Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
5
SIGLUFJÖRÐUR'S SILVER OF THE SEA
From 1900 to 1970, Siglufjörður was the
herring
capital of the North Atlantic. Hundreds of
fishing boats would crowd into the tiny fjord to unload their catches onto the rickety piers that
once stretched out from the quayside, where
herring girls
, as they were known, would gut
and salt them. During a good season, casual labour and the number of fishermen (who were,
in the early part of the century at any rate, primarily Norwegian) could swell the town's
population threefold, to over ten thousand.
Today, Siglufjörður's heyday as a herring-fishing town is long gone and the place is
considerably quieter, with a population of just thirteen hundred people. It's a pleasant
spot, consisting of a handful of parallel streets with unkempt multicoloured homes
grouped around the main street,
Túngata
, which turns into
Snorragata
as it approaches
the
harbour
, busy with the goings-on of a low-key fishing port. Here, you'll see
fishermen mending their nets in the shipyard and fish hanging out to dry - the town
still produces kippers (smoked herring) from a factory down by the harbour. Once
you've seen the
herring museum
there's some excellent
hiking
to be had along the trails
that lead up out of the fjord (see box, p.226).
Síldarminjasafn Íslands
Snorragata 15 • Daily June-Aug 10am-6pm; April, May & Sept 1-5pm • 1200kr •
W
sild.is/en
Divided into three sections,
Síldarminjasafn Íslands
(the Herring Era Museum) expertly
brings Siglufjörður's past to life. The best idea is to start in the
Bátahúsið
and then
work your way on to the old herring factory,
Grána
, before finishing in
Róaldsbrakki
,
the building which was once home to the herring girls.
Bátahúsið
Home to a collection of ten ships, the
Bátahúsið
(boathouse) offers a fine introduction
to some of the vessels that operated out of Siglufjörður during the herring era. The
ships are dry-moored around a mockup of a quayside as it would have looked in the
1950s, and you can even clamber on board two of them; the largest boat in the
museum is the
Týr SK33
, made of oak, which operated until 1988, when more modern
steel vessels made its design obsolete.
Grána
Next door to the boathouse, you can peep inside
Grána
, the reconstructed herring
factory. A whole host of machines help to give an idea of how Siglufjörður once
produced vast amounts of fish meal and oil for the European market; the oil was used,
for example, to light towns and cities across the continent as well as in the production
of Brylcreem, Nivea face cream and Lux soap.
Róaldsbrakki
The herring girls' story is brought to life in photographs and exhibits inside the
Róaldsbrakki
building, alongside Grána. This old salting station once housed around
ifty
herring girls
- you can still see graffiti, daubed in nail varnish, on the walls of the
second-floor room where they once slept, alongside faded black-and-white photographs
of heart-throb Cary Grant. There's usually a couple of atmospheric old films showing,
too, which give an idea of the conditions of the time and the work that the herring
girls carried out.
ARRIVAL AND INFORMATION
SIGLUFJÖRÐUR
By bus
Between May and September, buses run back to
Sauðárkrókur and Hofsós three times per week; the stop is
on the main street, Aðalgata, near to the supermarket.
Thanks to the new tunnel linking the town to Ólafsfjörður,
