We could picture the entire scene right down to the smallest details: how those present broke up the ice in frenzied haste; how, flouting the highter claims of ichthyology and elbowing each other to be first, they tore off chunks of the prehistoric flesh and hauled them over to the bonfire to thaw them out and bolt them down.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956