"The real value of the economic crash, one young woman told me, was that 'people are rethinking, who am I as an Icelandic person?' A number of people suggested to me that the nation, as a whole, was going through a period of intense introspection and that the consensus seemed to be that Icelanders needed to return to their roots.
If Icelanders are truly interested in getting back to what they have always done best, that means getting back to fishing. Fishing still accounts for about 40 percent of the nation's exports. It offers a great deal of promise of economic growth because Iceland has managed its fisheries well and maintained healthy stock of fish.
No one knows that better than Armann Kr. Olafsson (...) Uncertain about his future, he accompanied his brother, the owner of a successfull fish farm, on a trip to Boston to attend the annual seafood convention there. At the convention, an American asked Mr. Olafsson and his brother if they knew how to get hold of some fois gras de la mer. The brothers inquired what that was. Monkfish liver, the American explained, adding it was now a hot item at high-end sushi restaurants. "Our faces were just big question marks", Mr. Olafsson recalled. "In Iceland, we usually threw this liver out". Not anymore. Almost overnight, Mr. Olafsson became Iceland's leading exporter of fois gras de la mer.
When monkfish eason came to an end, he found another niche to capitalize on: codfish milt, or sperm. Mr. Olafsson discovered, after doing a bit of research, that milt was in demand in a number of upscale restaurants in the United States, Japan and Korea. One morning I accompanied Mr. Olafsson to the plant where he obtains his milt (...) "What's in those vats?", I asked uneasily. "That's the product", he replied proudly. He then scooped up a huge handful of milt. "This is the sperm. It has a lot of protein, just like your sperm." I marveled for a moment that what he was holding was a marketable commodity. But would he really eat the stuff? "You know", he replied, "in Iceland we eat ram's testicles, so believe me, it's no big deal to eat cod sperm".
Nota: Publicado na edição do passado fim de semana do International Herald Tribune (página 9).
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