HERRING TALES (HOW/ SILVER DARLINGS SHAPED HUMAN HISTORY (PB

Scots like to smoke or salt them. The Dutch love them raw. Swedes look on with relish as they open bulging, foul-smelling cans to find them curdling within. This lighthearted and informative book shows how, through centuries, the herring has done much to shape human taste and history. Following a journey from the western edge of Norway to the east of England, from Shetland and the Outer Hebrides to the fishing ports of the Baltic coast of Germany and the Netherlands, culminating in a visit to Iceland's Herring Era Museum, Donald S. Murray has stitched together tales of the fish that was of central importance to the lives of our forebears, noting how it and those who fished for it were celebrated in the art, literature, craft, music and folklore of northern Europe.