Bubbi Morthens Says His Songs Captured a Vanishing Era

Bubbi Morthens says he has not left behind the years he spent in the fishing industry. He is still examining that legacy from different angles and is expected to release a new song about fishing and quotas.

Many of his best-known songs evoke the mood of an entire Icelandic generation that worked in the fishing industry to build a future. His songwriting turned the communities and people of that period into lasting portraits, while also capturing the industry’s personal costs.

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I was just singing about life. I was just singing about waking up and going to work and I was singing about dreams that did not come true.

Asked whether he had considered that his lyrics might eventually become an important record of a vanished era, Morthens said he had not. “I was just singing about life,” he said. He listed songs about waking up and going to work, dreams that failed to come true, a woman who became mentally ill after losing her husband when a boat sank, and a dead sailor who appeared in a dream, the subject of “Steel and Knife.”

“It was innovative, but I wasn’t thinking about it,” Morthens said. “The only thing I could do was write from my own world of experience.” The article frames his work against a broader break between Iceland’s population and the fishing industry, which were once deeply intertwined.

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It was innovative, but I wasn’t thinking about it. The only thing I could do was write from my own world of experience.