Shark Drunk Read online

  I find the bull carcass and start to pack up its robust bones and rotting intestines in sacks. Tears run from my eyes, flies buzz around my ears, and the sun shines just like it does on a lovely day. It suddenly strikes me that Hugo should have done this job. Why did I buy his argument? His being unable to throw up shouldn’t have excluded him. It makes him superbly qualified.

  5

  Two hours later we’re at the harbor in Bogøy, ready to cross Vestfjorden in Hugo’s RIB (rigid inflatable boat). It’s a French-built boat made by Bombard, which makes me think of it as a potent weapon of destruction. In reality, it’s only a small boat, made of rubber and filled with air.

  We load the sacks and the rest of the gear on board, inflate the pontoons using the mechanical foot pump, and set out across Flaggsundet at a speed of thirty-seven knots, made possible by a recently overhauled 115-horsepower Suzuki motor. The RIB is unlike any of the other boats Hugo has owned. It can reach a speed of forty-three knots, or fifty miles per hour. Since it hardly has a keel and is filled with air, it floats on the surface instead of in the water. I can see why Hugo loves his RIB. It can walk on water.

  The history of Hugo’s family follows the boats they have owned. For generations the Aasjords have been involved with various types of fishing and hunting, including whale hunts. Hugo’s great-grandfather Norman Johan Aasjord—originally a cantor, cabinetmaker, and teacher—was a pioneer in the development of Norwegian fisheries. He started out on his own, and after spending time as a fish buyer in Finnmark, he took over a fishing station in Helnessund, in Steigen, south of Engeløya. On the mountain high above the station, he built an artificial pond, which froze solid in the winter. All summer long, ice could be sent down to the station on a wooden chute, which made it possible to export fresh fish to Europe.

  Hugo grew up in Helnessund, where he ran in and out of the family fishing station all year round. In the winter the kids played in the fish-drying loft. The call of the sea starts early. Even the oldest sailors probably started going out onto the water as young as eight. When Hugo was only ten, he and his pals would often stay out all night in small boats to fish or spear wolffish with a pik—a weighted harpoon that you drop from the boat. Since light refracts in the water, it’s an art to calculate correctly where to aim when you see a wolffish or flounder on the bottom. Another method is to drop a hook and line over the side of the boat, wait until you actually see the fish getting very close, and then yank the line up at exactly the right moment. Both techniques require training and precision, but when a boy masters them, he feels like he’s king of the universe.

  The big blue wolffish are so aggressive that they’ll come back if you miss, while the small brown ones realize it’s best to take off. Once when Hugo and his brother and father were out spearing wolffish, they caught a big one that wriggled free at the surface. All three leaned over the gunwale to look for the wolffish on the sandy bottom. It seemed to have disappeared without a trace. Then they heard the keel of the wooden boat start to creak.

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  Norman’s son, who was Hugo’s great-uncle Hagbart (not to be confused with Hugo’s father, Hagbart, or Hugo’s four-year-old grandson, Hagbart), was a legendary innovator in the district. He instituted new methods and started catching types of fish that no one had previously valued.

  Great-Uncle Hagbart’s whaling career began in a roundabout way. He was fishing for halibut off the west coast of Canada and Alaska when an American friend, who was a harpoon maker, introduced him to the whaling world. Several years later, when Hagbart returned to Bodø, he had a harpoon made and then borrowed an old cannon that had been used to shoot basking sharks—the plankton-eating shark that is the second-biggest fish in the sea after the whale shark. Basking sharks swim around with their jaws wide open to filter the water. It makes for a slow and peaceful way of feeding, but the basking shark looks aggressive, if not totally insane.

  Basking sharks were in demand for their livers, but it could be dangerous to get too close. If the boat got between the sun and the shark so that it saw its shadow, the fish would use its tail to strike. The blow could lift the boat into the air, make it capsize, or even crush it. So hunting for basking sharks required a great deal of care and accuracy. Many used handheld harpoons, which had to be thrown the instant the tail was right next to the boat. Then the shark would strike in the opposite direction as the harpoon bored into it.

