Shark Drunk by Morten Stroksnes

Author:Morten Stroksnes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2017-06-27T04:00:00+00:00

Winter

21

It’s early March the next time I travel north, enticed as usual by the sea’s old promises of adventure and the hunt for a shark you can only dream about when inland. My route takes me from Berlin to Oslo to Bodø, and then by catamaran ferry north to Skrova. In the villages of Brennsund and Helnessund, white smoke rises from the chimneys through the frosty arctic air.

It’s unusually cold. Winter along the coast is often damp and raw, but rarely does it get this cold. Each day the Gulf Stream carries as much heat to Europe as is generated by the entire world’s coal consumption over the course of ten years. Lofoten lies a good deal farther north than Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, yet in Lofoten the average temperature is almost ten degrees warmer, year-round. Without the Gulf Stream, the Norwegian coast would be one continuous expanse of ice, broken only by short, arctic summers.

On the catamaran I buy the local newspaper. I read a story about more than a hundred wild sheep that have been taken by high tides. They were on the foreshore in freezing cold weather, near Burøya. Their wool became coated with ice, the tide came in, and the rocks ended up submerged, which was something the sheep couldn’t have foreseen. They didn’t have a chance. One hundred and four sheep are no longer among us. Only three survived. What were they doing out there on the rocks?

Hugo has had a rough night. Yesterday he treated a floor with lye. But it’s five degrees Fahrenheit, which is abnormally cold for Skrova, and the water froze in the pipes. To rinse the lye off the floor, he had to bring salt water from the sea. The result is visible on his fingernails, which have split and partially dissolved. Plus he has the flu.

Yet Hugo is his usual positive self. I ask for an update on the restoration process. He tells me there has been some trouble with the financing needed to realize his big plans to bring a gallery, restaurant, pub, and overnight accommodations to Aasjord Station. The work has come to a standstill, but this doesn’t seem to be worrying him too much. I ask about his stomach. He merely rolls his eyes and takes me around the fishing station to show me what he and Mette have done since my last visit.

He’s made good progress on the interior of the Red House. They’ve also done a lot inside the station itself. What first meets the eye is that they’ve actually managed to clear out the fish-drying warehouse, the storage area for fishing gear, and the ground floor of the main building. All the old seines, vats, tools, materials, and equipment are now gone. In their place Hugo has built a bar from fishing crates printed with the names of fish landing centers and other companies from Vardø to Ålesund. In a week there’s going to be a big party at Aasjord Station.

During the

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