Hurtigruten Dining

As I write this we're about three hours away from Bergen, the end of our Hurtigruten voyage aboard the MS Trollfjord. The sun has even decided to shine, just a little, on our last few hours at sea. Yesterday was sunny much of the day, giving me a chance to indulge in the jacuzzi one more time.

Once ashore we'll take the bus to our hotel, the Strand, stash our bags, freshen up then call Jean Sue's cousin Leslie and his wife Gry for a ride out to Radøy for the family reunion.

A few words (or more) about the food board the Trollfjord. Good and plentiful.

Although I'm sure it doesn't compare to the huge cruise ships plying the Caribbean and Alaskan waters, I enjoyed all our meals aboard the MS Trollfjord.

Breakfast was a typical Norwegian hotel buffet, with many different herrings (and a few other fish, like mackerel and sardines thrown in), eggs (usually scrambled, another hot egg dish which varied, hard and soft boiled eggs), breads and cheeses, cold cuts, breakfast sausages (which are more akin to cocktail franks), meatballs, fruit, yogurts, cereals, etc. Today's variation were some crepes with blueberry preserves.

The lunch buffert is even more plentious, with at least two hot entrees (one is always fish, the other usually some sort of meat -- I had delicious roast lamb one day) with vegetable and potato sides, cold meats and cold cuts, cheeses, salads, more herrings, soup, breads, etc. And the desserts. Sweet, but not cloying, almost always light in texture if not in calories. There would always be a couple mousse-like puddings, a couple of different cakes, various berry sauces, tea cookies, fruits.

Unlike the other meals dinners were served at assigned tables (we had a two-top so didn't have to make conversation with strangers). Fish was served three of five nights: arctic char, cod loin, and a triple whammy of halibut resting atop salmon with an accent of gravlax on top. Always served with delicious steamed potatoes and interesting vegetables. Reindeer steak greeted us the first night, and breaking up the fish nights was one dinner of a roast sirloin. First courses ranged from soups (potato leek once, fish soup another time), marinted reindeer, gravlax, etc. Desserts could be cheesecake, fruit soup,  panna cotta, ice cream cake.

If, for some reason, the dinner menu did not appeal (you can consult the week's dinner menu soon after boarding) you can request an alternate, though I highly recommend going with the flow.

Other than water, you'll pay extra, of course, for beverages, whether it be soda, wine or beer. And at normally high Norwegian prices, though not any more so than you'd pay at a land-based restaurant: $10 for beer no matter where you go, unless you buy at the supermarket. A glass of wine was abut the same price. Half-bottles of wine started at about $40, full bottles at $60 and up.

You won't go hungry, and what was even more astounding was the quality. Even if you don't like fish, you've got to eat it here. Norwegians depend upon and thrive on fish and, after a couple of milleenia, they've learned how to cook it. Firstly, it's fresh. Secondly, they cook it through but never too much. Even the fish on the buffet wasn't overcooked. Yesterday for lunch had a piece of saithe cordon bleu, saithe being a cod-family member (also known as coalfish). It was crisply fried, and maintained the crispness on the buffet; the interior was meltingly tender, juicy and tasty.

Of course, I immediately go for the herrings at breakfast and lunch. At breakfast they offer a plain pickled herring, another in mustard sauce, another in tomato sauce. At lunch the herring is served in three different sauces: matjes (sweetish wine sauce), curry, and sour cream.

Summary: When you travel the Hurtigruten, don't fear the fish.

More Fiskesuppe

This brief post is a bit out of order, but I had to note the meal we had Saturday evening, our last at Svinøya Rorbuer, and its restaurant, Børsen Spiseri -- Stock Exchange Restaurant according to Google Translate, but probably more accurately as Warehouse and Store Restaurant, because that's where it's located, in the warehouse behind the original store, now rorbuer reception area.

I started with fish soup, here a richer version (though by no means as thick as the typical New England style chowder) made with full cream, with a few pieces of salmon joining the cod, shrimp and potato. What set it apart was a shot of Pernod.

For mains, Jean Sue ordered the halibut served with spring vegetables, including fennel. I went for lamb loin, cooked medium rare, served with french green beans. Both were accompanied by a delicious potato which seemed to be mashed with another veggie, then sautéed like a croquette, but without breadcrumbs.

Desserts were quite nice (pictured at the bottom of this post). Jean Sue ordered the fresh fruit salad topped with caramelized meringue, vanilla ice cream and a sprinkling of pistachios. I went for the cloudberry yogurt panna cotta, which would have been perfection had the cloudberries been put through a strainer: the large, very hard seeds ran counter to the silky texture of the panna cotta.

The Road to Å

The villages of Reine (right) and Sakrisøy are along the route to Å

Tuesday we set out in the morning to find the end of the road. We found it in Å.

Å is the fishing village at the southernmost point you can travel on the E-10, the road which connects the main islnds of the Lofotens. (A couple other inhabited islands -- Røst and Værøya -- can be reached only by boat or helicopter.) From Svolvaer, the nearly three-hour trip  covers 128 km (80 miles) along roads which, the more southerly you go the more narrow they become. At least two or three times we had to backup our Opel by curves or one-lane bridges to allow other vehicles to pass.

Even in drizzle and rain the Lofotens offer magical views. Changing tides provide a shifting landscape. The fish racks for drying cod no longer are A-frames; instead, southern Lofoten fishermen hang theirs from flat-top structures which, except for the dried fish, could be mistaken for arbors.

Two small museums dedicated to the region's fisheries industry are located in Å. One, devoted only to the fish-drying process, we skipped. The second and larger museum was what was, essentially, much of the original village. Today it is the museum, a restaurant and a collection of rorbuer, the fishermen's cabins that dot the coast of much of Norway.

The Norwegian Fishing Village Museum, as it is formerly known, is small and only moderately interesting, even to me, who finds nearly anything about fishing industry riveting. Of the half-dozen buildings you can visit, the most interesting is the boathouse, where samples of the small rowboats used by the fishermen are housed, along with nets and every other item necessary for making a living from the northern sea. Of a bit less interest was the cod liver oil factory where, if you are a masochist, you could taste the product from which these islands derived so much of their livelihood.

(The cod fishery off the Lofotens peaks during the winter, when huge quantities of fish from the Barents Sea (between Norway and Russia) seek the waters off the coast hear warmed by the Gulf Stream. For a wonderful, absorbing account of the live in a remote Lofoten fishing village, I recommend reading For Love of Norway, a literary account (in translation) centered around the life of the wife of a fisherman in the tiny (and now abandoned) village of Mostand on Værøya.

We had hoped to have lunch at the Brygga restaurant in Å, since we regarded it as The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. They were closed for lunch, so we headed back north, stopping at Maren Anna in Sørvågen.

It's About Fish

The Lofoten Islands may be broadening its economy through tourism, but fish is still at the heart of the community. Just a hundred feet or so from our cabin we found this worker taking cod down from one of the many drying racks near Svinøya Rorburer, the compound of cottages where we are spending our week on the islands.