Salt-cod fritters are not for wimps

and life on the Loften Islands isn't, either

The Lofoten Islands - a wild and beautiful archipelago just off the north-east coast of Norway and 200 miles inside the Arctic Circle - is not where you’d expect to find the raw material of Portugal’s favourite fast-food, bolinhos de bacalhau.

Nevertheless, much of world’s salt-cod is prepared on the Lofoten islands, as I was told on my first visit in June 1985, researching European Peasant Cookery. In high summer, the rocky inlets and pastel-painted wood-built fishermen's houses were bathed in the clear, twenty-four-hour sunshine of the short Arctic summer. By mid-June, the gigantic drying racks that dwarf the brightly painted wooden boats of the inshore fishing fleet, had been cleared of the wind-dried stockfish and bacalao that features on every Mediterranean menu.

"If it's the cod-fishing you're after," said the landlord of the only tourist-accommodation availablebat the time in Svolvaer, the islands' little capital. "Come back at the end of February, when the fish come into spawn."  No question but I had to finish the story. Salt-cured cod from the north Atlantic fisheries was an important trade-item as ship's stores and - commercially even more important - provided the Catholic communities of the Mediterranean with a fast-day food with a built-in shelf-life, making it as valuable a cargo as a holdful of spices from the East.

Ten years after that first visit, I took the landlord’s advice and returned for the cod-fisheries as suggested, when it was still the depths of winter and Lofoton Wall, visible from the mainland, was a sold block of ice painted in ice-cream colours. Along the harbour-front at Svolvaer, the fishing-boats were readying themselves for the first day of fishing. A few well-directed enquiries allowed me, as a journalist with a cookery column in The Scotsman (regional interests are shared), to beg myself a day out in the fishing grounds with the skipper of MK Skarheim, one of the larger boats in the harbour, on condition I did was I was told and didn’t distract the men. Women on shipboard are not always welcomed by the fishing-fraternity, but skipper's word is law.

The Skarheim, though fully equipped as modern trawler, was no competition for the ocean-going factory ships that sweep the seabed before the fish have a chance to spawn. Norway can’t do anything about the deep-sea predators, but strict quotas on the inshore fleet ensure that the bigger ships were tied up in harbour until midday, allowing the smaller traditionally-built fishing-boats, brightly-painted with triangular sails, first chance at spawning grounds.

The sky was lightening towards midday when the Skarheim set out for the fishing-grounds. The ocean was a deep indigo, the sky cloudless, the shore ice-tipped.  We had company on the waves to take a lively interest in our nets. A school of ink-black killer whales, a family of seals, a noisy pack of black-backed gulls, a pair of hunting fish eagles. The catch was well below average and the size of the females smaller than in recent years, but at least the fish were there and there might be enough of a harvest to satisfy the bankers in Bergen.

The catch has always been marketed through the port of Bergen, sometime headquarters of the Hanseatic League, a powerful trading cartel based in Lubek, northern Germany, who controlled the salt-cod trade, exchanging the islands' stockfish and cod liver oil for Mediterranean wine, wheat and wool.  With the mid-Atlantic cod-fisheries claimed by Spain and Portugal, the Hansas - Protestant businessmen to the core - saw an opportunity to supply the Catholic Mediterranean with salt-cured cod as fasting-food at a time when, by Papal decree, over half the year was meatless.

Since there was no easy method of extracting salt in a region where traditional conservation methods are a simple matter of making use of what nature provides - a dry climate with plenty of wind in a land that's frozen for much of the year - sea-salt from Mediterranean salt-flats was added to the Hansa bill-of-lading along with barrels of claret for ballast.  The result was that Portuguese-style bacchala became an important export-item for the Lofoten islanders, but was never (perish the thought!) adopted for home-consumption.

"If that's what your readers want to eat," observed the Skarheim's captain, transfering a well-chewed hank of klipfisk from one cheek to the other, "You’ll find it in the Mediterranean."  Lofoten fishermen, he continued, like the cod wind-dried, a process of fermentation lightly salted by the sea-breeze. When fresh, the fish is best appreciated straight from the nets on shipboard as skreimolje, as surely they also do in Scotland, a one-pot meal cooked in a cauldron set over the heating-stove in the cabin. Potatoes are a possible inclusion if there's not enough fish. Preparation is simple. The fish is sliced like fillet steak right across the bone, one for each man. The cooking liquid is sea-water, only so much as will just cover the fish. and the roe and tongue cooked for longer and set aside to firm.

When all is prepared, we’re ready for the sauce, an essential part of the dish: fresh cod’s liver melted in a little of the broth in a ladle set over the heat, an enrichment that serves in much the same way as melted butter. The flavour is astonishingly delicate and buttery, with an un-fishy flavour that could easily be mistaken for beef marror. The result, I assured the captain and readers of the Scotsman, is the most delicious things I've ever eaten. That said, my enthusiasm might, at least in part. be attributed to the beauty of the surroundings and the appropriateness of the company.  If liquid refreshment had been offered - which it wasn't, maybe because there were ladies present - it would not have been the customary beer with an aquavit chaser, but the good red wine of Bordeaux.  Old habits die hard.

After the fleet returned to harbour, the day’s work was by no means done. Awaiting the fishermen’s attention are forests of pearl-grey wooden poles with triangular slats, drying racks for wind-dried torfisk, towering over the houses. As soon as catch is unloaded, the fish is cleaned, gutted, and salted down for export from the town's wooden warehouses, or - the more ancient method - prepared as stockfish, tied together by the tails in pairs and hung over the poles to dry, with the nets flung over to frustrate the gulls. Life on the Lofotens was never easy, then or now - and the skipper of the Skarheim has no doubt that his children, in spite of the wildness and the beauty, will leave the island and choose a very different way to earn a living.

p.s. beloved paid subscribers (you know who you are!) will shortly be in receipt of a recipe for Kransekake, Norway’s favourite celebration cake, an almond and cinnamon layer-cake to eat with berries and cream.

p.p.s. more stories and recipes from the Lofotens in European Peasant Cookery (aka The Old World Kitchen) - in print with Grub Street.