Hallgrímur Helgason’s sequel to his award winning 2018 novel, Sixty Kilos of Sunshine, has just been published. The title is Sixty Kilos of Knockouts. It carries on with the saga of Gestur and his people in Segulfjörður Fjord, in the north of Iceland, at the turn of the twentieth century. The herring boom takes off for real, turning the small village into a full blown Klondike town, filled with rough sailors and sweet herring-girls. 

The novel describes the period between 1903 and 1919, a time that is often called The Norwegian Age in Icelandic history, when Norwegian herring bosses ruled the business and the small fishing village got swarmed with thousands of Norwegian seamen. The sudden change caught authorities by surprise and resulted in chaos and anarchy reminiscent of the American Wild West. Segulfjörður Fjord became Iceland’s first real party town, full of illegal bars, endless alcohol (despite the “ban years”) and constant street fighting (hence the knockouts in the title). 

After an avalanche destroyed their farm at the end of volume I, Gestur and his family have found shelter in an old turf hut on the edge of town. Despite the boom years, things look bleak for them, until two Norwegian brothers and businessmen offer to buy their old homestead. Gestur eyes an opportunity to get some money to buy them a decent home but his old man, the farmer Lási, won’t have it. He refuses to “sell his bad luck”, the farm where he lost his wife, daughter and grandchildren.