We had two bags of sardines, seventy-five fillets of cod, five pounds of high-powered salmon, a saltshaker half-full of fish bouillon, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored trout roe, beluga caviar, sea urchin eggs, shrimp... Also, a quart of squid ink, a quart of shottsuru, a case of surströmming, a pint of raw garum, and two dozen trout. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious fishe collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the surströmming. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a fairy in the depths of an surströmming binge, and I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.