  People laughed when Hagbart said he was going to begin whaling, but after some trial and error, he was bringing in up to thirty minke whales a week. Three boats were rigged and equipped for the job. That was how commercial whaling came to Steigen and Vestfjorden. The small island of Skrova in Lofoten, where Hugo and I are now headed, eventually became its epicenter. Today it’s still one of very few places in Norway that serves as a landing center for whales.

  One time Hagbart and two colleagues harpooned a huge fin whale. The fin whale can get almost as big as the blue whale, which is the largest animal on earth. Its sleek, cigar-shaped body also makes it faster than most other whales. The fin whale dragged Hagbart’s small boat for dozens of miles, straight across outer Vestfjorden, all the way to what’s known as the Lofoten Wall, a long series of mountain peaks that from a distance look as if they form a continuous line rising straight out of the ocean.

  This story is no exaggeration. In 1870 the Norwegian author Jonas Lie was on board when a fin whale dragged a steamer belonging to the whaling pioneer Svend Foyn across half of Varangerfjorden, some five hundred miles northeast of Vestfjorden. The ship was pulled against the wind, and the steam engine worked hard to put on the brakes, but it did little good. Foyn also raised a jib sail, but the wind ripped it apart. The swells poured over the bow, and the crew wanted to cut the whale loose, but old Foyn merely paced back and forth on deck in a contemplative mood. Jonas Lie writes: “The situation was getting more and more unpleasant; it was as if we’d harpooned the god of the sea instead of a whale, so incessantly and relentlessly did it run. When the hawser finally broke, no doubt many a soul on board breathed a sigh of relief.”6 The experience caused Foyn—who invented the harpoon grenade and thereby increased sixfold the efficiency of whaling ships—to devise a crossbeam with “ears” attached that would stick up vertically in the water. Lowered into the sea, it would significantly enhance the boat’s ability to brake.

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  The Aasjord family has owned fish landing stations, fillet factories, and cod-liver-oil mills, as well as export companies that sold fresh fish, salt fish, dried fish, and dried-and-salted cod, called klippfisk. Their boats have formed the hub of all these enterprises. When Hugo talks about his grandparents, his father, his uncles, and old friends, he almost always mentions the boats they’ve owned. Although he has never shown me photos of his relatives, I’ve seen plenty of pictures of their boats. I can’t even count how many times I’ve heard the names: the Hurtig, Kvitberg I, Kvitberg II, and Kvitberg III; the Havgull and the Helnessund, both I and II. Or the Elida, an old Plattgatter sloop, meaning a wooden vessel with a flat transom, jib boom, and gaff rigging, which the family firm owned up until the 1930s. There was also a trawler that came to Steigen from Iceland with a big dent in its bow after colliding with a British navy vessel during the cod wars of the 1970s.

  Hugo was only eight when the Kvitberg II sank, but he talks about the boat as if it were a dear old family member. It was a seventy-four-foot cutter that went down off Stabben, on its way from Bodø to Helnessund. On deck was a cargo of lime, cement, and septic tanks. Outside Karlsøy the wind picked up, and heavy seas caused the cargo to shift. The boat sank almost instantly. Hugo remembers that his uncle Sigmund waded ashore in Helnessund, soaked through and his whole body chalk white. The cargo had dissolved in the water as the boat went down, coating everyone on board.

  The Kvitberg II is not the only boat belonging to Aasjord & Sons to be wrecked. Just after the new year in 1960, the Seto went down off the coast of Møre. It was a trawler that had been converted into one of Nor
way’s largest purse seiners, and it had just made a big haul and taken on board 84,535 gallons of herring. The boat was about to head for shore to deliver the fish when it heeled over, capsized, and sank in seconds. The crew scrambled and were quickly picked up by a nearby boat. The next day Bergens Tidende reported, “It was a dejected bunch that arrived in Ålesund in the early hours of Saturday morning on board an assist boat after their own ship, the purse seiner Seto from Leines, near Bodø went down in the herring grounds 10 nautical miles west of Runde. The crew failed to salvage any personal belongings. Even their wallets remain on board.”7 Captain Ludvig Åsen thought that a bulkhead in the cargo hold must have burst so that several dozen tons suddenly shifted. If this had happened on their way toward land, with no other boats around, things could have gone very badly for the twenty on board.8

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  After World War I, Hugo’s grandfather Svein and his great-uncle Hagbart bought a British minesweeper. It was made of oak so that it wouldn’t detonate magnetic mines. Whenever Hugo talks about the Cargo, as that boat was called, you can hear the longing in his voice. He almost makes it sound as if life is missing an important element if you don’t have access to a British minesweeper made of oak.

