Art piece honoring the "herring girls" (dont miss the museum close by: The Herring Era Museum)
A memorial for the herring girls in Siglufjörður has been inaugurated on Saturday, July 29th, 2023, on the town’s annual “Trilludagur” where people can fish on the docks and sail and meet and be merry. Anita Elefsen, director of the Icelandic Herring Museum, says the herring girls have paved the way for women in the workplace and that they were salting herring on the pier, day and night, even for more than 24 hours at a time.
2023 marks 120 years since the Norwegians started fishing herring from Siglufjörður, with herring fishing in Iceland spanning more than 150 years ago.
Elefsen says that it is important for the Herring Museum to make the story of the women’s lives known, but the herring girls, in her opinion, have paved the way for women in the workplace in Iceland. “They showed that women could also be active participants in the economy.”
She says that the herring girls’ work was extremely difficult and that many formerly herring girls interviewed by the museum talked about standing on the pier and salting herring for more than a day at a time. “They were supposed to be ready and available when the ships came ashore and then they worked until all the herring had been salted.”
The girls were paid per barrel, not every hour, so it also mattered to be quick about the salting.
Photo/Kristfinnur Guðjónsson/Herring Museum
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