THE north of Norway is a wasteland. It is a desolate, godforsaken, cold and miserable place characterised by drunkenness, foul mouthedness and chaos.
Once you cross the Polar circle known as the "amoral" circle, you enter a realm of darkness where even in the summer light the thick black warms of mosquitoes serve to illustrate the rank desperation n the air.
It is a wilderness of moonshine, smuggling and sorcery peopled by knife wielding Sami and hardbitten fishermen whose language is colourful enough to make the cautious southerner blush to the roots of his law abiding and order loving soul.
Ignore Advice
"Don't go up there," southerners will advise helpfully, eager to save the visitor the hassle of travelling so far for so little. "Everybody is drunk all The time, and there's nothing but mosquitoes."
The curious, visitor who ignores this advice will find the rewards of venturing northwards are worth suffering a few mosquito bites. Explaining why they don't visit the north of their country, southerners are wont to point out that northern Norway is as distant from them as is Rome. Mere distance, however, did not deter the Romans.
The first well documented Italian visitor was, a Venetian merchant named Pietro Querini who, when setting off for Flanders in 1432, had no inkling that a raging storm would en sure he would be the first Mediterianean to chew on the delights of wind dried cod with rye bread. After weeks on an open lifeboat, the Italian and the surviving members of his crew were rescued at Sandoeya off Roest, the tiny southernmost outpost of the Lofoten Islands.
Querini wrote kindly of the people of Roest and may, have repaid their generosity by introducing their salty produce to the taste buds of Italy. He left the island with 60 stockfish and three large loaves of rye bread tucked under his arm. Five hundred years later, a stone monument was raised to the memory of Querini on Sandoeya and the Mayor of Roest made a speech in Italian for the benefit of the prominent Italians present.
Italian Links
Nowadays, Italian tourists flock to Roest and Vaeroy and the link with Italy has been crucial for Lofoten and particularly for Roost, as the observation of Lent in Catholic Italy has played a vital part in the island community's survival. The Italians took to stockfish like ducks to water, and 30 per cent of Norwegian stockfish exports come from Roest alone.
The Lofoten Islanders, have always been used to visitors. Their populations swell from January to May, when fisher men from all over Norway and beyond come to take part, in the highly lucrative Lofoten fishery. During these months, the islands play host to the Norwegian arctic cod, which migration gives, rise to the biggest cod harvest in the world.
The cod come to spawn in the Vestfjord, between the islands and the mainland, during the winter months. They then mature in the chilly waters of the Barents Sea, until the age of seven or eight when they set off on a journey back to their place of birth. The 800 kilometre journey begins in November and December and those fish which haven't been caught further north reach Lofoten by January, where the fishermen are ready and waiting.
Methods of conservation remain the same. The fish are tied in pairs and hung on wooden racks to dry in the wind and the sun. The moderating influence of the Gulf Stream on Lofoten ensures the temperature rarely drops below zero, creating ideal conditions for stockfish production. Whatever fish doesn't end up in Italy goes to Africa or to the home market, where it is soaked in lye and appears at Christmas as the glutinous mess known as lutefisk.
Abundance of Fish
The abundance of fish in the seas around Lofoten did not prevent the local people from exercising their predatory and culinary imaginations in other directions. The ruined village of Maastad on Vaeroy, north of Roest, is the home of the puffin dog. The sheer cliffs overlooking the ocean, which today are visited, by tourists in search of razorbills, guillemots and puffins, used, to be, the haunt of hunters with their dogs, catching the birds which would grace their tables throughout the long winter.
No family dared countenance that dark, stormy season without a barrel or two of salted bird meat in the larder. The practice of catching razorbills and guillemots at sea in nets was prohibited in 1899, allowing people to hunt on the cliffsides with rifles instead. The people of Maastad considered this to be a worse form of cruelty and continued in the old way. Puffins were a firm favourite with the islanders of Roest and Vaeroy, and still are according to hearsay.
Puffin dogs who came into their own during the cliffside pillaging can still be seen on Vaeroy today. There are small, fluffy dogs with pointed snouts, somewhat akin to the pomeranian. Nature has blessed them with an extra toe on each paw, but it is difficult to ascertain whether or not this is an aid in putt in hunting. Present day Vaeroy dwellers insist that the practice has died out and deny all knowledge of its finer points.