Friday had terrible weather, so after a walk in the mountains in the rain in the morning, we beat a retreat and rented a fishermen’s cottage, or Rorbu, for the night. The rest of the day was taken up with watching the rain out the window, drying gear, and eating cinnamon rolls from the Ã… village museum bakery.
Fortunately, Saturday morning was dry, although the cloud was still down on the mountains. After packing up all our now-dry gear, we decided we couldn’t leave Ã… without visiting the Dried Cod Museum. Our visit was slightly chaotic as we caught the last half of an English language tour, then watched the film about cod, and then tried to make sense of the rest of the museum ourselves. Fortunately, the guide was happy to answer lots of questions from confused tourists, and eventually I think we understood what was going on: Cod is caught in the autumn, left outside all winter to dry, then sorted and graded, and the best stuff is exported to Italy, where bizarrely Norwegian dried cod is a delicacy.
The best feature of the museum, however, was the biscuit dispensers in the cafe. Yes, those are real dried cod heads!
After lunch (more cinnamon rolls) we walked up the road to the village of Moskenes as another night in the Rorbu was more than we could afford. We then decided to head up the mountain behind the village to walk around a small lake. it turned out that the far side of the lake was a vertical cliff, so we climbed up some more, and suddenly everything opened out in front of us with fantastic views of bare rock faces, waterfalls and lakes in all directions. The scenery here really is fantastic, and hopefully in the next couple of days we’ll get to see it in the sunshine…
On our way back into Moskenes, we spotted the perfect bike storage solution for maximum security!
Did they show you how they dry the cod? I was amazed that it’s done outside during the super cold and dark winter months…
Yes – obviously the fish weren’t drying when we were there, but we saw the drying racks.
Now I know what Cod look like, I won’t feel quite so guilty eating them!
I think they dry them in the super cold as the wetness just freezes & drops off. I believe in Russia they do the same with washing.