We got up the next morning after Sigrun got back from voting.  While the weather had been beautiful at dawn, clouds had rolled in and the temperature had dropped.  Sigrun advised us to dress warmly.  Her father had offered to take us fishing today, and it would be cold on the water.  I put on three sweaters.

We piled into Sigrun's car and drove down to the harbor.  It took a little while to find the dock where Sigrun's dad's boat was moored.  He came and unlocked the gate onto the dock, and we walked out.  It was high tide, so the dock floated high on the water, and heaved slowly with the motion of the sea.

In the cabin of the small fishing vessel, Sigrun introduced us.  Her father, who didn't speak English, produced a tube of snuff, poured a bit on the web between his thumb and forefinger, and snorted it up.  He offered the tube to Craig and me, but we both declined.
 

Sigrun & Patrekur on the boat

Before long we were under way.  Kay and Craig stayed in the warmth of the cabin.  Sigrun, Patrekur, and I stood on deck.  The water was pretty rough, and occasionally I held the rail to keep my footing.  Once we'd left the shelter of the harbor, it got pretty windy.  The clouds were low and we were surrounded by a grey mist.  When the boat stopped, it looked as if a gauze veil hung between us and Akureyri.

Sigrun's dad set hooks off the side of the boat, and Sigrun and I each took a fishing rod.  Sigrun told me to cast it out and let the hook fall until it hit bottom.  I didn't know how to tell if it hit bottom, but I tried my best.  Neither of us had any luck here, though two fish had succumbed to the hooks off the side of the boat.

We moved on to another location.  Sigrun and I stood in the cabin, and she showed me the sonar her dad used to detect the fish.  Before long we reached a spot where apparently a school were gathered near the bottom, and we stopped.  Kay came out to put out a line, and I cast mine out again, too.  Within ninety seconds, I felt a bite, and reeled it in.  It was a good sized
cod.  Sigrun's dad pulled it off the hook and dropped it in a plastic bin with the other two fish.  Cod don't struggle.  They seem resigned to their fates.

Kay caught two fish that were too small to keep and too small for her to even register catching till she reeled them in because we were ready to move again.  Sigrun's dad pulled in another off the side of the boat.

We all went back into the cabin.  My jacket was soaked through.  We'd brought a thermos of cocoa with us, and I accepted a cup gratefully, though nearly spilling it as we sped over the waves back into the harbor.

Once we were moored we set about the business of fileting the fish, which were suffocating placidly in the plastic bin.  Sigrun's dad pulled the small front fin forward and cut a diagonal stroke from the fish's belly up behind the eye, then with another stroke that hugged the spine cut to the tail, and with another quick stroke along the belly produced a cod filet.  He repeated the procedure on the other side, and threw the remains into the water.  Then he handed me the knife.

I was clumsy and couldn't help wanting to apologize to the fish.  This was a first for me.  Despite my extended period of vegetarianism, I now believe firmly in the food chain, but with the caveat that we owe it to our prey to do our best to eliminate needless suffering.  I wanted my first strike with the blade to be quick and lethal, but the knife was neither as sharp as I expected nor my grip as firm as I wanted, and it was only after a few false hacks that the fish finally expired.  But by the time I was done, I'd produced a filet.  I laid mine next to the two Sigrun's dad had prepared. The flesh on his was translucent white.  Mine was red with blood.
 

Brendan filets a fish

Sigrun took care of the other half of my fish, with little more expertise than I had; her dad finished off the other two.  Patrekur appeared alarmed by the whole thing.

"He's confused," Sigrun explained.  "We always teach him to be kind to animals, that kind of thing, and now he sees us doing this."

Which is fair enough.  When I was six or so I remember being similarly alarmed when my dad told me what meat was.

Back at Sigrun's we hung up our wet clothes in the laundry room.  Kay and Craig went to bed to warm up, Sigrun saw to Patrekur, and I stayed in the kitchen, scaling the fish.  Between four pretty big cod, there was lots more fish than we'd need tonight, so I put a few filets in freezer bags and put them in the freezer; the rest I left in the fridge.

After an hour or so, Kay and Craig got up and we got into the car to head over to the swimming pool.  We'd go straight to her sister's graduation party after that, so I took a shirt and tie with me.

The pool was as good as I remembered.  We spent a while lounging under the jets of water in the lagoon overlooking the waterfall; the rest of the time we spent sitting in a hot tub.  Going swimming in Iceland never ceased to strike me as improbable; the weather today was just warm enough that you couldn't see your breath, but here we were, outside in the pool.

