Kya millennium site

When Petter Dass, the priest of Nordland, describes the country north of Helgeland in Nordlands Trompet, he says. “But to the north and beyond, I don’t know exactly. I have it only by hearing, but not seen by eye”. I don’t need to preface this description with that. But I can rather say with Ibsen in Terje Vigen: “If it should happen to be a little dry at times, it is nevertheless true and certain”. I was involved in skrei fishing in Kya when I was 15, 16 and 17 years old.

That was in the years 1932 to 1934. They were long winters with a lot of longing. But the senses were alert at that age, receptive to impressions, and one also had a certain ability to retain the memory of what one experienced.

The cabins on Kya stood close together, with only meter-wide roads between them. If a fire broke out, the whole settlement would be destroyed. But I had never heard of a fire breaking out on Kya. The arches mostly belonged to the fishermen. They were freeholders. But the two largest houses, the Arnesen buildings, functioned more or less as tenements with many apartments, where the fishermen had to pay rent.

Rorbuene had strange names. There was Slaveriet, Markbolet, Råstua, Skygglappen, Flira, Storsårret, Litlsårret, Apoteket, Stormølna, Litlmølna, Fauskjen and a few others. When it was fully occupied, we had between 200 and 300 people on the weather.

Most used a motorboat and had between 3 and 6 men on the boat. However, quite a lot of people were still rowing fishing boats in the literal sense at this time. Two-man boats were used (Faroese, i.e. four-rowers, i.e. boats with four oars), three-man boats (six-rowers, six-rowers), four-man boats (half-rowers, seventy-rowers, i.e. a boat with 3 1/2 compartments). Nobody used to fix five-man boats (four-ring, four-smoking, four-room boat) anymore. But we bought fish and salted it in a lighthouse ring. On these rowing boats, there were two types of sails in use at the time: square sails and snow sails. The raw seal was the oldest, and that’s what we see in pictures of Viking ships, and that’s what Johan Bojer talks about in The Last Viking.

On board, there was a myriad of names that you could never mistake. There was draget, staget, vantene, råa, skautet, boga, brasene, priarn, rakkjin, søftet, remma, kjølsvinet, barkolten, vannrefta, kjølfjæra, vaterbordet – to name a few of the most common, but there were considerably more. In a storm, it could be fatal if someone got their name wrong when the captain gave his terse orders.

The snow rig (with mainsail and jib) was more maneuverable than the square-rigged sail, especially when it came to crossing (building) against the wind, and the snow sail was therefore in the process of displacing the square-rigged sail at the time when engine power made them both superfluous.

Fishing usually began in late January/early February and lasted until Easter. But the first boats often arrived in mid-January, and the last ones continued fishing until the end of May in some years.

The daily rhythm varied somewhat depending on the length of the day. No one was allowed to go out in the morning until a signal was given by the weather supervisor. But anyone could end the day as they wished. The day at sea that has stuck with me the most was from 5 o’clock in the morning to 5 o’clock in the evening. But the working day could last until 9 or 10 o’clock in the evening when there was so much fish and slack. That was always the case with us, because we fished on a six-string, and then we bought fish as well, which we gutted and salted along with our own.

This fishery (the cod fishery, the spring fishery) was by far the main fishery at the time. The other seasonal fisheries, line fishing, trap fishing and saithe fishing, were only secondary industries. Nevertheless, the tax books from that time show a net income of only NOK 100-400 in winter wages from cod fishing. The cod was salted and dried into clipfish, which the fishermen themselves usually delivered to Kristiansund in June.

Space was at a premium in Kya during this year’s “rush hour”. In Rådstua we lived 16 men + 1 cook in a house of approx. 25 sqm. floor space, with one room upstairs and one downstairs; there was a loft and cage room. We slept in the attic, two by two in each bunk at the top. The cook’s wife certainly didn’t have to be picky in this rough-and-tumble male society. But she often had moral support from her father, who was often one of the crew. The cook was busy. There were often two teams of cooks. When the men came in from sea, dinner had to be ready, perhaps steak fish for one team and fish balls for the other. She otherwise arranged the rooms, swept, washed and made beds, brought in water and carried used water out. There was no pipe system for water in and out. I’ve often wondered how she managed it all ever since. But then she earned well. NOK 1 per man per week and free dinner. What’s more, it was customary to give the cook a large cod every now and then when the fishing was good.

Peat was the fuel, both for cooking and heating, and petro-machines were the light source in most of the arches. Some probably even used cosmo burners (road lamps) or matador burners (also road lamps). They were also called round burners and spread burners respectively. It was at this time that a new type of lamp arrived on Frøya. They also had a wick like the older types, and a net like the petromacs, but they burned quietly, without a hiss.

In the evening, when everyone had gone to bed, the air was thick in the loft. 17 lives in the small room, and half of them steaming on a sour snadde half an hour before they went to sleep. No one had to mention leaving a window ajar. We actually had two. It was a dangerous cold and preferably pneumonia that was the sure result of such frivolity. I often almost suffocated, tried to breathe through the duvet, but then there was too little air left in my lungs. I tried to solve the problem by going to bed as soon as possible after supper – before the poison gas was turned on in earnest. But that also had its downside – the fleas.

Fleas appeared in dangerous numbers in the fishing village. They were hungry after a long day at sea, and whoever went to bed first became their supper. When their bedmate arrived half an hour later, the worst hunger was satisfied, so they ate less of him. By the way, I think they had fallen in love with me. Perhaps it was because I was the youngest and had the tenderest meat. I received a lot of advice for my tormentors, most of whom were gangly. The best was to smear yourself with paraffin just before bedtime.

Another big problem in Kya at that time was the doa (toilets) – or rather the lack of them. I don’t remember there being more than three in the whole weather, two 2-seaters and one 3-seater, for 2-300 men and 15-20 women.

On Saturday evenings, many traveled home. The food supplies had to be supplemented. Meeting my mother in a freshly cleaned kitchen with a warm embrace is one of my fondest memories. It smelled like freshly baked bread, and soon all her glory was on the table: freshly churned butter, freshly boiled gum, freshly baked bread, steaming coffee and sweet milk – and then mother at the center of it all.