Скачать или смотреть Turskan tarina / The Lofoten Islands

Follow me to the Lofoten Islands in Norway and you'll see, how the artic cod is pretty much everywhere. The slogan In cod we trust has a point.

Fishermand's paradise
It seems like the Lofoten Islands are the paradise for a fisherman - they say it's super easy to catch fish. I don't go fishing, but I do cook and seafood is indeed excellent around here.

Even today they dry fish in a traditional way - you can see fish racks everywhere, empty at this time of year, and the key is the weather around here, perfect for drying fish.

There are two types of dried fish: the one with salt (klippfisk) and then the other one without salt (törrfisk). The klippfish I found really tasty. Törrfisk not (But I was told dogs love especially törrfisk).

The cod Klondyke and the bacalao
Vikings used to sail by the energy they cod from dried cod, but the big change took place, when the cheap salt became accessible and Norway could start exporting dried and salted cod, which became a huge business. This happened in the beginning of the 18th century and especially Catholic countries bought loads of cod: because of the lent they had a huge demand. So, the smell of dried fish became the smell of money.

And something came back to Norway as well, in addition to the wealth: the bacalao, a fish dish popular in Norway even today. In the video I'm exploring a market version of bacalao, which is not that bad at all. The first recipe of bacalao was published in Norway in 1860s: at the time the only ingredients Norwegians were familiar to was the cod.

The arctic cod comes to spawn to Lofoten for winter and back in the days one could compare the islands to Klondyke: one could get rich by catching cod. For instance in Nusfjord, a small village you can see in the video, they had 1500 fishmern and 500 boats flocking in that tiny harbour. Of course, not everybody got rich, and nowadays commercial licence to catch is really expensive.

The colours of the houses
The red fisher's cabins are called rorbus and they were painted red, because the red paint was the cheapest, it was a mixture of cod liver oil and ochre. A bit more expensive was the yellow colour, including cod liver oil as well. The most expensive colour was the white, so painting a house white was a status issues well. No wonder churches were painted white.

#norja #lofootit #matkavinkki