ishermen in Ålesund love to boast
about their fishy paradise with big
numbers. In early spring, they say, the
mass of herring roe off the surrounding
coast weighs three times that of
Norway’s human population. Those
eggs draw a bounty of other fish,
including the 500 tonnes of cod that
swim into the fjord around Ålesund
(
about the weight of 100 monster trucks, in case you were
wondering). Given that mass of fish, they also say you can catch
a 30kg cod here just by dangling a rod into the harbour and
waiting for a bite.
This is all near-enough true, though the belief in
hal
–
the
idea that if a fisherman has plentiful sex the night before, he’ll
get lots of fish the next day – certainly seems apocryphal. (Tom
the photographer is not my type, and I caught plenty of fish – but
more of that later.)
Whatever. Ever since it started producing
klipfish
(
dried, salted
cod) in 1750, Ålesund has become the fishing capital in a country
that’s known for its sea life. The Vikings knew you could catch
fish in the fjords all year round – cod, haddock, halibut, pollock,
mackerel, herring, ling, cusk, saithe and more – as well as trout in
the nearby lakes and salmon in rivers such as Straumen, widely
known as the world’s shortest salmon river.
But the fishing industry is changing here, as it is across much
of the world: big operations are hauling in monstrous catches
while smaller-scale independent fishermen struggle with rising
costs and falling prices for their wares. “Until at least the 1960s,
you couldn’t move for ships in the harbour,” says Arve Eidsvik,
78,
who runs the picture-perfect Eidsvik Skipshandler fishing
shop with his daughter Solveig, showing me old photos of tightly-
crammed fishing vessels. “Just about everyone in the town would
be out in their boats – they’d raise a flag at a certain time and
everyone would drop their nets. The fishermen would come back
and deliver fish to the whole town.” That still happens today,
though on a smaller scale – if you head down to the harbour most
afternoons, you’ll find fishermen ready to part with prawns or
cod hauled straight from the sea.
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