Discovering Lofoten’s foodways

The wind howled its ancient song, whipping my head into an involuntary wobble as our hiking guide, Audun Rasmussen, grinned, remarking, “Now you know what it’s like to be in the eye of a storm.” We were perched precariously at nearly 2,000 feet on a formidable, multi-faceted granite peak, its jagged edges slicked by relentless rain. The panoramic vistas of picturesque towns and shimmering freshwater lakes, typically the hallmark of Northern Norway, were entirely swallowed by a thick, swirling fog. It clung tenaciously to every nook and crevice of the colossal glacial formations that surrounded us, creating an ethereal, almost otherworldly shroud.

Despite the obscured views, a profound sense of accomplishment settled within. The relentless rain had transformed our ascent trails into treacherous stretches of sinking mud, while the exposed rock faces offered little to no grip. We had scrambled, pushing past resilient birch saplings with our hands, skidding on moss-covered stones, our progress a testament to sheer willpower. The journey back down still loomed, but for now, we found solace in the heart of the clouds. Huddled under rocky overhangs, we found brief reprieve, fueling our spirits with hearty reindeer-meat sandwiches, savory dry fish bites, and the beloved Norwegian chocolate-covered wafers known as Kvikk Lunsj, literally a "quick lunch," a staple of Norwegian outdoor adventures.

It is these very ascents, over rock foundations that profoundly predate the Jurassic period – indeed, much of Lofoten’s bedrock is Precambrian, over 2.5 billion years old – that draw close to a million visitors each year to the Lofoten Islands. This tiny Norwegian archipelago, dramatically situated 68 degrees north of the Arctic Circle and a short two-flight journey from Oslo, presents a distinctive and dramatic landscape. Spiky, ancient mountains rise abruptly from the Norwegian Sea, their peaks often shrouded in mist, while sandy beaches fringe deep, sapphire fjords. In the boundless daylight of summer, adventurers flock from Norway’s mainland, eager to camp under the midnight sun, scale challenging peaks, and swim in surprisingly temperate waters.

However, summer had already begun its twilight descent when I arrived in late September. My purpose was to uncover an entirely different facet of Lofoten: one found not on its formidable peaks, but meticulously crafted and celebrated on its plates.

In the wind-whipped, southwestern reaches of the archipelago, specifically in the charming fishing village of Sørvågen, a cluster of traditional mustard-colored cabins, known as rorbuer, jut out on stilts into the bracing sea. These historic structures, once the bustling heart of a cod factory, have been meticulously transformed into Holmen Lofoten, a unique culinary destination and boutique hotel. Since its inception in 2007, Holmen Lofoten has become a magnet for food lovers and adventurers alike from across the globe. The rorbuer, with their distinctive corrugated roofs (some charmingly topped with insulating grass), are connected by a network of wooden walkways that extend over the water, leading to decks that face the wild, untamed sea. Inside the guest rooms, expansive picture windows frame the dramatic shoreline, offering uninterrupted views of the ever-changing elements. With its deliberately simple, locally sourced furnishings and hand-hewn charm, every element of Holmen Lofoten feels deeply connected to its elemental surroundings.

During my four-day immersion, Holmen Lofoten was hosting the 30th edition of its extraordinary culinary adventure, "Kitchen on the Edge of the World." Launched in 2018, this event welcomes acclaimed chefs into its kitchen four times a year, inviting guests not just to the table, but out into the surrounding wild landscape. This particular iteration was helmed by Matt Orlando, a California-born, Copenhagen-based chef with an impressive pedigree, having honed his craft in some of the world’s most influential kitchens, including The Fat Duck in London and Per Se in New York. For us, the guests, it meant a feast for the senses, with every dish a direct reflection of the dramatic landscape spread out just beyond the windows.

Ingunn Rasmussen, the warm, engaging matriarch and visionary behind "Kitchen on the Edge" – and hiking guide Audun’s sister – took over the property in October 2001 and now runs it with her son, Håvar Holmen. "I wanted to build a space that felt like home, where we could all log off and reconnect with our natural roots," she explained as she picked me up from the airport. A fisherman’s daughter, Ingunn grew up around this very site; indeed, one of the cabins still bears her sister’s childhood scribbles on its walls, a charming testament to its personal history. After a period spent abroad, Ingunn returned with a resolute determination to breathe new life back into this remote corner of Lofoten. What followed was a meticulous restoration, painstakingly focused on preserving the original structures and their historical details, eventually leading to the thoughtful addition of a couple of new buildings in the same vernacular to accommodate larger suites.

