A salty story of friendship, adventure, and the explosive life that teems beneath the ocean The Lofoten archipelago, just North of the Arctic Circle, is a place of unsurpassed beauty—the skyline spikes with dramatic peaks; the radiant greens and purples of the Northern Lights follow summers where the sun never sets. It’s a place of small villages, where the art of fishing, though evolving, is … fishing, though evolving, is still practiced in traditional ways.
Beneath the great depths surrounding these islands lurks the infamous Greenland shark. At twenty-four feet in length and weighing more than a ton, it is truly a beast to behold. But the shark is not known just for its size: Its meat contains a toxin that, when consumed, has been known to make people drunk and hallucinatory. Shark Drunk is the true story of two friends, the author and the eccentric artist Hugo Aasjord, as they embark on a wild pursuit of the famed creature—all from a tiny rubber boat.
Together they tackle existential questions and encounter the world’s most powerful maelstrom as they attempt to understand the ocean from every possible angle, drawing on poetry, science, history, ecology, mythology, and their own—sometimes intoxicated—observations, meanwhile pursuing the elusive Greenland shark. By turns thrilling, wise, and hilarious, Shark Drunk is a celebration of adventure, marine life, and, above all, friendship.
Winner of the Norwegian Brage Prize 2015
Winner of the Norwegian Critics’ Prize for Literature 2015
Winner of the Norwegian Reine Ord Prize at Lofoten International Literature Festival 2016
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The Lofoten Islands in Norway is the beautiful setting for this book. Best friends Morten Strøksnes, (author) and Hugo Aasjord, an artist, have decided that they need to try and catch a Greenland shark, which can be up to 26 feet long and weigh a ton, from a small inflatable dinghy.
I don’t know if I would have picked out this book if it wasn’t offered to me as I am not really interested in fishing and am a bit scared of the ocean, but I am so glad that I read it. I is really a fascinating read. The story is not only about the author and Hugo’s long time friendship and their joint quest to catch this shark, but it became a wonderful history lesson in just about everything. The author did a lot of research for this book and the facts, myths and legends intermingled with their recollections and stories of their youth, give us quite a feel for what goes on around them as they silently wait in their small boat for a sign of the shark.
I love the facts that he gives us, about sea life, ecology, biology, astronomy etc. plus the legends of the wonderful folklore of the area. He gives us a feeling of the different time periods, authors, artist, you name it he covers it.
I wish I had had a class in school that was so readable and interesting to follow.
I love Morten and Hugo’s honest and relatable friendship, both easy and intense and their shared interest in the sea.
I may have a bit more respect for the the sea, but still have maybe a bit more fear for what I cannot see beneath the water, at least now I know a bit more of the fascinating life that goes on down below.
I want to thank NetGalley and Knopf Publishing group for the ARC of this book.
Great holiday palate cleanser! I love reading about Scandinavia. This nonfiction book was unexpectedly delightful. Loved it.
Shark Drunk: The Art of Catching a Large Shark from a Tiny Rubber Dinghy in a Big Ocean was quite the pleasant surprise. I thought 8+ hours of audiobook was a bit long to listen about someone catching a shark but this endeavor is only the background music to what ended up being a plethora of perspective and education about the sea and all the life that inhabits it.
I’ve stated on other reviews that the ocean is my favorite place to be in the entire world and it is worth saying it again. I loved all of the information Morten A. Strøksnes generously provided in this book. But because this book appears to be marketed and sold as a shark fishing adventure so to speak, I did still want some resolution. Ongoing attempts at scouting out the elusive Greenland shark were scattered throughout this book, but it wasn’t until the final five minutes via audio that any progress was made. No, I didn’t want to read 8+ hours of shark fishing stories but I also was a bit surprised that the climax was left until the very, very end. No matter, Shark Drunk: The Art of Catching a Large Shark from a Tiny Rubber Dinghy in a Big Ocean was a captivating book of science, history, ecology, mythology, culture, and friendship, and I’m glad I read it. A pleasant surprise indeed. Check it out!
My favorite quote:
“When the waves slam against the rocks, they shatter and turn to spray. Water molecules dance around on the world’s oceans, dissolving, evaporating, cooling, and combining in new ways. The drops that strike my face have been in the Gulf of Mexico, in the Bay of Biscay, through the Bering Strait, and around the Cape of Good Hope many times. Maybe over the eons they’ve actually been in all the oceans, both big and small. In the form of rain they have washed over dry land; there they have been lapped up thousands of times by animals, people, and plants, only to evaporate, transpire, or run back out to sea, again and again. Over billions of years the water molecules have been everywhere on earth.”