Hafdís Sturlaugsdóttir

Over the years, I have learned from several farmers that Hafdís Sturlaugsdóttir and her husband, Matthías Lýðsson, are known as a couple of the best sheep farmers and specialty meat producers in The Westfjords region.

Originally from Reykjavík, Hafdís moved to Hólmavík when she was 20 years old and soon fell in love with Matthías. “I did not know what I was going to do, so we went to farm school together and then we just started farming here.” 

Hafdís studied the social behavior of sheep in her master's research project. For two years, she marked a group of her flock that were of the same bloodline before releasing them into the wild and made observations on whether they recognised each other, and whether their behaviours reflected a connection between mother and kins and amongst siblings.

“I just went for a walk up the mountain and tried to find the sheep with binoculars… and then I found these pink sheep, which I had marked with pink colors, were my favourite sheep, of course, they were pink. They were in a group opposite to the boulder here in Tungudalur. They grazed in the pasture and at night they came in a group and laid down together. So the pink sheep were from her, here, Þæg.”

Hafdís enthusiastically points at a sheep. As if waiting for its cue, it trots towards us and sniffed the air. “[The next year] I did a little bit of follow-up research with a GPS transmitter that was used for tagging reindeers… I looked at the same sheep again, and I could see their tracks, and then it turned out to be exactly the same as I had seen [in the previous year]. The related sheep stayed together, in most cases. It was really fun to do this kind of project and research in nature.”

D: Why did you become interested in sheep?

H: Let me tell you my first experience with sheep. I went to visit a town not far away, called Steinadalur. And I had never really seen a sheep before… And I went to the sheepfolds with my friend and she just walked in the jata (feeding alleys) normally and there were a lot of sheep with their heads [in the alleys] and I was scared shitless.

I was eighteen, I should not have been afraid of sheep, but I just did not feel well at all. It was a terrible endurance test for me to walk in the feeding alleys. And I thought to myself, this is not for me, no sheep-business. But then I just met this nice man and then I started to get interested in sheep.

At first I only had one sheep called Sæta (The Sweet One). And then came sauðburður (the lambing season) and I just fell for the sheep, I just loved them so much. And since then I have felt absolutely wonderful, and there is nothing more soothing and more so relaxing than having fed the sheep and then staying at the sheepfold, not rushing, but stopping and listening to them when they eat. Then I feel completely relaxed and it's wonderful. I really think so, if people were so nervous and stressed, they should be allowed to go into a fjárhús (sheephouse) and listen to the sheep after they have been fed. It's not very exciting to listen to them before they are given feed, because then they are just noisy, but once they have been fed, it is so wonderfully peaceful.”

D: Do you have a favourite sheep?

H: Yes. You always have a favorite sheep, that's just the way it is. Now there are a few of them, my favorite sheep.”

Hafdís walks down the aisles and points at a group that is standing still, looking at us, instead of running away. They finally decide to come over. They reach their heads over the fence and gaze at me, as if studying my face.

H: Or look, some favourite sheep want to be petted. Other favorite sheep are favorite sheep because they have such special personalities.”

Both of us are now busy scratching around the sheep’s jaws and side of their necks. Hafdís’ eyes become very lively. She flashed another big smile and explained,

“You just look at them and you know that. I expect [it] to go in [a specific] direction but [it] also knows that I expect it to go in that direction; but still [it] goes in the other direction just because she's such a character. But I think [it]’s really funny for that.”

She reminded me of a mother who is joking admiringly about her mischievous children.

“The meat was gone and you did not know what happened to it, or, what people did to it to sell it. But it's a little different today, since we decided to set up a meat processing facility and took part of the meat home [from the slaughterhouse] and processed it. And then it gave a little different angle on being a sheep farmer—because then you think about what you were going to do with the meat, what you were going to do [to process it], and how you wanted people to see the meat.” 

Húsavík farm obtained an operating license in 2008 and began creating its own special recipes for meat products.