On the inaugural night of the multi-day event, we gathered in the cozy living room situated above the main kitchen. Like all of Holmen’s shared spaces, it is defined by rustic interiors, featuring exposed wooden beams and raw, sculptural elements. Foraged flora, carefully preserved taxidermy, and found objects from the shoreline adorned the space, creating an aesthetic that perfectly echoed the weathered, untamed landscape outside. That evening’s dinner was orchestrated by Holmen’s own talented team of resident chefs, a young and diverse assemblage hailing from as far afield as Sicily and Piauí in Brazil.

Trays circulated, laden with delicate shrimp croustades and cocktails that, at first glance, resembled Negronis but told a distinctly local story. The vermouth, I learned, was infused with foraged blackcurrant leaves, while the Campari had been steeped with dried berries and aromatic yarrow flowers. Each sip seemed to capture the very essence of the autumnal palette I had observed blanketing the hillsides during our drive. The non-alcoholic version was equally sophisticated: an elderflower tonic enlivened by a syrup crafted from freshly picked wild hops from the nearby terrain. "Holmen was created because we want to show our guests the Lofoten Islands," Ingunn reiterated. "And food is a critical part of understanding it."

I gravitated towards Mia Hjorth Hansen, co-owner of Gedulgt, a celebrated cocktail bar in Aarhus, Denmark, and the resident mixologist for "Kitchen on the Edge." Shelves around her workstation were lined with glass jars brimming with a fascinating array of foraged and dried ingredients – cornflower, dandelion, and fireweed – all destined to be transformed into exquisite elixirs. While most visiting chefs participate once, Hansen is a notable exception; this was her twelfth "Kitchen on the Edge" event, a testament to her deep connection with the philosophy. A consistent thread among all the guest chefs, from Ana Roš, the renowned Slovenian chef behind the three-Michelin-starred Hiša Franko, to Simon Rogan, the UK pioneer of the farm-to-table movement, has been an unwavering commitment to land stewardship. "We take time picking them," Ingunn emphasized, referring to the chefs, "because we want people who will be considerate about the people and wildlife that make this our home."

The first night of the event is always intentionally designed as an icebreaker, and Ingunn had forewarned us that we would be surprised by how quickly we would grow comfortable sharing such close quarters over the four days. We were a wonderfully motley crew: a geologist from Brunei, a committed adventurer from Dubai, and a retiree from Melbourne who travels specifically for intimate food events such as this one. Our animated conversations seamlessly followed us outside for dessert, onto a wooden deck overlooking the sea. There, we savored ice cream crafted with black currant leaves and lovage, topped with mascarpone made from rich Lofoten cream and finished with a delicate meringue, charred to perfection over binchotan, a Japanese white charcoal. A tracking app hinted that the Northern Lights were tantalizingly close, and Holmen staff kept a vigilant watch on the skies. It was a potent taste of what was to come: an intimate experience profoundly shaped by live-fire cooking and a deep embrace of the Arctic elements.

The following morning, encouraged by Ingunn’s open invitation to explore every corner of the property, I ventured into the kitchen to observe Orlando and his sous chef, Tom Siebeler, as they meticulously prepared for their first dinner. "Anything that comes out of that wood-fired oven is going to taste amazing," Orlando assured me, deftly working his way through a pile of reindeer ribs sourced from a sustainable farm run by Sápmi herders just north of Lofoten. Originally anticipating chops, he was creatively improvising garnishes to complement the unique cut of the ribs. Reindeer is just one of many ingredients Holmen takes meticulous care to source locally, alongside artisanal cheeses, Lofotlam (a Geographical Indication-protected local lamb), and a variety of hardy vegetables. "For us, knowing where things come from matters, even with the objects we use," Ingunn explained. The exquisite tableware we were dining on, for instance, was handcrafted by local ceramicist Gunvor Tangrand, whose organic forms pay homage to the rugged surroundings, and whose textured surfaces subtly incorporate old fishing yarn.

Orlando had arrived in Lofoten a few days prior, his case filled with his favorite culinary building blocks – barley, Danish yellow peas, and several kinds of miso – but he expressed the most excitement about working with what he could discover in the immediate surroundings. He invited me to step outside with him to forage for additions to his dinner menu, and we returned shortly, our baskets brimming with chickweed, tender corn shoots, and tangy sheep sorrel. "I love cooking in remote places," he mused. "Thinking on the fly and exploring the potential in things you’ve never worked with before is where the coolest ideas come from."

Orlando, much like Ingunn, is a visionary in his own right. Some years ago, he opened Amass, a groundbreaking circular restaurant in Copenhagen’s industrial Refshaleøen neighborhood, where friendly service and an approachable, low-waste tasting menu were paired with a harborside produce garden that diners were encouraged to wander through. While Amass has since closed, Orlando last year unveiled Esse in a beautifully restored Nordhavn warehouse, which impressively received its first Michelin star just a few months later. Signature dishes, including his renowned fermented potato bread, made the move to Esse, along with his unwavering commitment to environmental responsibility. At Holmen, this philosophy finds a natural and deeply resonant fit.

