One chest belonged to Ingrid’s father, the second to her grandfather and the third to her great-grandfather, the latter is emblazoned with the same initials as her father’s: H.B. for Hans Barrøy, and the year 1831. It is also the biggest and least battered of them, for the man was lost at sea at such a young age that his son still hadn’t learned to handle a pair of oars.

They ask Arne and his brothers to carry the chest up to the house and put it in the parlour. Benjamin and Jørgen see to the one bearing the inscription Martin Barrøy, 1864. Arne asks what the point is, two Lofoten chests on the floor where the dining table used to be, they had been told to push that up against the closet wall, the chairs stand around like a circle of mute onlookers, it is the end of September.

But now it is the herring season and everything grinds to a halt again.

Ingrid decides they should do the salting themselves instead of gutting fish at the trading post in the shackles of wage labour. Arne and Benjamin agree.

They row to the village in two boats and buy barrels and salt, have it charged to their account by the new foreman with the odd appearance, the one Ingrid sold eider down to, they haggle to get the price as low as they can, they need half-barrels, the windlass on Barrøy can’t lift more than that. And that same afternoon they close off the sound between Moltholmen and one of the Lundeskjæret rocks according to Ingrid’s instructions, they also set nets westwards from the other rock, thus forming a kind of V, as they have always done here.

However, although they see columns of birds, like roaming tornadoes, over the sea to the west and north, and also close to the skerries, they don’t catch anything until more than a week has passed. But then the nets are almost bursting with fish beneath the new moon, they have to tow them ashore and lose half the catch. But they still have thirteen half-sized barrels. And they are big herring. Ingrid tells the boys to chop off their heads rather than gut them.

Fredrik Barrøy is home from school and is given the job of carrying water and making the brine that is poured into the barrels after they have been laid on their sides. Arne has drilled a hole in the middle of one of the staves on each. Ingrid thinks they should have had a pump on the quay, now they have to carry or winch up buckets of sea water to the rinsing tubs, it is as it has always been, Barrøy has everything, yet lacks something of real importance.