Iceland, home to world's most expensive feather treasure

STYKKISHOLMUR, Iceland– The handpicked down sells for thousands of euros a kilo, catering to those looking for exclusive products.

“When there are eggs, we only take a part of the down. And when the eider has already left the nest, we take everything,” Erla Fridriksdottir, head of King Eider, one of the country’s main exporters, told AFP. Worldwide, the annual harvest of eiderdown is no more than four tonnes, three quarters of which comes from Iceland, by far the world’s largest producer, ahead of Canada and other countries bordering the Arctic.

The local practice is said to have started in Iceland as Vikings from Norway settled on the island at the end of the 9th century. “We feel that the ducks like to have their nests close to us, where we are staying,” Jon Fridriksson, Erla’s brother, told AFP, adding that it could be a strategy to keep predators at bay.Then Fridriksdottir’s employees begin the first stage of sterilising and cleaning the down in a huge oven at a temperature of 120 degrees Celsius for eight hours.

As a last touch, expert hands — which no technology has been able to replace for this process so far — do another thorough cleaning.Finally, the down feathers are washed with water and disinfected, again by hand, before being wrung out and dried.While world famous, eiderdown production is a drop in the bucket of the world’s total down production, estimated at 175,000 tonnes per year, according to the International Down and Feather Bureau.

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