Far North - Michael Ridpath [39]
Until the kreppa, Björn had been a beneficiary of all this. His uncle in Grundarfjördur had been one of the original recipients of a quota, which had been granted to those men who were fishing between the years 1980 and 1983. The quota represented the right to fish a certain proportion of a total amount of catch set each year by the Marine Research Institute and the Ministry of Fisheries, depending on the level of fish stocks. The fortunate ‘quota kings’ as they soon became known, had either continued to fish, or sold out to larger companies for millions, or sometimes hundreds of millions of krónur. Einar, Harpa’s father, had done just that. Björn’s uncle had sold his quota and his boat, Lundi, to Björn at a low price, but even so, Björn had had to borrow heavily from the bank.
Björn had been fishing with his uncle since the age of thirteen. He was a natural, they said he could think like a cod, and he was also quick to understand and make the most of the new technology that was becoming available for mapping the sea bed and locating shoals of fish. Soon he had paid down most of his debt. Then he borrowed more to buy the quota of another small fisherman in Grundarfjördur. The quota applied to the proportion of a catch and not to a particular boat, so the secret to profitability was to own as high a level of quota as one boat could sustain. Then, in 2007, he took down another loan to buy a third small quota and some state-of-the-art electronics for Lundi.
His old school friend from Grundarfjördur, Símon, who had become a banker rather than a fisherman, and who had just left one of the Icelandic banks to join a hedge fund in London, advised him. The thing to do was borrow in a mixture of Swiss francs and yen, because the interest rates were low and the Icelandic króna would stay strong. It was what Símon was doing on a major scale at his hedge fund, and he was making a fortune.
Björn took his friend’s advice and for a while things worked out fine. Then the króna began to depreciate, and although the interest rate was still low, the size of his loan in krónur was growing fast. The kreppa came in earnest, the Icelandic banks went bust, the króna collapsed and Björn’s loans ballooned way above any amount he could ever possibly repay.
He received a good offer for his quota and his boat from a large company in Akureyri in the north. He took it, and paid down the bank as much as he could. And now he was begging for work from anyone who would take him on. He had an excellent reputation as a fisherman, but he found it difficult to shut up and take orders when he had his own views on where the fish were and how to catch them, so some of the captains, like Gústi, saw him as a threat. But Björn could still just about make a living and he could still go out to sea.
He had lost his boat and his dreams. All he had wanted since he was a boy was to own a fishing boat and hunt the fish. And now it was denied him.
When he had seen Símon one Friday night in Reykjavík a month after the banks collapsed, his friend was surprised at Björn’s misfortune. Símon had unwound that trade the previous spring and gone the other way. His fund had made millions.
Bastard.
Björn hadn’t seen Símon since then.
Now the politicians were talking about joining the European Union. They promised that Icelandic fish would be kept safe for