The Tongue Cutters

If you can swim in a gelatinous goo of body parts and not barf; and can squish your fingers deep into eyeballs and not blink; and can smash severed heads onto spikes in order to slice out their tongues, yawning all the while; then you, too, have the chops to be a Tongue Cutter of Lofoten. But only if you can wield a knife like Bruce Lee wielded nunchucks in Fists of Fury; that is, as fast as lightening, and a little bit frightening.

One thing, though: You have to be a kid like these kids if want to become the Nordic version of a Kung-Fu Fighter; as tongue cutting is the rite of passage every child of a Lofoten fisherman (or woman) must pass through if they want to do what their parents do, and their grandparents did, and their great grandparents did, and on and on, since the dawn of the Viking Era a thousand years ago. But far from being a ghoulish gauntlet these future fishermen and women are forced to endure, they revel in the gore. Mucking about in a steaming stew of stock scrap, having food fights with fetid offal, tongue kissing tongueless cod (I kid you not), it’s better than recess for them - especially given that they can make a killing in Krone selling the slimy slivers as Scandinavian sushi.

To do this. To live this three-dimensioned life far from screens. To breathe with unconditional breath the unconditioned air of these arctic islands (to borrow from Wendall Berry). That feels like Valhalla on Earth to me. And makes me wish I grew up there. And my children grew up there. And we all were Samurai of Skrei, like these beautiful children.

Photographed on the Lofoten Islands in Norway as part of an article on Tongue Cutting featured in Smithsonian Magazine.

“Fish doesn’t smell like shit. It smells like money.” - A Tongue Cutter of Lofoten, Age 8.