Ok, Morten has promised that I will write about my norwegian experiances, so here they are. At least in terms of "having a traditional norwegian dinner".

Friday night we went out to a quite nice fish restaurant in the newly build shopping and restaurant area Aker Brygge in down town Oslo, directly at the harbour. The name of the restaurant was "Lofoten" which clearly indicated that we were not going to get some nice english style steak (if you don't know about the Lofoten you should read about them here).

As I already promised weeks before to give taditional food a try the waiter didn't provided me with a menu. In fact most of us (we were nine people at all) skipped the part with the menu, except Morten and his wife, the other Morten and Thomas. The fact that both Mortens as real norwegians were not going for the traditional fish should have worried me... Well, to be honest, it did, at least a little bit.

As a starter we got something that is called "rakefisk". Stop, that's not true in fact, the real starter was the akvavit, but more on this later...

So, comming back on the "rakefisk". Those of you who know a little bit about the norwegian, english and german language know that there are many similaryties making at least reading some norwegian not too hard. So, lets look of we find any similar word of "rakefisk" in either german or english. Searching... 1 match found... yes it's true, it really is "rotten fish" !!!

I was happy being in a restaurant with a very understanding waiter, so my "rotten fish" was a light one. The norwegians have different "versions" of rotten fish, from light up to strong and I leave it to your imagination what these levels are standing for.

So, here I was, sitting in front of "rakefisk" with quite a few eyes on me to see how I would do things you're usually not supposed to do within a restaurant after having tasted the first bit. Well, to be honest, I expacted something more awefull, but in fact the taste wasn't that bad. I am not saying that I liked the taste, but I was able to eat all of the fish with all it's surrouding salads.

Now it is time to tell a little bit about the akvavit. You do your stomache a real favour drinking it along with the fish. I don't know what happens without the alcohol, but as a matter of fact I liked the waiter making sure our glasses were never empty. So, it was not only me drinking akvavit, all others having the rotten fish as well were drinking it too. There might be a reason for this... And one more tip on drinking akavit: you drink it warm, just like whiskey, to get the taste of it.

After having killed the starter (I wonder how long it would have been taken until the fish was able to tell his name again, so "killing the starter" is not so far away from what we did) the next challenge waited for me: "lytefisk". The norwegians are quite innovative when it comes to fish, as a matter of fact all scandinavians are. It just comes to my mind that I sure be happy not having tried traditional icelandic fish when I was there some weeks ago...

So, back to the innovative things about fish. In most cases all you do with your food is usually to make sure that it's not getting rotten too fast (well, I just learned there are exceptions for this rule). One of the things you can do with fish to make sure it wil last a little bit longer is to dry it in the fresh air for about 2-3 month. Now the fish is called "stockfish". In former times the city of Bergen was member of the so called Hanse, a sort of trade union of lots of cities all over europe, mostly cities with a direct harbour at either the north sea or the baltic sea.

Bergen was famous for trading stockfish and got quite rich with it. Well, in fact it were german traders operating Bryggen (also called Tyskebryggen, meaning german wharf) that made all the money from the "stockfish".

Coming back to "lytefisk": after having dried the fish you can keep it nearly for ever. Of course you can't eat it in this state. So, getting it's back to something you can enjoy for dinner the norwegians put it into a water for 5 to 6 days, with changing the water daily. After that they put the fish into a lye for 1 to 2 days. After this treatment the fish has nearly double of the size as it had when it was still swimming happily in the atlantic ocean. Of course you can't eat the fish in this state with all the lye in it, so another 5 to 6 days in daily changed fresh water will follow. The result is the so called "lytefisk" and it is a traditional dinner in the christmas season in norway.

Now you know what the main course of the evening in the Lofoten restaurant was for me. The norwegians put a lot of things aside the "lytefisk": potatoes, bacon, mushed peas, mushed carrots, lots of pepper and salt and of course: akvavit.

I sat back and whatched the other norwegians eating the fish and I tell you something: they were all cheating !!!

With all the supplements to the fish you never ever taste it actually ! All you get is something very gucky, that's all. I tasted the pure fish and was supprised to get some fishy taste. After the above described treatment I didn't expacted that. But anyway, it was clear from the very first moment: I would feed my appetite from all the supplements, the potatoes, the peas, the carrots and the akvavit, but not from the fish.

After all I was not killed by either one of the both dishes but you can bet: they will never ever make it onto the list of my favourites.

After spoken so much of fish I am not going to tell you what the both Mortens had for their main course... All I say is that it was also something traditional and it was not related to fish.

We closed the dinner with a really nice dessert: myltekrem. It is made from mixed cloudberries, whipped cream and sugar. I tell you: if you get myltekrem only when having the fish in advance, eat the fish! Myltekrem is worth it.

Have I already told you that all dishes where served with a certain amound of akvavit ?

After the restaurant we went into the next Irish Pub, called "The Ferryman" spent the night with lots of Guinness, fine Whiskey and a nice (but totally drunken) norwegian woman. But's that another story and it's not going to be told here.

So if you ever come to norway you might know now what you either want to try to eat ... or not.

Just to be clear on this: all these dishes are traditional norwegian food. I am not going to make fun of them, in fact the opposite is true. I tryed to explain as detailed as possible about them and putted in all the links to Wikipedia and even more importent: I tried each of them !

So finally, I enjoyed the night (and I really don't know if it was the alcohol that saved my life or if the fish wasn't that poisened)