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  On our way out to Flaggsundet we pass the fish farm, and I happen to think about the Kvitberg I and what Hugo had told me about the boat. It was a solid vessel, built as an icebreaker in 1912. In 1961, after it had served its purpose, the boat was parked in the intertidal zone of Innersundet in Helnes, where it eventually fell apart and was swallowed up by the sand. There it would normally have stayed until the last beam rotted away.

  But Hugo had other plans. In 1998, he had the prow dug up along with a section of the ship’s side. Both pieces were put on display at the premises of the Bodø Art Association. Bjarne Aasjord (1925–2014), who was the last owner of the ship, couldn’t really understand what his old boat was doing in an art exhibit after it had been buried for almost forty years. But for the first time in his life, he attended an art opening.

  After the show was over, Hugo placed the hull near the salmon farm in Steigen. There it stayed for several years, until it was once again buried on the foreshore, though no one told Hugo. Now he’s considering digging it up again, maybe to put it in another show. That ship’s hull must be starting to wonder what’s going on.

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  Fishermen frequently talk about their boats as if they were alive. If pressed, they’ll admit that of course the boats are inanimate, but deep inside they know this commonly held view is all wrong. It may be because they’re so closely connected, and in an emergency the attributes of the boat can spell the difference between life and death. It’s essential for the fisherman to know the boat’s personality, its quirks, strengths, and weaknesses. Together they can master the sea, provided the boat is handled with respect. Today, of course, speaking about boats in this way is no longer common, except for people like Hugo.

  Hugo makes the boats sound amiable, clever, diligent, nice—or difficult, cantankerous, maybe even deceitful. He speaks fondly of most of them. It’s true that they may have had their quirks and eccentricities, but if you showed them respect and coaxed forth their secrets, they would prove to be amazing vessels. When Hugo talks about them, it’s as if he prefers to emphasize their positive aspects rather than their flaws and weaknesses, in the same way people tend to speak kindly of deceased friends. We all have our limitations, after all.

  Ten years ago Hugo owned a Viksund, though he never felt truly comfortable with it. When the wind kicked up and the boat began to roll, sediment would come up from the diesel tank and clog the filter, which could make the motor stall. That can be dangerous in the treacherous waters where he usually ventures, such as the area south of Engeløya, out toward Engelvær—especially if it’s dark and you have two young children sleeping in the bow. The Viksund’s motor was unreliable, and even though the boat never wrecked, Hugo always speaks of it with a trace of scorn.

  And by the way, I too have bad memories of the Viksund. One time the wind was so strong that the tub of a boat began to roll. I got really seasick, and Hugo thought that was the perfect moment to tease me. As I hung over the rail, he put on a concerned expression and said, “It’s always been a mystery to me why people get seasick. Do you do it on purpose? I’ve always been curious to know what it feels like, but it’s never happened to me. How exactly would you describe it?”

  As far as I can recall, I tried to grab his scarf so I could stuff it into the propeller, but I was too weak. Later he told me that he actually used to get horribly seasick, up until the age of fourteen. He was often so ill that his parents would put him ashore on a bare islet just so he could feel solid ground under his feet.

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  The RIB races out of Flaggsundet, and Vestfjorden quickly approaches. The sheltered waters are completely calm; the only ripples on the sea are those we’re making ourselves. Hugo can just “plow ahead,” as he says, at least for the time being. The conditions almost always change once we come around Engeløya and enter Vestfjorden. It’s not really a fjord at all, but rather a moody stretch of sea. Some people call it the Lofoten Pool, which always makes me think of the world’s biggest and coldest swimming pool. The place where we’ll cross is about seventeen nautical miles as the crow flies. Vestfjorden is one of the areas sailors and fishermen often talk about, in addition to Hustadvika, Stadthavet, Folla, and Lopphavet. In any case, it’s one of the largest ship graveyards along the Norwegian coast.

