notes from norway 3

hygge - a cozy mood. saw this word quite a bit lol

And we are back after a “chill” two days! After our Reinenbringer hike, esteemed subscriber Winnie Li and J decided for a chiller day and reoriented our plan around going to the historic village of Å and just hitting the sauna. 

The village of Å — being the last town on the E10 highway — is fittingly named the last letter in the Nordic alphabet. It’s entirely filled with the beautiful rorbuers and houses a few museums including the Stockfish museum and the Norwegian Fishing Village Museum Å. 

Honestly? The museum I gained the most info out of the entire trip was the Stockfish museum. They had a pretty good documentary talking about the Lofotfisket (the traditional cod fishing season from Jan to Apr) and how it’s shaped the entire region, and a very very good guide through the museum that described and showed each part of cod processing in fairly good detail. 

Afterwards we hopped over to the Norwegian Fishing Village Museum … but found that the greatest attraction there was the amazing cardamom bun with apricot and rosemary. I did learn a bit … I think? I guess I just remember what cod oil smelled like lmao.

Anyway we ended the day with a nice sauna and Arctic plunge. The Arctic part is more that it happened in the Arctic circle but the water wasn’t too cold!

You might be wondering how I’m getting around. As the main driver on this trip I rented a very very nice Skoda ENYAQ! It’s like this electric cross over deal that’s honestly amazing to drive and has all sorts of bells and whistles I did not have in my 2003 INFINITI QX4. The roads have not been too treacherous — the main danger has been an abnormal amount of one-lane roads and infinite blind corners. But each road is usually wide enough for two passenger cars to pass through. 

For food that day, we ate entirely at our AirBnB. We picked up some shrimp, spread and toast from the supermarket and also some cod filets and bacalao in a bucket for dinner. I think we probably saved $150 across four or five home-cooked meals and highly recommend doing so if you ever visit Lofoten. For the most part … the food here … is lacking. If Taiwan is food heaven, I am in food hell. 

That is obviously excluding the star of this trip: FISKESUPPE! Today we set out on our first stop of the day on our final day out here in Lofoten and started in Nuafjord. The whole thing is blocked off and you need to pay to get in. It was cute enough so we decided to do it. 

The two main stops here are the bakery and the general store. We had a splendid rhubarb cardamom bun and a normal cinnamon roll and at the general store we got the FISKESUPPE. 

This was, by far, the creamiest fiskesuppe. When I took a few bites there was still some sour cream floating around. It was also happily our fishiest one but also the saltiest. Not sure which of the fish soups is my fave but … do not think it was this one. 

The other meal I actually thought was worth was the bacalao I had today at Svolvaer! Bacalao generally is the end product of all the cod processing I described earlier and is a salted naturally preserved cod product that is used mainly in Italy and Portugal I believe. The Norwegians I believe took this recipe from the Portuguese to create a tomato and chili based soup featuring their beautiful salted cod. 

I had this in two forms: the first was a take home meal from the supermarket where we just heated it up on the stove. The other was at a restaurant named, aptly, Bacalao. If you are in Svolvaer and want a relatively good value meal, order the Bacalao. They give you hella bread and the soup portions are large for once in this damn archipelago. 

In terms of hiking, we did attempt to do one more today above Svolvaer but the visibility was tough and the rocks were getting slippy. So we abandoned and I created this wonderful Strava post. 

That’s all for Lofoten! I’ll be in Oslo tomorrow and will be reporting in one more time before my flight. Catch you all on the other side!