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| Posted by Jerome Konen on 05/08/06 |
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| The Sharkman of Bjarnarhöfn |
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| Photo by Jerome Konen |
| Hildibrandur together with his wife and son, owners of the shark curing farm in Bjarnarhöfn. |
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02 August 2006 - Farmer Hildibrandur in Bjarnarhöfn, located close to Stykkishólmur, runs a shark curing farm having also a small museum. A strong smell of the shark flesh lies always in the air when visiting the farm.
With the help of his wife and son, they process the Greenland Shark (Somniosus microcephalus), a deep dwelling shark and one of the largest sharks in the world. Regular sizes are 4.5 - 5 metres but it can grow to over 6.5 meters and up to 1000 kg of weight.
The meat of this shark species is poisonous when fresh and has to be treated before it can be consumed. Hildibrandur together with his wife and son, they use a 400 years old process to get the shark flesh edible, a long fermentation followed by a drying process are necessary to transform the highly toxic flesh into something eatable. He delivers only to the local icelandic market, especially in February, during the icelandic traditional-food-days, when shark meat is on everybodies menu.
Hildibrandur does not catch the sharks himself, as still the generations did before him. He gets them from the fishermen, mostly from Reykjavík. The huge trawlers tend to fish deeper and deeper and so about a hundred Greenland sharks per year end up as a bycatch. Well, they couldn't be of any use if Hildibrandur wouldn't make something consumable out of it.
Shark and dried Haddock are very popular traditional food in Iceland. In the old times (1400-1700), exporting shark liver oil was a big trade. Unfortunately, that time, the flesh wasn't used and thrown away as the people didn't know about the process to make it eatable.
How does it taste? Well, there was no getting out of it, although I had to force myself tasting it. To make it short in description, it's awful strong. I never tasted anything similar before. And this makes it only consumable as a tiny snack, but only if it is your kind of thing.
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