Over time, other dwellings began to be built near the votbúðir. These were cleaner and more comfortable than the tiny shacks that had previously housed the intrepid seafarers. These were called þurrbúðir, “dry camps”.
Gradually, other establishments were set up near the votbúðir and þurrbúðir to service the fishermen and their operations even further. And that is how fishing villages were born.
23 Foremen’s intuition
For centuries, people went out fishing in open rowboats. I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate on the hazards involved. After all, we are talking about the North Atlantic, and weather conditions could change instantly.
Consequently, accidents at sea were far too common. Sometimes virtually all the men from a single district were wiped out in one disaster.
Those open rowboats generally had six to ten oars, meaning they were rowed by three or four people. I use “people” because even though those who went fishing were usually male, this wasn’t always the case. Women also rowed, and in fact there are even one or two women known to have been foremen (or, well, forewomen) on fishing boats.
A foreman had a hugely important job. (I’ll stick with the male pronoun because in Iceland women are men, as I explained in the first Little Book.) He was the captain of his vessel, charged with assessing conditions at any given time to determine whether it was safe to go out. The foreman needed to be extremely attuned to nature and all her signals, and each formed his own particular way of interpreting these. Usually he would wake up in the night while everyone else was sleeping and go outside to check on conditions. If the moon was out, he might “read” the clouds. Their position and shape around nearby mountains and over the surface of the sea would determine where he and his crew rowed the following day, and how far out. If, for example, there was a mackerel sky (a cloud formation with ripples), it would likely mean that the day would be good and they could venture out further than if the clouds were different.
Or the foreman might wade out into the sea and listen to the wind. If there was a heavy tide, that would give him an indication of what the waves were like further out. Some foremen even tasted the water. Not sure how they made sense of their findings in that regard, but it was all a part of coming up with a unique system of interpretation.
Sometimes the foreman decided not to row out that day, and couldn’t really explain why. Stories exist of boats setting off from a given location and one of the foremen having a “feeling” and deciding not to go - and later in the day a storm blowing in. Everyone perished except the crew of the boat with the foreman who had trusted his intuition. And so, a good and intuitive foreman was obviously someone you wanted to know, and with whom you wanted to row.
24 Seafaring superstitions
Fishing on the open seas was one of those activities that was fraught with risk and uncertainty. Consequently: superstitions, almost all of them aimed at keeping people safe while out at sea.
For instance there were these letters called himnabréf, “heaven letters”, that Christ was supposed to have written and which provided instruction as to the correct form of behaviour and such. These were not unique to Iceland, but were known throughout Europe. Over time they somehow morphed into letters that, if carried on your person, would protect you from harm. Those were the letters folks carried on them when they went out to sea, in the hope that they would be spared from drowning.
Similar in nature were little hollow stones, called aggarsteinar. They floated, and if carried on you they were supposed to protect you from drowning. (And while I see the logic, I’m supposing a lot of those puppies would have been needed to actually keep you afloat).
Not all superstitions were about safety, though - some had more to do with prosperity. This included the aflakló, or “catch claw”, a cut-off foot of a heron that a fisherman would keep in his shoe. He would then wait for it to prick the bottom of his foot. When it did, it was time to put out a net. Not sure how it worked if there was more than one fisherman with an aflakló in his shoe, and if they all pricked at different times. Maybe they just kept throwing out nets and consequently catching lots of fish, thereby fulfilling the prophecy.
Other superstitions were a bit more nebulous. For instance, some things were never supposed to be called by their real names while out at sea. Like a swordfish (Icelandic: sverðfiskur) was never supposed to be called that, but rather vopnafiskur, or “weapons fish”. If called by its real name, it would bring bad luck.
The first fish caught in any fishing excursion was called a Maríufiskur - “Mary’s fish” (indubitably a reference to the Virgin Mary and thus a throwback to Catholicism), and it was always supposed to be kept until the crew arrived back on land and then given to a poor widow. Even today the first salmon caught in any fishing excursion or angling season is called Maríulax, or “Mary’s salmon”, though I don’t believe the poor-widow tradition exists any more.
Many of the seafaring superstitions were connected to women, who were supposed to bring very bad luck. Like if a fisherman passed a woman on his way out to the fishing station or to a boat, it was Bad News. If a fisherman dreamed about a woman before rowing out to sea, especially if he was in close contact with that woman, it was supposed to foreshadow bad weather. One foreman reportedly never went out fishing if he dreamed about his grandmother the night before, since the old lady was invariably highly agitated in his dream.
Finally - and I’ll leave it to you to decide whether this constitutes superstition - the crew of a boat never rowed out to sea until they had said a prayer together. The fishermen would climb into their boat, take off their hats, bow their heads, and pray. This was known as the Sjómannabæn (Seafarer’s Prayer) and no one was permitted to go out unless they had learned it. There were several variations on the prayer, but essentially it went something like this:
Oh my Lord and my God, as I row out to fish and sense my powerlessness and the weakness of this vessel against the hidden forces of the air and water, I lift up to you my eyes of hope and faith, and ask you in Jesus’ name to lead us safely to the open sea.
