While waiting for the Herring Era Museum in the northern Icelandic town of Siglufjörður to open, Steven and I wandered around the small town.
The bronze statue in the town center depicted Gústi Guðsmaður (1897-1985), a local fisherman, missionary, and humanitarian, appearing to read a bible.
At the top of a set of stairs was the iconic Siglufjarðarkirkja church, completed in 1934, with a distinctive red roof.
Fish is what put Siglufjörður on the map in the mid-19th century, when locals began using the town's harbor as a trading post and a base for shark-hunting. When Norwegian fishermen established it in 1903 as a hub for herring, Siglufjörður boomed as a sort of "Atlantic Klondike" through the first half of the 20th century, until overfishing caused the herring industry to collapse.
When there were rough seas in the town's fjord during the 1940s, as many as 400 to 500 boats sought shelter in the popular harbor. At the time, there were 260 Icelandic herring boats, 130 Norwegian vessels, and ships from Sweden, Finland, and other countries. On stormy days, up to a thousand fishermen came ashore, and the town's streets bustled like a big city rarely seen anywhere else in Iceland, swelling the population to over 3,000 people.
As we walked along the shore, we saw old pier pilings, the last relics of the town's herring port, which was one of Iceland's biggest harbors for decades. The highly nutritious salted herring was easy to transport across Europe and to the United States, and was highly prized, especially during the world wars. The wealth generated by Siglufjörður's herring exports not only represented up to half of Iceland's total export income but also helped make the country financially independent and later politically independent from Denmark.
The Herring Girls sculpture honored the so-called herring girls who worked at the town's salting stations and were critical in boosting Iceland's economy. The 'girls,' either in their early teens or mature women, were on call whenever the boats sailed into the fjord with freshly caught herring. They worked rain or shine all summer long to process the herring before it went bad, sometimes 20 hours straight. They cut, gutted, sliced, and salted the herring into barrels until the whole catch had been processed for export to markets.
During Siglufjörður's Herring Years from 1903 to 1968, 120 companies produced salted herring, and another nine factories processed meal and oil. Walking along the idyllic and serene harbor, it was hard to envision a time not that long ago when the area was jammed with piers and stacked with thousands of barrels of salted herring.
Steven and I started our tour of the Herring Era Museum at the Róaldsbrakki, or Salting Station, where the herring girls worked at the white tables out front. It was a shame that we weren't there to witness a live demonstration of herring girls at work!
On the warehouse ground floor was a good exhibit about making the barrels and their signs.
During the herring era, Siglufjörður pulsed with a big city feel and gained a reputation as the country's good time town. At the beginning of the 20th century, Siglufjörður was home to many pubs and small dance halls where bands played almost every night. The local movie house showed a film every two hours from 3pm until the late show at 11.
Poor herring catches resulted in fewer people living in Siglufjörður in the 1950s, but herring fishing rebounded for a few years in the early 1960s. Though the last summer of herring fishing out of Siglufjörður was in 1964, herring was shipped to its processing plants from distant fishing grounds in the far north until 1968. With the end of the herring adventure due to overfishing, the old dilapidated docks and herring stations were removed, changing the town's look almost beyond recognition.
Up a flight of creaky stairs was the museum's highlight: the living quarters for the herring girls, with up to eight girls sharing the largest room, often two to a bunk bed. Iceland's answer to Rosie the Riveter, Siglufjörður's herring girls are remembered as feminist icons who strengthened the community and country through their hard work and perseverance, beginning in the early years of the 20th century.
Their efforts were critical in the country's fledgling labor movement and women's rights. When the herring girls went on strike in 1925, their male employers quickly settled it, realizing their work was essential to the local industry. Still, there was no surprise that while the hardworking women were paid by the barrel, the male dockworkers who assisted them were paid hourly.
Handwritten lyrics from love songs were etched into the walls, and we even spotted a picture of Cary Grant on one wall!
A small garret room was transformed into a larder, a tiny kitchen, and a place for drying out wet work overalls.
