Why Björk is brave enough to call your salmon “evil”
Intelligent and boundary-pushing, Björk, as the avant-garde pop provocateur she is, will not shy away from big topics. With repeated interventions, including her ‘Nature Manifesto’ exhibit at Centre Pompidou, on the environment and multiple contributions to activism, she’s a star who routinely puts her head above the parapet in the name of a good cause.
So, it’s no surprise the artist opposes intensive factory salmon fishing in her home of Iceland. In fact, she insisted “it’s evil” to Dazed.
Björk introduced her activism for salmon with the dreamy pop track ‘Oral’ sung alongside Rosalía, of which all the profits go to legal fees for people fighting fish farming in Seyðisfjörður. She continued to speak urgently to National Geographic on the crisis, “Sometimes it’s been difficult to bridge a gap between Gen Z vegans and, like, farmers who kill sheep every autumn to eat,” she says.
Adding, “But on this fish-farming project, everyone is united.” The reason for this unity comes from an alarming proposition. Thousands of farmed salmon escaped from a hole in one of the pens, now out in the wild, these distinctly different fish might breed with the wild variety and pass on disease and parasites, creating an ecological disaster. The song might be dreamy, but the reality it faces is scary.
If an ecological nightmare is not enough to put you off mass-produced, environmentally dangerous food products, Björk also defended the ‘Oral’ song’s intention as follows: “Basically, there are these genetically altered salmon from Norway. Their bones are designed to grow three times faster than they are supposed to, so not only are they in a lot of pain, but 60 per cent of them are disfigured – literally like Frankenstein or the fish in The Simpsons.“
The artist is never too far away from a comically off-kilter reference, but she swooped straight back into a more alarming tone, continuing, “Their skin is falling off, and 20 per cent of them die in the net because the conditions are so horrid. There’s a huge sea lice problem, so they have to use an enormous amount of insect poison, along with antibiotics and other chemicals, which is evil both for the fish and the whole fjord. The people behind this are two Norwegian billionaires. Maybe a few people in Iceland get jobs out of it, but the majority of the money goes to them.”
Alas, that’s not the only reason Björk has remained tethered to her roots enough to rally against it. Nature has always been a key part of Icelandic folklore, and a level of fear and wonder leads to deeper reverence for the natural world and our place in it. She has always channelled this sentiment into her music.
She’s not alone either. Locals standing up for their folk beliefs have protected the ancient Gálgahraun lava field from having a road built over it. The fjords equally have impressive folk tales, adding to the all-around wonder. This interconnectedness with nature is always present in Björk’s world: musical, visual, personal, and political.
In a Biophilia review, Far Out commented, “Björk suggests that human instinct and the natural world have more to learn from each other and often intertwine, so long as we’re open and willing to relinquish control and listen and feel instead.” The album offers a philosophical line of thinking that echoes Albert Camus’ classic The Rebel when he advocates ending the constant battle between domination and submission, that ends up being a revolving door with no real change. To be clear, the supposed subordination of nature, a category in which humans are a part, to man is only going to bite us on the arse.
Pragmatically, Björk highlighted, “The Paris climate accord is a modern utopia impossible to imagine, but overcoming our environmental challenges is the only way we can survive.” Rather than subjecting more animals to a life of suffering, maybe think twice in the supermarket; tofu and chickpeas are cheaper, and line-caught wild salmon is tastier anyway, and endorsed by Björk.
