In Reykjavík last month, farmers laid out dead fish on the steps of Iceland’s parliamentary headquarters and doused them in insecticide, the latest action in a growing public outcry about the state of fish farms operating in the country’s waters. Among the crowd of supporters was one of Iceland’s most important voices: Björk, whose advocacy for the environment in her home country has encompassed geothermal energy, public lands, and, now, wild salmon.
On Thursday (November 9), Björk releases “Oral,” a Sega Bodega–produced single with Rosalía that dates back two decades. She wrote the song between 1997’s Homogeneic and 2001’s Vespertine, but she felt like the track wasn’t a good fit for an album. In the years that followed, she’d occasionally remember the song’s melody, but not the title, and she couldn’t ever find it in her tape archives.
In March, however, the title came back to Björk when she saw the word “oral” in a CNN news chyron while she was on tour in Australia. The same month, a report arrived about the devastating impact of poorly regulated, Norwegian-owned commercial salmon farming operations on Iceland’s native ecosystems. Full of parasite-ridden fish that are genetically different from Icelandic salmon, the open-net pens located near Iceland’s fjords have been a particularly grave environmental threat. The fjords are among the country’s most prized natural treasures, salty safe havens for a vast array of flora and fauna that support a larger marine ecosystem encompassing whales, birds, foxes, and seals. Björk’s connection to the cause clicked with immediate serendipity, and, in September, her sense of urgency worsened when one company discovered that 3,500 fish had made their way out of its pens and into the fjords.
Proceeds from “Oral” will be used to support a legal case against the fisheries, brought forth by residents of the town of Seyðisfjörður on the eastern side of Iceland. For her part, Björk has a fierce determination that Iceland’s wildlife is not forever doomed to collapse under the demands of industrial enterprise, and that “Oral” can be a beacon for the environmental cause. “When we win it—we’re gonna win, we just decided it—we are hoping that that could be some sort of exemplary case that other fjords in Iceland could use, and hopefully for all the world,” she says. Below, find a lightly edited transcript of Björk’s conversation with Pitchfork about “Oral” and her commitment to the natural world.
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