Its day three of our circumnavigation of Iceland, and we’re spending the early morning hours slowly cruising up a beautiful fjord, in calm conditions, toward our first destination of the day, Siglufjӧrđur. This lovely community was built around the herring fishing industry, which peaked in the 1940s and 1950s, and eventually saw the crash of the herring population around Iceland, and the loss of a once thriving economy in this centrally located north Iceland town!
The Icelandic people are strong, and have fought back to keep the community alive, and even thriving, with an ever-growing tourist based economy helping to support the remaining fishing industry! So, our stop this morning is all about the history of the herring fishing economy, touring with local guides through several historic buildings that have been turned into a wonderful museum dedicated to those peak herring fishing days.
One of the highlights of the tour is a theatrical reenactment of how it was to work in those past days, cleaning and processing the fish for the markets in Iceland, as well as many other places around the world. The “Herring Girls” would clean the fish, and get paid by the barrel, then the fish would be salt preserved in those barrels by the men, before being sent off to market. It was a very entertaining and educational tour through history!
There was one more option before we left port, the more adventuresome could go off on a bus ride to a nearby stable to have the chance to ride Icelandic horses for the early afternoon, while the rest of us stayed onboard the National Geographic Orion while it repositioned further east to the “Second City” of Iceland, a lovely city called Akureyri, the second largest community in Iceland. We arrived there in mid-afternoon, where we had a chance to wander into town, or take a shuttle bus to visit the Botanical Gardens in a local park, or visit the symbolic Lutheran church which was opened in 1940.
Our intrepid equestrians continued on, meeting us in Akureyri in late afternoon, in time for cocktail hour, dinner, and the after-dinner musical entertainment at a local bar/restaurant.