Later that evening, as we gathered around communal tables adorned with wildflowers and soft candlelight, a collective gasp of delight escaped us when the much-anticipated potato bread arrived, served with a delicate allium butter. Another murmur of appreciation followed for the fishbone noodles, a masterful creation demonstrating Orlando’s zero-waste philosophy. These collagen-rich noodles, made by pressure-cooking fish bones and puréeing them until silken smooth, gained their distinctive slippery texture. Orlando complemented them with smoked chili, umami-rich sunflower-seed miso, and a creamy fermented chili. Served family-style, the meal was a joyous and wonderfully messy affair, with utensils often set aside so we could fully savor the main course – the succulent reindeer – with our hands. As a pescatarian, I happily dug into my own artfully prepared dish: hedgehog mushrooms grilled with a chili-strawberry barbecue sauce and served with a vibrant Lofoten chimichurri.

Outside, the luminous harvest moon kept its silent, watchful vigil over the scene.

The weather in the North changes with astonishing speed; quiet and calm one minute, then wild and dramatically baroque the next. "Four seasons in an hour," Holmen’s staff often joked. It is this unique confluence of climatic conditions that renders Lofoten such a remarkably productive landscape. The interaction between the warmer currents of the Gulf Stream and the cold Arctic waters creates an incredibly rich marine environment, teeming with life. The long hours of summer sunlight send plant growth into hyperdrive, while the constant sea spray nourishes the pastures where the local lamb grazes, imparting a distinctive flavor. "This land and sea have nourished us for generations," Ingunn explained, often leading guests on foraging walks, returning with fireweed flowers for immune-boosting tea, cloudberries for making jam, or lovage for a vibrant, savory butter.

But to truly comprehend this landscape is to understand its enduring and symbiotic connection to one particular food source: skrei, or Arctic cod. Here, the distinctive, tepee-style wooden drying racks known as hjeller are as ubiquitous a visual fixture as Lofoten’s majestic mountains. Their iconic frames have dotted the terrain for over a thousand years. While the racks were empty during my autumn visit, come January, they would be heavily stacked with skrei, caught at the culmination of their annual migration from the icy Barents Sea to Lofoten’s milder, nutrient-rich spawning waters. Transformed into tørrfisk (wind-dried stockfish), this seasonal bounty has sustained the local economy and its communities for centuries, acting as "white gold" for the region. However, like many other coastal societies profoundly shaped by the migration patterns and economics of Atlantic cod, Lofoten has faced considerable ecosystem pressures over the decades, from shifting migration routes to the encroachment of large offshore fishing fleets.

Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that a more diversified and sustainable agricultural movement is taking root across the islands. One rainy afternoon, I ventured from the cozy confines of Holmen, driving an hour north to the fishing village of Napp, home to the Lofoten Seaweed Company. Their products not only supply Holmen’s kitchens but also grace our bathroom shelves. Co-founded by Angelita Eriksen and Tamara Singer, this entirely women-led team dons wetsuits and meticulously hand-harvests seven distinct types of local seaweed, including sugar kelp and nori, from the powerful tidal currents of straits like Nappstraumen. These ocean treasures are then transformed into prized seasonings and even toiletries. Singer guided us through their processing facility, housed within a traditional rorbu. This very building, she explained, was where Eriksen once cut out cod tongues – "a common way for kids in this region to make a bit of pocket money" – and where they now sort, store, and carefully age seaweed destined for top kitchens worldwide, including Noma and Geranium in Copenhagen.

The Lofoten Seaweed Company is not alone in this innovative movement. Across the islands, artisanal cheesemakers and farmers cultivating hardy root vegetables and edible flowers are leveraging the region’s rich, unique ecosystem. Back at Holmen, I spoke with local expert Bjørg-Elin Kårn, who specializes in food and agriculture systems at Love Food, an organization dedicated to connecting small-scale producers with local restaurants. "Lamb, stockfish, and seaweed are all remarkably sustainable ways of producing food," she affirmed. "But conservation only truly works when the people living on the land and by the sea can make a good living. When a restaurant chooses these local products, it helps keep that whole system alive."

Kårn’s work also extends to steering tourism towards local food and agriculture, actively discouraging visitors from simply "hitching tents and climbing mountains." We discussed the growing toll of what she termed "the wrong kind of" mountain tourism – a sensitive point among residents. Holmen’s own mountaineering guide, Audun, now prefers not to share the names or precise locations of specific ascents. He fears that overexposure on social media will draw the wrong kind of attention, particularly from underprepared climbers who gravely underestimate both the difficulty of the routes and the famously capricious whims of the Arctic weather. A few years ago, in response to these pressures, Lofoten took the significant step of banning wild camping, restricting campers to designated grounds.