After showering, we headed over to Kay's dad's house for the party.  It was a subdued affair.  The buffet consisted of potato skins, quesadillas, and various other items that looked like they'd come from the nearest TGI Friday's (there's one in Reykjavík).  There was a sort of hot ham loaf thing that was pretty good, and one item that looked like a cake but I think involved a lot of seafood and mayonnaise, though I could be wrong.  I think there were some strange family dynamics afoot.  There wasn't much talking.  People sat around and looked at each other.  Kay's dad and a young guy whose relationship to the family I don't remember sat on the floor and worked on hooking some gadget to the TV.  Someone broke open champagne.  We made a toast.  Soon after Kay, Craig, and I wished her sister well and made our departure.

We stopped at a 10-11 to pick up some carrots and lemon juice for dinner.  I had offered to cook tonight.  I also got some coffee and more licorice for my mom, and a couple packages of Blue Opal.  Opal is possibly one of the world's more bizarre candies: vaguely chewy but considerably harder than Jujyfruits, they come in little disks.  Green Opal is menthol, I think.  I
have no idea what red is, but I don't really think I could discern it from the green if I were blindfolded.  Menthol in autumn, maybe?  But even weirder is blue, which is chloroform-flavored.  Look, I don't know what comes to mind when you think of chloroform, but I remember it being what villains in Hardy Boys novels would soak cloths in before using said cloths to knock unsuspecting victims unconscious.  Not the sort of thing you ever really think of eating.  Except it's actually kinda good in an anesthetic sort of way.

Shopping complete, we drove back to Sigrun's.  Kay and Craig rested while I started dinner.  While I was chopping the potatoes in the kitchen, Sigrun had the Eurovision song contest on.  The last time I was in Iceland, the Eurovision was on, but I didn't get to see it.  This time was different.

To non-Europeans, the Eurovision deserves its own paragraph of explanation. Each country in Europe submits a song to the competition, whose purpose is to improve cultural understanding through the medium of pop music.  The songs are mostly in English.  It should be noted that they are generally terrible, and it is very rare that the winners ever approach stardom (the major exception, of course is ABBA, who got their start as Sweden's entry and that year's winner.  The controversy surrounding Dana International, a transsexual woman from Israel, who won in the late 1990s, arousing the ire of many non-secular Israelis, propelled her to fame briefly as well).  There are lots of sequins, and, strangely, quite a bit of feathered hair (but this year the competition was held in Estonia; maybe fashion is different there). Each country in the competition allocates points to the other countries' songs based on a strange point system I won't bother to explain here.  The awarding of points clearly has little to do with the quality of the songs; rather, there is a bizarre sort of diplomacy going on.  Greece and Cyprus have a major love-fest going on (I guess we know which side of the green line the Cypriot entrant is from, particularly since Cyprus and Turkey ignore each other).  The Baltic countries throw points at each other like a straight boy's fantasy of sorority sisters in a pillowfight.  Germany gave high marks to Israel's atrocious entry for reasons I can only chalk up to Holocaust guilt.

So I chopped in the kitchen and pan-fried the cod in butter while listening to the grating entries.  Romania's entry was hands-down the very worst song of the evening: a simultaneously syrupy and turgid duet that would be enough to make one nostalgic for a good Communist march under Ceaucescu.  Sweden's upbeat entry was inoffensive.  Slovenia's weak song was performed by a group of men in airline stewardess drag who may wish to invest in new razor blades before hitting the stage again.  Denmark was the only song that I liked at all; naturally, it came in dead last when it came time for scoring.

Scoring started, conveniently enough, just after dinner.  The fish turned out well.  I don't think I've ever had cod that hasn't been frozen before, and with just a bit of salt and lemon juice, it tasted as fresh as you could expect a fish that had been alive a few hours before to taste.  We took bowls of ice cream into the living room to watch the scoring.  Craig, who along with Kay had indicated that under no circumstances would we be watching the Eurovision, became engaged as it became evident, during the nearly interminable announcement of the scores, that it was going to be a tight race between Malta and Latvia and their eminently forgettable songs.  Malta being one of those countries that is inherently funny, along with San Marino and Lichtenstein, Craig and I sat on the couch chagrined as votes from Estonia, Lithuania, and mother Russia managed to push Latvia ahead.

After the Eurovision ended, we watched election returns come in for a while.  Kay and Craig soon went to bed.  Sigrun and I stayed up for a while, watching some American crime drama before we turned in, too.
 

 May 27: Akureyri, Reykjavík, and Minneapolis
 Iceland, Round 2 Index
 Travel
 The Internet is boring