eiderdown

On social media we're confessing to curling up with the cat on the eiderdown, with laptop, phone and notebook to hand.

Alma’s poltergeist not only twiddled necklaces but sprang them from shop counters; it whipped saucers across rooms, upended eiderdowns, spun rings on to fingers.

I pick it up and the flakes fall off like strands of eiderdown.

Woven through are moving stories of the remote microeconomies engaged in these trades, such as Iceland’s eiderdown gatherers who, year on year, give safe haven to thousands of wild eider ducks in nesting season.

They may be luxury commodities now, but civet coffee, eiderdown, sea silk, vicuña, vegetable ivory, guano and edible bird nests all started as local harvests.