The multicolored building was the museum's Grána, or fish meal and oil factory, where some of the herring catch and other fish species were processed for animal feed. Herring was unloaded initially by hand, shovelling them into a barrel, which was hoisted to the docks, with the contents tipped into a cart and pushed to one of the factories.
Some of the herring was cooked into mash with 170°C steam in the cooker, where a screw conveyor pushed them along, releasing oil from the herring.
The hand press: In the earliest fish oil factories, herring were boiled in open cast-iron pots. As the oil floated to the top, it was scooped off with ladles and poured into oil shipping barrels. Cooked fish were shoveled into a hand press and layered between burlap-covered iron plates. Workers cranked the press, forcing the liquid from the fish, which was boiled to separate the oil. Blocks of pressed fish were dried and sent to Norway for animal fodder.
The oil tank was built in 1937 and was used in Siglufjörður by BP for nearly 80 years. All herring factories used similar tanks to store herring oil. It was moved to the museum site in 2016. During World War II, first the British, and then the Americans, had a camp in Siglufjörður and on the peninsula. The exterior of the oil tank was painted to resemble a house to disguise it from German bombers.
The last of the museum's buildings was the multi-roofed Boathouse that opened in 2004. It was an impressive life-sized recreation of a typical jammed North Iceland herring port during the period from 1938 to 1954.
In the lobby was an example of an Icelandic fisherman's store, as well as smaller exhibitions on the harbour in Siglufjörður, marine research, and where the herring shoals were located.
There were about a dozen docked fishing boats of different sizes, designs, origins, and years of construction that provided a real sense of how busy the port might have once looked.
Instead of just admiring the largest boat, the 38-ton Týr SK 33 from the ground, visitors were encouraged to climb aboard the deck and look into its every nook and cranny! Built in 1946, it was one of the many fishing vessels constructed as part of the postwar government's efforts to boost the economy.
It was great fun clambering among the boat's decks and looking at antique pulleys, lanterns, nets, and other tools, imagining how this boat would have been one of hundreds in Siglufjörður's harbor during its herring heyday.
I read that the Boathouse occasionally hosts small concerts and performances where the Týr often serves as the stage. How neat would that be to attend one of those!
View of Siglufjörður from a scenic pullout on a headland across the fjord:
After disappearing into a 2.5-mile-long tunnel, we popped out at a virgin lake, Héðinsfjarðarvatn, at the bottom of Héðinsfjörður, another fjord on the Tröllaskagi peninsula.
I chuckled at the mural on the swimming pool in Ólafsfjörður, a particularly scenic town located further east on the peninsula. As with many other spots we had already toured in Iceland, the area was known for its connection to Icelandic folklore, particularly tales of trolls.
You especially need your wits about you while driving through Iceland's one-lane tunnels! Fortunately, there were enough pullouts for oncoming cars in the third, older tunnel.
Within minutes, we arrived in the village of Dalvík, which was established just over a century ago. Previously, the area consisted of scattered farmsteads and a few buildings dedicated to the fishing and general agriculture that the farmers practised. When
Norwegian fishermen started flocking to the area for its plentiful herring around the turn of the last century, the village grew rapidly. Dalvík soon became the third-largest herring port in Iceland.
In 1934, the area’s most powerful earthquake in recorded history destroyed much of the village, leaving approximately 200 people homeless. Even in a country with many earthquakes, it was one of the largest in Iceland's history.
When our tour book suggested we stop at the Gísli Eiríkur Helgi Kaffihûs, named for three comically 'backward brothers' of Icelandic lore, we couldn't pass it up! Steven enjoyed his Americano coffee, and I ordered carrot cake, a surprisingly common dessert all over Iceland.
Next post: Artsy Akureyi and whale watching in Húsavík later that day.
Posted on August 25th, 2025, from home in Denver, where we arrived very early yesterday morning from my hometown of Ottawa. Even after having a blast touring Iceland and Greenland for about five weeks, and then close to a week with family and friends in Ottawa, there's no place like home. As always, take care of yourself and your loved ones.