25 Bounty
Even when farmers didn’t go out fishing (or before they had discovered what a fine prospect it could be), they soon discovered that living near the sea could be a Very Good Thing. So good, in fact, that the crown and the church were super quick to catch on, and made a point of usurping all the best land bordering the ocean.
As it happened, the sea yielded lots of great stuff besides fish. Like driftwood, for instance. Oh boy. In a country with hardly any wood, what a massive perk it was to get logs of driftwood delivered practically to your doorstep. And not just any wood. Wood from freaking Siberia. Wood that had circled the North Pole several times before it came to alight on Icelandic shores. Wood that, as a result, was remarkably tough - fortified by years of rolling around out at sea. Badass survivor wood.
Everybody wanted that wood. Which is why every farmer who had sea access was given a special mark that he scratched into the wooden logs to stake his claim to them. A mark that loudly and clearly proclaimed MINE, AND GET YER DIRTY HANDS OFF IT.
That’s how important it was.
Second reason for wanting a seaside home, besides the view: all that kelp and seaweed. Somehow people discovered that the stuff was actually quite nutritious and that, in a pinch, sheep could be sent down to the shore to graze on it. (“Pinch” generally meaning that something had happened to your hay and your sheep were about to starve to death.) Also that seaweed could be fed to the cows, and could be mixed in with the hay to make it last longer.
Moreover, stuck to the seaweed were often mussels just begging to be eaten. Also, if your seashore had cliffs it would probably have birds, and those birds laid eggs, and those eggs were just there for the picking ... as long as you had nerves of steel and were prepared to rappel down the cliff face to fetch them. And even if you didn’t filch the eggs and just let the birds have their nests and their chicks and everything, you could still collect down feath
ers from the nests when they were done and use it to make duvets and mattresses and pillows.
Then there were the seals. They lounged around on the shores and were an easy prey, especially in the sellátur, the place where they went to give birth to their young. The seal hunters would go there, wait for the mummy and daddy seals to leave for the day, and then BAM! club the baby seals to death.
I know.
Very occasionally there would be huge amounts of fish that washed up on shore. For example in 1669, in a place called Staðasveit on the Snæfellsnes peninsula, several hundred dead catfish suddenly floated up on the coastline. Almost exactly a century later, in 1770, four thousand catfish washed up on the very same shore. And nobody knows why.
But the greatest, most fantastic bonus of all was the hvalreki. A literal translation of the term is impossible, though “washed-up whale” comes pretty close. As the name suggests, it was a beached whale. One of those beasts could feed an entire district in a single swoop, or could keep the household of a farm fed for a year. In fact a hvalreki was such an amazing stroke of luck that, to this day, the word is still used to denote a windfall. Like if something unexpected happens that means massive good fortune, you might say: Þvílíkur hvalreki! - “what a windfall”,
26 Indebted to the district
One of the darkest stains on Iceland’s historical fabric has got to be the law that allowed district authorities to dissolve households when the male head of that household died.
It happened frequently. In a treacherous landscape with an unforgiving climate, death was everywhere. Men drowned at sea, got lost in fog, fell into crevices, became ill from malnourishment, or simply vanished.
When a man died, his widow would be left with the children and whatever farmhands were living at the farm. However, she was not permitted, by law, to continue farming on her own. Virtually before her husband’s body was cold in the grave the authorities would arrive and auction off the land (if the farmer happened to own the land) and pretty much all possessions (the widow might be allowed to take a chest with her personal belongings; the children perhaps some of their toys). If the land happened to be very bountiful, or bordered the sea, those selfsame authorities might just make sure that the land went to them. Or the church would step in and claim it. Whatever it took to usurp the best land for those already in power.
When the land and all possessions had been auctioned off, the members of the household would be sent off to live at whatever farms would take them in. For money, of course. It was the duty of the district in which they lived to look after them (mind you, they had to have lived there at least ten years to qualify - which, given that the Icelanders were always on the move, was probably asking a lot), and their objective was to look after them in the cheapest way possible. Meaning they would farm the welfare cases-slash-dependents out to the lowest bidder.
Almost every family in Iceland has a story of an ancestor who was affected by such a household dissolution. In my family it was my grandmother. Her father, my great-grandfather, died, and my great-grandmother was left with four children. Even though she wanted to keep the farm and there was nothing physically preventing her from doing so, she was not allowed to. Instead the authorities showed up a few days later to begin the auction. The evening before, an official of the district reportedly came and advised her to hide her sæng - her duvet. Pretty much every Icelander alive has their very own sæng from the day they are born, and it becomes a very personal and intimate possession. The fact that the authorities were prepared to auction off her sæng speaks volume about the lack of sanctity for even the most private of possessions. Everything was taken.
