Iceland Walking Tour - Siglufjörður [4K]

Siglufjörður has often been called Klondike of the Atlantic. This town in northern Iceland expandend around a booming herring industry and there were many who went there to make a fortune, with varying results. In this tour we explore this town during a beautiful summer day.

Here are the highlights of the tour:
00:03 - Svarta Krían (The Black Tern) to the right.
03:50 - Þjóðlagasetrið (The Folk Music Centre). The centre brings to life the world of Icelandic folk music. Visitors can see video recordings of people of all ages chanting epic poetry (rímur), singing quint-songs (tvísöngur),
reciting nursery rhymes, and playing folk instruments such as the langspil (similar to dulcimer) and the Icelandic violin (fiðla).
05:38 - Cafe Rauðka to the left and Hannes Boy restaurant to the right. These buildings have a long history and used to be fish factories.
08:10 - Hotel Siglo.
11:57 - An old Mercedes Benz short bunnet truck, also known as Kurzhauber.
12:17 - The houses ahead to the right contain the Herring Era museum.
12:40 - To the left are the remains of the old pier.
13:47 - The sign reads: Here stood rows of herring piers and salting-stations. In 1938 herring was salted at twenty-two facilites in Siglufjörður, but the herring catch went into five local factories, to be processed into oil and fishmeal. Here at the seashore stand old pier pilings. These are the last relics of the herring port, which was for decades one of Iceland's biggest harbours.
14:18 - The sign reads: The Oil Tank. Built in 1937 and used by BP in Siglufjörður for nearly 80 years. During the Second World War the Allies, first the British and later the Americans, had a camp in the centre of Siglufjörður and on Siglunes peninsula. To disguise the oil tank from German bombers, the exterior was painted to resemble a house. All herring factories used similar tanks to store herring oil. In 2016 the Oil Tank was transferred to the museum site.
15:11 - Lying on the ground to the left is something that looks like drift wood but these are whale bones.
15:45 - The sign reads: "At the Edge of the Arctic. Siglufjörður and Gamvik are two small communities, each situated on the far northern shores of Iceland and Norway respectively. Their settlement and growth was based on the rich fishing grounds found nearby. Herring was the main factor in Iceland's rise to prominence in the early 20th century and Siglufjörður was the largest "herring town" of all, building everything upon the fisheries."
15:57 - "The Volatile Herring and the Predictable Cod. The Atlantic Herring is nicknamed the Silver of the Sea. It is one of the most abundant fish species in the world. (Later)... it is regarded as the most commercially important fish in history. The Atlantic Cod is known as the Gold of the Sea. (Later)...Historically cod has been fished since settlers arrived on Northern European shores but has been traded commercially since the Viking Age."
16:05 - "Valuable Export: Iceland and Norway 80 years Apart. The herring trade was Iceland's most valuable export business in 1938, when the herring industry was booming. At this time it contributed a significant percentage of Iceland's GDP. Salted herring, fishmeal and fish oil were all vital, in demand products for the nations of Europe."
16:09 - "Lessons learned. Siglufjörður with its booming herring industry gained nicknames such as Klondike of the Atlantic or Fisherman's Eldorado, while the cod industry also flourished in Gamvik. But in the 1960's the fishing industry collapsed in both towns, due to new and unexpected circumstances the herring failed to appear and the world market for stockfish collapsed. The over-reliance on one industry had serious consequences for these communities. The economy suffered and after the collapse decades of consistent depopulation followed.
31:30 - The church of Siglufjörður, built in 1932.
34:37 - The old elementary school of Siglufjörður designed by Guðjón Samúelsson, State Architect of Iceland.
40:00 - The river Hvanneyrará. The building in front of it is an old power station. It does not produce power anymore but supposedly a family lives in it.
40:40 - Information sign about avalance defense in Siglufjörður.

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