“It just started very little and we were working on rolled meat and then, the following year, it grew a bit and now we take home about one-third of the production and process it all here at home. Both lamb and mutton.”

D: Could you tell us more about what you want people to see, and how you want it to be?

H: Look, we want the packaging to be attractive, for people to think when they see it: ‘yes, it looks good’ and then we also pack the ground meat in flat packs and then freeze them, because then we have shelf life, then there is less food waste. And we think, to put this in flat packs so that it thaws only in twenty minutes, half an hour. And then you can cook it.

So we put a little bit of effort into making it that way. When I cut down meat for soups, I take each piece and arrange it in the package, so that it looks good. And I turn the pieces back and forth to make it fit and look the way I want it to. And that's how I want it to be. With everything I pack, I arrange it so that it looks attractive and so people would want to eat it. That's just what I think matters.

D: So it takes a lot of work and thought into it all.

H:When you start with meat processing, you have to think that this is work. And this is something that one has to think oneself through and that you have to have time to do this work. And it means very little if you were to create your own specialty [but then] you just piled the meat somehow in a bag and think that the consumer would want to buy it.

D: You also have all kinds of developments going on in meat processing, don't you?

H: Jú. We have, we are doing all kinds of experiments and we have done all kinds of experiments. When we first started with the meat processing, we went through a very strict design process, and we went through a lot of development with Matís* for our first product, Lostalengjur.

She said as she took a purplish-red, perfectly cured, air-chilled leg of lamb and thinly sliced into generous portions for us to taste. Mattías is an avid wild bilberry picker in the Autumn. The Lostalengjur recipe was designed to layer meat with wild bilberries (that he foraged) and then dried to prolong shelf life. The meat was sweet and very tender. The aroma and umami flavour lingered long after I swallowed the last piece.

H: One learned a lot in the development of such things. So I have continued to play with this and that and I am still playing, yes, I call this playing… and I'm trying different methods, because I find it the most enjoyable, trying to figure it out myself. How I'm going to do it. It's a lot of fun to play in the meat processing and try to invent something new and exciting.

Apart from product development, environmental sustainability is also a priority. They supply to a few local restaurants and have proposed to use reusable containers, or, offer the possibility of customers to bring their own containers to buy directly at the Húsavík farm*. Their newest initiative is to test environmentally friendly packaging, such as a compostable vacuum packing material.

H: We're moving in that direction right now, we're on a mission where we could do that, trying to reduce plastic use as much as possible.

*Matís is a a public limited company established by the Alþingi, specialized in research and development in the food industry.

*note: this is their farm’s name, which is located in The Westfjords, a different location than the Hùsavík known for whale-watching trips… though, it is also possible to see whales from their farm.

H: I work at Náttúrustofa Vestfjarði*. I call myself a specialist in vegetation, I mostly do vegetation reports and sometimes I also go out to sea. First, I studied seagrass and then I started to look at various other things—seaweed and marine invertebrates. I also have butterfly traps. It is a very diverse job at Náttúrustofan. 

D: Maybe like the work at the farm, they are both very diverse?

H: I love diversity… Being able to come to work and you are not quite sure what the day will be like. Maybe someone comes up with a fun bug that I need to look at and identify. Or, a plant, and that is, naturally, my favorite. And being able to be out in nature and look for plants, is really exciting.

Maybe people would not find it exciting to walk far up in the mountains to look for a fjalla-bláklukku (Campanula uniflora / arctic bellflower). You put in a lot of work to walk up, up, up and for a long time in an impassable country, than you see [the flower] and then you become so happy. I got an inquiry the other day if there's a chance to find burnirót (Rhodiola rosea / golden root) in this area. And then I would just go back in my mind and think about the walks and how happy I was when I saw the golden roots. 

Our environment is very diverse and living here in this place, that it is a short way to the beach and up the mountain, you can find so many habitats and explore.

*The Icelandic Institute of Natural History in The Westfjords. Since the interview, Hafdís had left her job at Nátturustofa.