Pollock

“Did you catch anything?”

“Nah, just a few pollock.”

For anyone who has been fishing off the coast of Norway, Denmark, or Sweden—or off the East Coast of the United States—these words may sound oddly familiar. Whenever you throw out a line—no matter how lousy a fisherman you are, how rusty your hook is, or how empty the ocean may seem—there is always a pollock down there, just waiting to be caught. In Norway, where fish is abundant, it has almost always been greeted with the same lack of enthusiasm. “I was expecting a nice big cod or dreaming of a beautiful wild salmon, or an equally ugly monkfish, and this is what I got. Mr. Common Fish.”