Coincidences - One

We spotted Todd and Gerry in their garden, taking advantage of the sunshine to plant flowers and dig the soil, so we pulled in for a cup of coffee. First we went out on their veranda, but the view across the fjord to mountains opposite Djupvik was so gorgeous, and the water so still, that Todd soon suggested we go out on their boat. 

The boat is old and noisy, but reliable and comfy. It has room inside for two people to sleep. We sat out on the back deck and Todd killed the engine. We floated in the fjord and watched the light on the water. Behind the boat floated a group of translucent blue jellyfish. Each of them was a dimly perceptible blue outline with what looked to be a kind of nervous system in the centre. Todd told me they were made of of groups of cells which come together and coexist in a single organism, but which can be separated and continue to live. The light refracted inside them so that it looked like sparks of electricity. 

From whence we came

Todd asked if we wanted to have some chicken soup later, and I reminded him that I haven't eaten meat in 16 years. I do eat fish though, so he ducked inside and got me a fishing rod. 

I'd never been fishing before, but ever since I started eating fish some six or seven years ago, I've been thinking that I really need to kill a fish in order to justify the whole thing to myself. In North Norway, even more than in some other places, vegetarianism is something you are often called on to explain. I had a lot of very thorough moral reasons when I became a vegetarian, but for me today it's mostly intuitive. I can argue a case about the lack of higher consciousness in fish as opposed to mammals, but in truth I think my eating habits are all caught up with the way I feel about death and suffering. I want to be connected to as little of it as possible. I don't really have a defence for singling out fish over birds as the exception to the rule, but I do believe it's best not to eat something you couldn't comfortably kill.

Todd put the bate on the line. It was just a green metal fish with four hooks at the base. He showed me how you lower it to the bottom (about 30m in this case), then pull it up just a little and jiggle it about to make it look like a distressed fish. "Then along comes a bigger fish and says, 'I'll put him out of his misery.' And that's when you use this here to wind them in." I did as I was instructed.

For quite some time I didn't have a great deal of luck—though since I was not entirely eager to catch anything, the truth of that statement might be a little questionable. In any case, my line stayed empty while Gerry got another rod, sank her line into the water and immediately caught a small haddock. I lent my line to Marthe and ended up using an old wooden rod so thin that it bent just under the weight of the bait. When my line eventually hooked something, the rod bent over into a u-shape.

I couldn't reel it in. Todd was driving the boat again by this time and I focused mainly on holding on to the rod. Every now and again I forced the reel around. Even as I thought about The Old Man and The Sea, I worried that when the fish finally appeared it would be humiliatingly small. I might be battling a minnow. I carried on the fight and eventually saw a flash of sliver down in the darkness. It looked pretty large. And then I got the fish up to the surface. It was a cod about the length of my inner arm.

Marthe got a net and helped me get the fish into the boat, where it thrashed around in a plastic container while Gerry hunted for a hammer. Then she gave it to me—a ball-peen hammer—and Todd told me to hit the creature behind the eye. So I did. Twice. Three times. I really wanted to make sure it was dead. 

I stood there and thought about what I had just done while Marthe caught more fish. I didn't feel much triumph, but I didn't feel like I'd done anything terrible. One minute the fish had been there, the next minute I had dispatched it elsewhere. Or snuffed it out like a flame. Marthe caught a haddock and I had to kill that too. "Sorry," I said while I hit it in the head with the pliers we used to get the hook out of its lip. Then Marthe caught a smaller cod, so small we put it back. We fought to unhook it and then dropped it into the water. It seemed to freeze for a moment in shock, but then flicked itself calmly down into the darkness. I felt a little better. I know that many Inuit tribes believe that whenever you take a catch from nature you must give a small piece back.

We sailed back in towards the harbour and Todd started gutting the fish into the water. I though it was around 4.30 because the sun was still hanging above the mountains, but it was actually gone 10pm. When Todd disemboweled my cod and dropped the head and guts into the water, a dolphin broke the surface on the port side of the boat. Then another came up on the starboard. Gerry was pointing to where the first one had appeared, all of us were laughing and looking wildly around, and two more dolphins surfaced further out in the fjord. I saw another swim underneath us. Who knows how it is that dolphins bring so much joy with them? We decided in the end there were between eight and ten of them in the pod, glittering as they broke the surface, gliding by.

Gerry and Todd said that in all the years they've been going out on their boat, this was only the third time they had seen dolphins. Marthe and I had just happened by one day and gone fishing on a whim, and suddenly there they were. Up to ten of them. Gerry and Todd are both members of the Baha'i faith. Their lives are characterised by symbols and signs. For them, this was no coincidence. 

Djupvik

This week it has been light. No sun yet, but light still. And this has changed where we live.

On Wednesday I went and took a biology course in Norwegian at the adult education centre. I found out I knew woefully little about the workings of the human heart. Walking back into town, I saw an eagle circling up above the mountain and I stopped to watch it for a time. They can move such a distance in such a short time. I felt very earthbound for the rest of my walk. 

Living out here, you would think we would be surrounded by wildlife, and we probably are, but we've seen very little because of the time of year. Even the reindeer are elsewhere for the winter. I fully expect to meet more animals as the spring comes.

Today we drove to visit a woman I work with and her husband in a small village called Djupvik. When she was giving me directions to her house she said, "You just follow the road and keep going until you come to a sign which says Djupvik. It's the last house on the left." There is only really one road here. It's called the E6.

We stopped a couple of times on the way to take pictures around a place called Rotsund, which seems like a fishing village. I was using a broken camera and could barely get it to work. In the end it didn't matter so much that I hardly had the chance to take any pictures, because it's difficult to make an ugly photograph there.

Boats Outside Rotsund

Mountains Outside Djupvik

Then we drove a little further down the road and found the people we were heading to see. They live in a place where the tourists always stop to take pictures. They have a boat and they go out on the water, where whales swim over to inspect them until they switch off their engine. Moose live behind their house. (I am jealous of anyone who has seen moose in the wild, but everyone assures me I'll see one soon.)

They come from Alaska, but lived in Finland for many years. They welcomed us to their house and gave us coffee and soup. It was a good way to pass a Sunday afternoon.