Art piece honoring the "herring girls" inaugurated this weekend

A memorial for the herring girls in Siglufjörður will be inaugurated tomorrow, Saturday, 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.

The inauguration of the memorial art piece will take place on the pier in front of the Herring Museum, and it will be Iceland’s Prime Minister, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, who will unveil the memorial. The program will also include a pier ball and salting herring like in old times.

In the morning, a symposium will be held on the role of the herring girls in history, and it will take place at the Herring Museum’s Boathouse. The inauguration of the work will take place in the middle of the day, and after the inauguration, the salting herring will be at the pier at Róaldsbrakki, where some of the herring girls still working will showcase their work. Asked whether the prime minister will also be on deck for the salting of the herring, Elefsen laughs and says only time will tell.

Want to honor the herring girls in history

This year 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 the Herring Museum has thus been the ideal place to hold a seminar in the boathouse after the inauguration of the memorial to further honour their history.

“Of course, the herring girls are a big part of our history and their part may have been the least understood,” she says.

“There were thousands of herring women in the country through the years, and there were many of them who made it their life’s work, and it was of course just a summer job with the herring season lasting the summer,” Elefsen says.

Paved the way for working women

She says that the herring girls were very successful and soon realized the importance of their work, including the founding of unions for girls and women. “They were not afraid to get up and demand more benefits. For example, they went on strike in 1925, almost 100 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.”

Working through the days

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. Elefsen said she is excited to honor their history at the seminar and with the memorial, as the former herring girls will be present at the ceremony.

Got a government grant

The memorial to the herring girls is a work by artist Arthur Ragnarsson, in collaboration with SR Mechanical Workshop in Siglufjörður. Arthur has been living in Sweden for many years, but he worked on the project in Siglufjörður.

Elefsen says the project started as a private initiative by individuals who wanted to honor the herring girls, in the capital of the herring, Siglufjörður. Later, the government then gave the project a massive grant of 15 million ISK.

The artpiece is quite bit, or in the height of humans and a pier was also constructed to support the work outside the Herring Museum. The work shocases three herring girls and herring barrels, with the artwork illuminated from the bottom of the herring drums showing a golden reflection of the work shimmering in the sea as dusk falls.