Fishing king Kristján Berg Ásgeirsson says there is no reason to hide it if people suffer from discomfort. Kristján, who is the latest guest on Sölva Tryggvason’s podcast, recently said that his mental health hasn’t been at its best lately:
“If your thoughts are taking over your reasoning, you shouldn’t hesitate to ask for help. When you get to the point where you start to think you don’t want to live, you need to do something about it. there are certainly many people who are in a worse situation than me, but it shouldn’t be taboo to talk about how you feel Posting this post on Facebook was my way of expressing myself and I can’t hide as That.
I’ve been that happy guy in commercials all these years. Why do you have to face it alone if you are in great distress? The people around you want to be there for you, and it was a relief for me to start talking about it. I got a lot of comments when I talked about it, especially from people who are in business and who may have been pushing themselves very hard for many, many years. In fact, I’m still waiting for an appointment with a psychiatrist and it seems like the wait is 1-2 years.”
Difficult to close one of the oldest fishmongers in the country
Kristján says he has now reached the point where he no longer wants his life to be limited to work.
“I feel like I want to do more in life than work endlessly. There are tough and very worrying times. It’s cost me blood, sweat and tears to run these companies for all these years and I also have 6 children, so life is not always easy”
Kristján recently had to close one of the oldest fishmongers in the country with great reluctance. He says the fish trade has actually been in decline in Iceland for 30 years.
“It was very difficult to close this store. When you have been running a fish shop in the same place for 30 years, making this decision is a difficult step. But in the end, you have to put your feelings aside. The fish has become an animal Less than 1% goes to Icelandic consumers.
The world is big and there is a great demand for good and healthy food. So we are in direct competition with foreign countries and this has increased the price considerably over the years. There is also a generation in Iceland that is not used to eating as much fish as before, and that is having an effect. But the competition will have to decide that and there’s no point in maintaining things that aren’t up to par. I don’t have a one-size-fits-all solution, but I think it’s unfair that lamb meat is subsidized and not fish.”
expensive phone number
In the episode, Kristján talks about how he discovered one of Iceland’s coolest phone numbers:
“When the Novas came on the market they had a lot of power and lightness, and I liked that. Then an auction was held on number 777-7777 and the proceeds went to a good cause I thought it was the coolest number in the country and I decided to participate and I first offered 50,000, then a hundred, then it continued to much higher amounts and I lost in the end as the number grew to over a million. But I didn’t give up and kept calling the person who got the number at regular intervals but he was absolutely adamant that it wasn’t. was not for sale.
But then came Covid and then the tourism industry collapsed and this man was running a business in this business and in the end he gave up. I actually ended up paying more than it originally cost, but I won’t disclose the amount. That’s a big number and people don’t forget that and that’s why it’s great in my business when people want to buy fish. But at a certain time of the day, the phone does not stop. Then the children talk on the phone. I get an average of 20 calls in the second half of the day and 90% of them are calls. Then there are calls from abroad in the evening and at night. So I have a certain love/hate relationship with this number.”
Rather be in jail than be stuck in street court jail
Kristján had a lot of problems and, among other things, was in prison for quite a while quite a long time ago:
“I have nothing to hide and I don’t want to hide anything. I come to the door fully dressed and being in jail is part of it. Once you’ve served a sentence, whether it’s serving jail time or pay a fine, you have several options to move forward. At some point, you have to come to believe for yourself that this chapter is over and you can and that you have to move on after you learn your lesson I got out of prison in 1997 and I thought no one would buy me fish anymore, but after talking to my psychologist I decided to move on There’s no point in hiding and getting stuck in depression. I had already made up my mind, and when I started to believe it myself, finally there was never more to do than ‘after that time. I think if I had to choose, I’d rather be in jail than stuck in street court jail. When you make your decision sion, it’s over, and you can put a full stop behind it.”
The episode with Kristján and all the other episodes of Sölva can be accessed at www:solvitryggva.is
