Fishing Vacation on Norway’s Lofoten Islands

It’s two o’ clock in the morning and the sun is shining brightly. On the night before the summer equinox – known to locals as Saint Hans’ Eve – the streets are nearly empty in Henningsvaer, a town of 500 on the Lofoten Islands in Norway. In this coastal fishing village north of the Arctic Circle, the sunlit night is subdued but not quite spent, as a few stragglers dart between the closing bars and in-town parties.

One such straggler, noticeably inebriated and sporting a freshly blackened eye under his sunglasses, grasps a silver mug on the porch of his harbor-side vacation rental. Like my traveling companions and myself, he’s an out-of-towner, only one that’s a mere 200 miles from home.

“Karsk?” asks one of my Norwegian-speaking cohorts.

“Karsk,” nods the stranger.

I cringe. Karsk has been a principal topic of conversation for the better part of a week. And here it is. Norwegian moonshine. 190 proof liquor that is typically mixed with coffee and beloved in the north. Uh-oh. Karsk.

The mug is passed. I take a sip. It tastes like another chief Norwegian product: gasoline.

In modern Norway, one foot is firmly planted in the past as the other pushes into the future. A socialist monarchy with a state church, the government frowns on the binge drinking in which the karsk-passer has so clearly partaken. Exorbitant taxes on booze have led to smuggling, with Swedish vodka and Danish beer among the most popular illegal imports. And, from within, bootlegged karsk by the truckload.

The end result: billions of kroners are lost annually to the black market. No matter. As long as immorality comes at a price, the old guard is happy.

This is just one minor example of how tradition shapes modern Norwegian culture. Historically one of Europe’s poorest countries and a province of Denmark and Sweden for most of the past millennia, Norway and its history changed course in the mid-1960s with the discovery of offshore oil. (The oil could well have been the United Kingdom’s, but postwar boundaries proved favorable to the Norwegians.)

Pre-petroleum, the Norwegian economy began with fish and ended with poverty since the end of the Viking era, nearly 1,000 years ago. More than half of the country’s populace emigrated to the United States and elsewhere during the 19th and 20th centuries. But oil changed everything: The country now enjoys one of the highest standards of living on the planet, thanks largely to its status as its third-leading exporter of oil.

The resulting cultural shift “is not good,” says one thirtyish Oslo resident. “Norwegians are not humble anymore.” But the oil will eventually run dry, he adds, and humility will come in handy when it does.

This is in part due to the fact that Norway’s thriving economy is somewhat isolated. The country narrowly rejected membership in the European Union in 1994, a vote that failed principally due to entrenched conservative attitudes – i.e. “Let’s keep Spanish fishing boats out of Norwegian waters.”

To further shield the country from international competition, the government props up the farms in the north with some the world’s fattest agricultural subsidies. Many farms that would have otherwise faded live on because of government support, and the resulting prices of food and beer can induce sticker shock if you’re constantly calculating the exchange rate.

Beyond protecting domestic agriculture, the subsidies helped keep the north populated for reasons that are more political than economic, holdovers from the days of the Cold War. Before the Iron Curtain tumbled, the threat of Soviet aggression was very real: Norway was the only NATO country that shared a border with Russia. And, due to the geography of the political boundaries, the north was the most vulnerable area in Norway.

But times have changed, policy has not, and migration from the northern farmlands to the urban south continues. As one native observed to me in an Oslo barroom, “We once had to protect the northern border from the Russian army. Now we have to protect it from an army of Russian prostitutes.”

Few places reflect these changes as much as the Lofoten Islands, where cod has been the key to the economy for more than a century. It remains a linchpin, but tourism has grown mightily in its significance over the last 20 years. In Henningsvaer, only a few of the wooden cod-drying racks that dominated the landscape for centuries still stand, and most of those are generally devoid of fish today. The year-round population has dropped 50 percent since 1950. Rorbuer, or row-houses, that once housed pro fishermen have been spiffed up to lodge tourists, and galleries and restaurants have sprung up alongside them.

My home for the week is not in Henningsvaer proper, but rather on Vakthusoy, or Guardhouse Island. The Anthonsen family has called this two-acre island a few hundred yards from the Henningsvaer harbor home since 1896. The family’s patriarch (and Dennis Hopper look-alike), Karl Martin Anthonsen, was born here in the late 1920s, becoming the first in three generations to leave Lofoten when he pursued an education and engineering career. Now retired, he has returned to Vakthusoy every summer for the last 30 years.

