticket yet, and I’ve been stranded in far worse places than Skrova. Plus we probably have enough liver graks to lure Greenland sharks from all over Vestfjorden to wherever we like, if only we can get the outboard motor fixed.
33
For the next few days the weather is annoyingly stable, and it’s aggravating to see the water so calm because we can’t go out. Yet we’re actually starting to get used to this kind of situation and quickly slip into the rhythm of Aasjord Station and the island.
An island is both real and its own metaphor, as the German author Judith Schalansky writes in her book Atlas of Remote Islands. I usually feel strangely free whenever I come to a small island like Skrova. It’s as if life takes on a new rhythm, and my normal hectic pace feels distant and unimportant.
An island is a world in miniature and easy to master because the geography is clearly limited, as are the number of people and the stories to which you need to pay attention. Life seems simpler; a sense of perspective settles into your body. That’s how Daniel Defoe describes the island life of Robinson Crusoe, who manages fine on his own as he personally moves through the various phases of civilization. He begins as a hunter and gatherer, then develops farming, raises animals, turns to architecture, slavery, war, and so on, making use of increasingly advanced technology. He eventually reaches the capitalist phase, with his balance sheet accounts and maximum-use view of the world.
On the island he also comes to understand who he really is, and he turns philosophical. Crusoe discovers that he can be happier alone on an island than anywhere else on earth. On the island he lacks for nothing. He’s like a free-floating atom of noble gas, and he thinks of himself as emperor or king of his own realm. But he is cut off from humanity, and at one moment he sees his solitude as a punishment from God. He is thrown completely off balance when the parrot speaks to him. “Poor Robin Crusoe! Where are you? Where have you been?” But he is never truly afraid until he discovers footprints left by another person in the sand.
An island can be a paradise, but sometimes it’s a prison. It’s easy to have illusions about an island, imagining that everything will be great, that you’re protected from the chaos and disruptions of the mainland. You may start to miss people and everything from which you’ve fled. A feeling of loneliness and isolation spreads over the whole island. You stop thinking of yourself as the emperor or king of a specific and limited realm. Instead, you feel trapped, surrounded by water on all sides. Maybe the autumn arrives, bringing darkness and silence. You long to leave nature behind and return to the city and other people. “But silence on an island is nothing. No one talks about it, no one remembers it or names it, no matter how strongly it affects them. It’s the tiny peek at death that they’re given while they’re still alive.”16
Some people turn their back on the world and put their trust in an even smaller island, a utopia where nothing can disturb them, an island that’s small enough to encompass only their own personality and where they feel no longing for anyone else. An obsession may seize hold of some people; they change and start living a largely interior life. But either their personality is too small or the island is too big for any lasting happiness. That’s the experience D. H. Lawrence describes in his mostly forgotten story “The Man Who Loved Islands.”
The Atlantic Ocean is filled with mythological islands—places that have never actually existed except in the imagination of cartographers and poets. In the twelfth century, the famous Arabic geographer al-Idrisi reported there were twenty-seven thousand islands in the Atlantic. The truth is there are only a few dozen. So many expeditions have been sent out to discover islands that don’t exist, yet were described in such detail by seafarers who claimed to have been there, even though no one was able to verify these fantasies of theirs. The descriptions were often so vivid that other seamen became convinced they’d been there too. Then they in turn made their own contribution by filling in the gaps about these islands of the mind.
—
At low tide I take walks on the island, usually along the shore’s edge. Like most people, I have a personal relationship with the intertidal zone, having played there as a child. It’s a pleasure to spend time in this space between sea and land. People taking walks like this seem compelled to collect small items to put in their pockets and then set them on the mantelpiece or kitchen windowsill. Smooth stones, shells, sculptural pieces of driftwood, or other things the sea has brought in. Maybe a message in a bottle will even turn up from the other side of the globe. During a certain period of my childhood I sent out bottled messages myself, saying that I was stranded on a desert island. And that wasn’t really far from the truth, since I grew up in Finnmark.