  The phenomenon called storsjøtt in Norwegian is something else that makes Vestfjorden extra tumultuous. During a full or new moon, when there’s an extreme difference between high and low tide, enormous amounts of water are forced into the narrow and deep Tysfjorden. At low tide the huge volume of water surges back, colliding out in Vestfjorden with currents driven in by a southwesterly wind. This creates big swells of seawater and unpredictable currents.

  There are skerries all along Vestfjorden that have crushed countless boats into kindling and left behind many widows and fatherless children. If you study the sea charts of these areas, you can tell a great deal just from the names of the shoals that are either barely visible or lie just below the surface. Bikkjekjæften (Dog Jaws), Vargbøen (Wolf Lair), Skitenflesa (Shit Rock), Flågskallene (Floe Skulls), Galgeholmen (Gallows Islet), Brakskallene (Crashing Skulls). Whenever a storm occurs, the sea rages around these islets and skerries. Most of them may not look like much, but what’s visible at the surface might be the peaks of huge submerged mountains, with the whole ocean crashing against them with violent force. Some skerries are visible only under such conditions. They are the most treacherous of all.

  In the old days, the fishermen often had to stop and wait for weeks at the old trading post on the island of Grøtøy or in one of the smaller, outlying fishing villages on Vestfjorden until the waters were calm enough to cross. Then they’d end up in debt to the merchant and fishing village owner Gerhard Schøning,9 who would subsequently have the men in his pocket. In the late 1800s, he would board the steamship Grøtø and travel all around the fjords, visiting villages and telling those who owed him money which party they should vote for. The conservative party Høire won some surprising victories among the fishermen and farmers who were weighed down by debt.

  The fishing village owners divided up the sea among themselves and blocked anyone but their own fishermen from fishing in their areas, resorting to force if necessary. If there was a lot of fish, the owners would collaborate and demand two fish for the price of one, thereby cheating the fishermen out of half their pay. Feudal conditions existed, and in many ways the fishermen were tenant farmers subject to the rule of the fishing village “lords.”10

  6

  After about half an hour we’re finally out in Vestfjorden’s wide, open waters, inhabited by multitudes no one can count. Ships pass. The Leviathan plays.

  It’s not like those painful crossings when we zigzag to avoid meeting the sea swells head
-on; they can slam against the boat and make your flesh feel like it’s being shaken off your bones. Not this time. We can already see details of the Lofoten Wall on the other side, appearing magnified in the warm, clear air. Parts of the jagged black peaks have been here since the earth’s beginning.

  Right now the water is as still as liquid white metal, just as Hugo had predicted. It’s one of the year’s calmest days on Vestfjorden. We scan the mountains of the Lofoten Wall from one end to the other. We can glimpse the village of Lødingen in the northeast, then the peaks and islands of Digermulen, Storemolla, Lillemolla, and Skrova, which hides the town of Svolvær and the approach to the village of Kabelvåg. Continuing west, we see the sharp silhouette of Vågakallen, and the fishing ports of Henningsvær and Stamsund, Out there toward Lofoten Point, cloaked in a sleepy veil of mist, are Nusfjord, Reine, and Å. At the very end is the infamous Moskstraumen, a maelstrom feared by sailors for centuries and described with glee by authors such as Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe.

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  The view of the famed Lofoten Wall has caused many to gasp. When the Norwegian painter Christian Krohg crossed Vestfjorden on a winter day in 1895, he wrote, “Well, it cannot be denied—an impressive sight. The purest of the pure, the coldest of the cold, the most virtuous of all, the grandest imaginable, altars to the god of solitude and chastity’s divine virginity. Difficult—how difficult to paint this! To convey the elevation, the grandeur, and nature’s inexorable, merciless calm and indifference.”11