Bubbi’s lyrics preserve a vanished era of fishing

A large collection of songs by Bubbi Morthens captures the spirit of an era and a generation that worked in fish-processing plants to build a future, mbl.is reports. Through his music, Bubbi made the communities and people of that period enduring by carving them into words and melodies.

Asked whether he had considered that his lyrics could eventually become an important record of a bygone era, Bubbi said he had not.

“I was just singing about life. I was singing about waking up and going to work, and I was singing about dreams that did not come true. I was singing about a woman who became mentally ill because she lost her husband when the boat sank. And I was singing about a dead sailor who somehow appeared in a dream, which is ‘Steel and a Knife,’” Bubbi said.

“It was innovative, but I was not thinking about it. The only thing I could do was write from my own experience.”

Bubbi was himself part of the generation of seasonal workers who went wherever the fish called them.

“I went to the fishing season in 1972 in Bolungarvík, the fishing community, during the summer I was 16. I was a baiter on the Hugrún,” he said.

“I experienced Bolungarvík as a superpower. There was tremendous fishing activity and tremendous life. The roads were perhaps not great, but all the harbours were full of boats and the fishing grounds were full of fish. That was my first experience of this.”

At that point in his life, Bubbi said he often sought out gang culture, where fights and break-ins were common. He attributes this to the circumstances in which he grew up. He has previously spoken about a childhood marked by violence and drinking, as well as being abused during his teenage years.

“Then a good police officer in Akranes contacted my mother and said: ‘The boy is reaching the age. We are going to put him inside.’”

His mother decided to take control, and the solution was to get the boy out of the city. Bubbi had already tried seasonal fishing work in Bolungarvík, but this time he was sent to Höfn in Hornafjörður, the town where he was to work.

A photograph of Bubbi from the herring season in 1983 has been revived this year in a special line of seafarers’ jackets by 66°Norður. The jackets sold out quickly, showing how strongly people still associate Bubbi with that world.

“I was so ready for this life. The fishermen’s barracks were full of people my age who had been through various things, but somehow everyone believed that work could heal all wounds,” Bubbi said, adding that work is not a real solution to mental health problems.

Nevertheless, he said there was a certain sense of relief in being able to immerse himself in hard work.

“It means that you can get through this, and I remember thinking: ‘This is a wonderful life, I love this.’ I thought the smell of fish-processing waste was fantastic. I remember being in Vestmannaeyjar when the processing plant was operating at full capacity and the smell of guano was everywhere. People gagged, but I thought it smelled so good. People asked whether there was something wrong with me,” Bubbi recalled with a laugh.