Olafur Arnar Ólafsson

Olafur Arnar Ólafsson
Born 1940, Ísafjörður
Former policeman

I got to know Icelandic weather as a fisherman from an early age. Actually I have a nickname. I was a skipper in Ólafsvík and one day they were all going to stay in harbour except me, so I set off and then they all came after me. But then they turned back but I went on, and then I earned my nickname: Storm, Óli Storm. And I’ve always felt good out at sea even if it’s stormy. I feel good in storms.

I never feel bad. Perhaps it was better when I was fishing if the weather was reasonable, but I didn’t necessarily feel bad even in rough seas for days on end. I remember when I was a skipper on a ship from Ólafsvík and we were sailing to Britain, and when we were leaving the Pentl and Firth to the south, the foulest weather struck that I’ve ever seen. I think seven ships sank in it.

I remember one incident, it was fine down here but a raging storm up in the hills and a coach full of French tourists overturned onto its side at Stórholt and you could hardly stand on the road. The tarmac was blown off large sections of the road, just stripped away. I was driving a Gemsa truck then and waited for my companion who was in a Landcruiser, then a juggernaut lorry overtook me and rolled off the road onto its side so it was difficult to pass. The rescue team had a Unimuk truck, a 16-seater, but they couldn’t get farther than Gríshóll and had to wait there while we ferried the people from the coach to the rescuers using the Landcruiser and Gemsa! Oh yes, the difference can be that sharp. I remember another accident when a coach went off the road in Kolgrafarfjörður and three cars as well. The coach driver was standing by the side of the road when a jeep was blown into him and hit him with its top, but it saved his life, I expect, that there was a lot of snow, it was a blizzard. I saw the jeep after the weather died down and it had been blown two or three hundred meters, but I had the sense to drive my car into a snowdrift. And the weather down here was fine.

Once in February a westerly gale got up and some plastic roofing that was used instead of iron plating was standing up in the air after the night, like tents that had been pitched all over the roof. There was a greenhouse here at that time that exploded into atoms. The anemometer crashed so we didn’t know what the wind speed was but the meter on board the ferry showed 11 on the Beaufort scale while up here at the airport, where the wind is even stronger, the meters showed only 10.