Most Norwegians seek out the foreshore during vacation. They may have a cabin near the sea, or else they travel to a beach area in southern Europe. Nothing is considered more natural. Give a kid a plastic bucket and a shovel, and he can spend the whole day at the beach. He forgets about being cold or needing food. It’s as if he belongs in that salt world of sand, waves, water, and rocks. Half naked, he plays in waves or builds dams, canals, and other edifices, totally focused, like a supervisory engineer. “History is a child building a sand-castle by the sea,” the Greek philosopher Heraclitus (535–475 BC) is said to have written.
—
A bone, possibly from a moose or a reindeer, has washed ashore. All organic energy has been leached out of the pores through the microscopic tunnels in the bone tissue, which has now turned to mineral, hard and smooth. The pale-gray porous bone material weighs almost nothing, and it doesn’t shine like it used to. The surface is dull and absorbs the light. All the gristle, flesh, and fat were merely a temporary cover that has now been cleansed away by the sea.
British scientists who have examined fossils from the Devonian period (ca. four hundred million years ago), when the first sea creatures crawled up on land, have made quite an amazing discovery. The jaws and teeth of the first land animals had developed to tear apart flesh, not to chew plants. The eyes sat on top of the head, and the animals lacked any sort of neck. So the first animals on earth were carnivores with fish heads who used their teeth to tear one another to shreds. The fish-heads ruled the land for eighty million years.17
You may find it difficult to get this image out of your mind once it takes hold.
—
On the seaward side of Skrova all of Vestfjorden stretches out before me. Straight ahead, to the southeast, I can see the islands of Steigen. A towering gray cloud cover creates a favorable backlight that is neither glaring nor blinding, but instead forms soft contours and muted contrasts. “Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs.”18
If I climbed up the hill, I would see the island of Landegode outside Bodø, as well as Værøy to the southwest. Maybe even Røst, the island farthest out in Lofoten. There, a crew of Venetian sailors was stranded on their way from Crete to Flanders in 1431. Just after passing through the Strait of Gibraltar, the ship hit a rock. Repairs were done in Lisbon, and the ship continued its journey north. In the Bay of Biscay, it encountered a violent storm that broke the main mast and rudder, setting the ship adrift. In mid-December, the crew had to take to the leaky lifeboats and abandon ship. They fought the sea through snow and darkness for weeks, enduring hunger, thirst, disease, and exhaustion. On a single day, four crew members collapsed and died. From the ship they’d brought plenty of salted meat—but not enough wine.
The currents and winds carried the men farther and farther north, into the wild nocturnal nothingness. They never expected to experience terra firma under their feet again. But then one of them caught sight of the archipelago that is Røst. The crew managed to find a beach, and there they landed on February 4, 1432. They were saved by the locals, and on return to Italy the captain, Pietro Querini, described them as “the mo
st flawless people one can imagine.” Their hospitality was quite without limits, and people from Røst are still said to be of a darker complexion than most others in Norway. At any rate, the Italians were given lots of dried cod (stoccafisso) to take home, and Italian chefs soon worked wonders with it. The export of fish from Røst to Italy has been going on ever since.
I decide not to climb up the slope to get a glimpse of Røst but instead continue along the beach. A few small pools have been left on shore by the tidewater, and in one of them a couple of young fish are swimming. A solitary seagull is sitting on a rock. When I pick up a clump of seaweed, swift sandhoppers scatter in all directions, even though there’s no other place to hide.
The foreshore constitutes a border area between sea and land, but also between life and death. That was true, at least, in the Vikings’ world because the intertidal zone was used as a place of execution. The methods varied. Many of those condemned to death were bound to a post, and the tides then did their job. Such is the case in Olav Tryggvason’s saga, which recounts, with an exemplary economy of words, the fate of the worshippers of seiðr, a type of shamanistic sorcery, at Skratteskjær: “The king had them all taken out and brought to a skerry which was under water at high tide and he had them bound there. Eyvind and the others thus lost their lives. From then on, the skerry was called Scrat-Skerry,” meaning wizard or troll skerry in Old Norse.19
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