In their article from 1983, published in the American Ethnological Society, Gísli Pálsson and E. Paul Durrenberger discuss two folk models which explain differential fishing success in Iceland. One applies to the short term and is based on material factors; the other refers to the long term of seasons and careers and centers on the personal qualitys of skippers, or the skipper effect. They show that the skipper effect cannot account for differential fishing success and develop a sociological explanation for the ideology of skipper effect and how the ideology developed in response to historical changes in the social relations of production in fishing.

Icelandi foremen and skippers: the structure and evolution of a folk model