My great-grandmother was sent away to become a labourer on a farm. She was permitted to take one of her children with her, but the other three were all sent out to separate farms. My grandmother was first fostered out to a farm where she was treated very badly. Later she was sent to another, where the people were kind. Those people effectively raised her, and she always spoke very fondly of them as her foster parents.
People who were sent out to farms in this manner were the niðursetningar. The literal translation of the word is “put downers”, and it was very shameful to be a niðursetningur, even when you had done nothing to bring it on yourself. To exacerbate the injustice, the money that the district paid for your upkeep accumulated as a debt that you had to pay back. Obviously this gave the authorities vast control over your life (although the authorities had vast control over everybody’s life, so that wasn’t too much of a departure). If, for example, you wanted to marry, you were not allowed to if you had received what was somewhat erroneously dubbed sveitastyrkur, “district support”, at some point in the previous ten years. That is, unless you could pay back the debt, which was hardly likely, especially if you were a woman, because where were you going to get the money? You had to work, sure, but you didn’t get paid.
The convoluted thing in all this was that it was ostensibly done to reduce the number of district dependents. The common notion, at least as far as the law was concerned, was that a woman could not manage a farm on her own. She and her children would inevitably wind up destitute and have to be supported by the state. Which boggles the mind, because that’s exactly what happened when those people were driven off their land and into the “care” of the district.
Which leads me to think that there might have been another, more sinister one, reason. For instance that the law was specifically designed to allow crown and church to seize land that had the potential to yield wealth, like land that bordered the sea.
27 Lamb in a barrel
Without question, the single most important animal in Iceland back in the day was the sheep. Without the sheep, the Icelandic people would have been extinct within a few years of settlement on their hostile, weather-beaten rock.
A wealthy man in the Iceland of old was a man who owned many sheep. Even today the Icelandic word fé means both “money” and “sheep”, and the old word for “shepherd”, féhirðir, is the word used for “treasurer” today.
It should come as no surprise, then, that lambing season was one of the most important, and delicate, times of year. Bringing those little lambs into the world and keeping them alive was a task that was not to be taken lightly.
But sometimes a lamb wouldn’t make it. When that happened, the immediate problem was how to keep the ewe milking as long as possible, since ewes’ milk was a staple of the Icelanders’ diet. If a ewe lost her lamb, another lamb had to be found as its replacement.
This usually meant taking a lamb from a ewe that had one to spare, and parading that lamb in front of the bereaved ewe to try to get her to adopt it. This didn’t always work, since it turns out that ewes are a bit particular and will not allow just any old lamb to suckle their precious teats. A strategy was required. This sometimes involved rubbing the liver of the lamb that had died on the head of the lamb that was supposed to be its replacement. If that didn’t work, the hide of the dead lamb would be sewn onto the replacement lamb, after which it would be locked inside a shed with its intended foster mother. Ideally the ewe would be duped by this crafty plan and think that the lamb with the sewn-on hide was her own little lamb come back to life.
If all else failed, and the stubborn ewe refused to adopt the lamb, the changeling would be put inside a barrel where it would commence to bleat incessantly. The ewe would be tied up next to the barrel, or confined in a small space next to it. When the lamb was finally released, the ewe would ideally break down and gather the baby to its bosom. I suppose even the hardest-hearted ewes have trouble withstanding the pitiful bleating of a lamb in a barrel ... though of course it’s possible she just wanted to stop that bloody noise.
On the other hand, if the situation was reversed - if the ewe died and the lamb lived - the first course of action was to try to get another ewe to adopt it. If that didn’t work (see above), the orphaned lamb would usually be taken in by the farm folk. Such lambs were called heimalningar, “home raised”, and
tended to become the household darlings, since they invariably grew very attached to the farm people. This was especially true of the children, who were often charged with their feeding.
Each child on a farm was usually allowed to claim one lamb as their own during lambing season. They didn’t exactly own the lambs, but could adopt them. The children would spend inordinate amounts of time cuddling their little lambs ... but they had to be careful not to kiss them, because if they did, superstition had it that it would get eaten by a fox when it was sent to the mountain pasture later that summer.
28 What the sheep gave
So we’ve established that sheep were important to the Icelanders’ survival, but what exactly did they provide?
Answer: almost everything.
First, of course, the wool. Sheep were shorn near the beginning of June, by which time the wool was so long that it was literally hanging off them and could be removed by hand. That’s right: shears didn’t actually come into play until the 19th century. (So I guess “shorn” isn’t the correct term, strictly speaking. “Handed” is probably more accurate.)
In any case, when the wool was off, it was washed in warm urine that was kept gently simmering over a fire. (No I am not making this up). After that it was rinsed (thoroughly, we hope) in a brook or river, before being laid out to dry.
The wool was then carded, spun, and knitted into sweaters, socks, hats, underwear, mittens, trousers, blankets and just about anything else that could conceivably be used to cover a human body.
The Little Book of the Icelanders in the Old Days Page 5