Vakthusoy’s commercial fishing operations ceased in 1962, and Karl Martin converted the row-house into a fully equipped apartment for his children a decade ago. They spend less and less time by the year in the north, however, so it became an underused vacation rental instead. The price – less than 700 kroner (about $100) a day, which includes use of a small motorboat and fishing gear – is a pittance in comparison with just about everything else in Norway.

However, Norwegian tourists, flush with spending money, “want something more than rorbuer,” says Karl Martin, explaining the reigning preference for luxury over quaint charm. But for my party’s simpler tastes, the creaky old row-house on Vakthusoy is ideal.

Karl Martin is showing me the nooks and crannies of Vakthusoy when seven fighter jets crack through the gauzy coastal sounds, looping around the shoreline on patrol. “During the Cold War, they would come every day to Henningsvaer,” recalls Karl Martin. “They don’t come around so often anymore.”

Closer to the small isle’s stony coastline, he points out another sight that’s seen less and less these days: a sea duck camouflaged amidst the rocks, sitting upon a nest of eggs. Imported Canadian minks have preyed on the ducks with gusto since Karl Martin’s childhood, when the Anthonsens would harvest an egg every Sunday for their own meal. “Some 20 years ago, they were everywhere,” he says. There are only seven nesting sea ducks on Vakthusoy this summer.

My mind drifts back to an encounter I’d had a few days earlier, in the tiny southern Norway town of Opphus. Olaf Sverre, owner of one of the largest mink farms in the country, spoke of a backlash to agriculture and furring. “Norway is a democracy,” he said without a hint of antagonism. “If 51 percent of the people say no more farming, then I will not farm. I will go to the city to make money.”

Sea ducks aside, such diplomatic and egalitarian attitudes as Sverre’s are pervasive within Norway. In terms of annual income, the richest 10 percent make about four times the money that the poorest 10 percent do (as compared to a 60-to-one ration in the U.S.). Allemansretten, or “every man’s right,” is a long-standing Norwegian policy, allowing for camping anywhere, even on private property.

Lofoten, and all of northern Norway for that matter, is stunning, with postcard-worthy scenery around every bend in the road: steep mountains, dense forests, dramatic waterfalls, and ever-present fjords. In a rented Subaru, we drove 1,000 miles on the only highway that traverses Norway in its entirety, from south to north, and saw only one dusky hour of night before our week of uninterrupted sun began. Emerging from a tunnel alongside a fjord, a rainbow, lush greenery, I could think of only one word: Valhalla.

And on Vakthusoy, where my morning ritual of drinking coffee and writing in my journal included a killer whale sighting, the scenery is similarly spectacular. Stately peaks rise to the north of the picturesque harbor and smaller rocky islands dot the sea to the east, west, and south.

For a few hours every night, the sky dims but never darkens as the sun dips behind the looming Festvaagt Mountains, only a mile away from Henningsvaer. One day we hike 2,000 feet to the summit of one of these alternately rocky and lush crags. The view, all endless blue and imposing stone, is the rich reward for our efforts; from this perspective, even the manmade bridges connecting Henningsvaer to the surrounding islands are sublime works of art.

But most days are spent fishing for torsk (cod) in the crystalline waters around Vakthusoy. We find a reliable hole nearby where we spend hours pulling up torsk after torsk until we have a freezer full. Our dinner menu for the week includes torsk tacos, torsk pasta, and fried torsk with potatoes and carrots. Somehow, we don’t tire of all of this fresh fish.

The abundance of fish is the prime reason for civilization on the Lofoten Islands, which extend west from Norway’s mainland for 100 miles. Then there’s the climate, the best in the world for the latitude – about 68 degrees north. Warm albeit wet weather is the midsummer norm, but we luck out, and hardly a drop of rain falls during our stay.

Despite its remoteness and long, dark winters, humans have long inhabited Lofoten, with the Vikings supplanting the incumbent cave-painters about 1,500 years ago. Trade with the Catholics of southern Europe began in the 17th century, catalyzing Lofoten’s dried cod industry as a major source of fish during Lent.

At the tip of Lofoten is the end of the road, a colorful fishing village simply named A. Around the edge of the island from A is the Moskstraumen, a.k.a. the Maelstrom, the home of the world’s most powerful tidal currents. For 500 years, mapmakers have marked this spot with the direst of illustrations, sea monsters strangling ships and grimace-faced storm clouds huffing and puffing. But on our boat tour, the Maelstrom is surprisingly sedate.

Back in the Vakthusoy rorbu, a pan of fresh cod sizzles on the stove aside a pot of boiling potatoes and carrots. Steam temporarily sheaths the windows from the persistent sun. Soon we will toast this last meal in Lofoten – thankfully with wine, and not karsk and coffee – and dig in.

Two days later in Oslo, night falls on us for the first time in nine days.