It is abundantly clear that tourism has arrived in Lofoten, bringing both opportunities and challenges. In 2025, inbound visitor growth in Northern Norway as a whole, and Lofoten in particular, is projected to outpace the rest of the country, generating a familiar tension: how to welcome visitors while simultaneously protecting the very qualities that make a place worth visiting in the first place. "Our hope is that people come to Lofoten for the right reasons," Ingunn told me, her voice reflecting a deep concern for her homeland. "Ultimately, that will be what helps us protect the islands and our unique way of life." Food, increasingly a primary anchor for how people choose to travel, offers a powerful way to bridge that gap, inviting visitors in while fostering a deeper understanding of the place they have come to experience. "Here, you simply can’t separate food production and the landscape," Kårn concluded. "Much of what visitors come to see, whether they know it or not, is shaped by food."

In this profound way, "Kitchen on the Edge of the World" at Holmen Lofoten aims to sound a resonant call for travelers to rethink why and how they visit places like the Lofoten Islands. Hospitality that takes guests beyond the plate and directly into the fields, the waters, and the communities isn’t a novel concept, but here it’s more than a mere perk; it is an intrinsic way of life, an invitation to participate in the very essence of the Arctic.

One morning, when the capricious weather cleared just enough, we piled into inflatable boats, cutting through the choppy waters towards an uninhabited island. Once a thriving fishing village, this island was abandoned when motorboats became commonplace in the mid-20th century, rendering proximity to spawning grounds less critical for fishing communities. Today, nature has triumphantly reclaimed this idyllic spot – a place where Ingunn herself spent idyllic childhood summer days picking berries and swimming – now adorned with cascading waterfalls and carpets of vibrant reindeer moss.

While others eagerly traced the shoreline on foot, I chose to sit quietly by the jetty, taking it all in: the majestic mountains disappearing into the vast, grey sea, a pair of white-tailed eagles circling gracefully overhead, and the delicate, resilient tiny berries and subarctic flora underfoot. There’s a peculiar phenomenon that occurs in the brain when one constantly zooms out to absorb the grand, sweeping panorama, then narrows focus to the smallest, most intricate details. I later learned there’s a name for it: attentional elasticity, a psychological framework that helps one anchor firmly in the present moment. Perhaps this explains the profound stillness I felt, despite the lingering fog of jet lag and the gentle pull of activity around me.

The Holmen crew built a crackling campfire, around which we gathered to eat hearty fish soup. We took turns making pinnebrød, winding dough around birch sticks and cooking it slowly over the dancing flames. A flask of aquavit – almost holy water in these parts, believed to ward off the chill and aid digestion – made its welcome appearance, passed from hand to hand.

At Holmen, authentic encounters with nature seamlessly became part of the daily rhythm. We foraged not only for food but also for art, gathering lush moss, wild mushrooms, and branches heavy with vibrant berries to create wild, evocative tablescapes with Becky Hindley, a British botanical artist. In a woodworking cabin, where optimistic shafts of sunlight occasionally pierced through the clouds, we spent hours with Lee John Phillips, a talented woodcarver from Wales, meticulously fashioning spoons out of local birch. It is a particular kind of luxury, one deeply rooted in the ancient knowledge of how to build and sustain a life from what the land generously provides.

As in any true home, the kitchen at Holmen is undeniably the heart of the house, so we continually found ourselves returning to it: to watch chefs expertly pry open delicate Icelandic queen scallops and slice basketfuls of earthy chanterelles and hedgehog mushrooms. Chef Orlando was always within easy reach, sharing recipes, offering insights, and initiating engaging conversations about sustainable food systems. Unlike many modern culinary festivals, there was no metaphorical curtain to peek behind; indeed, there was no curtain at all. "This is my dream for a restaurant," Orlando declared on the night of his final culinary presentation, as we savored perfectly grilled pollock with chard shishito butter and sipped a remarkable oat milk drink flavored with green cardamom, rose, and spiced apple. "To be able to have diners weave in and out and chat as I cook, truly part of the experience."

As fate would have it, the clear blue skies we had hoped for never quite materialized during my four-day stay. Yet, the astonishing dishes served beside a crackling wood-fired oven, the easy camaraderie forged around the communal dinner table, and the ever-present, tantalizing possibility of witnessing the Northern Lights left me feeling more awake and profoundly connected to the world than I had in months. The raw beauty, the deep respect for nature, and the exceptional cuisine at Holmen Lofoten offered not just a trip, but a transformative journey into the very soul of the Arctic.