How the Sunnmøre region in western Norway is an unlikely hub for New Nordic cuisine

Mariann Øye dashes through the trees like a forest sprite. The steep gradient and uneven ground offer no obstacle as she bounds about, stooping occasionally to inspect a patch of undergrowth. “I was born in these mountains so I’m like a goat,” she cries cheerfully over her shoulder. Sunglasses pushed back over her blonde hair, fleece zipped up over a patterned yellow knit, Mariann is in her element.

No less happy to be in the mountains on a fine September morning is her friend, Anette Myrhagen. With a wicker basket balanced on her arm and a knife hanging from her belt, Anette has fallen into step with my own slower pace. While I watch my footing and attempt not to trip, her eyes sweep the ground — quiet, meditative, deliberate.

We’re in the Sunnmøre region in western Norway, at the far end of a fjord that has zigzagged from the coast through deep, glacier-carved valleys. Their sides shoot up from the water to peaks that remain under perpetual snow. With little flat land for farming and winters that can last for six months, it’s an unlikely spot for one of Europe’s most celebrated food cultures, New Nordic. I’m here to discover the secret. My first stop is the tiny settlement of Øye and the hotel, Union Øye, whose gastronomic reputation has rippled far beyond its Norangsfjorden setting. As manager and head chef respectively, Mariann and Anette are well placed to introduce me to one intrinsic part of the culinary landscape — foraging.

With patchy sunlight illuminating a forest floor carpeted in pine needles, bracken and moss, we hunt for mushrooms. It’s early in the season, but Anette’s basket soon holds a healthy supply of orange chanterelles, stubby porcini and cream-coloured hedgehog mushrooms, alongside hazelnuts and wood sorrel. “In Norway, we have allemannsretten [right to roam] — everyone can use the land,” Anette explains as she cleans the bottom of a chanterelle with her knife. “This land belongs to a farmer, but we’re allowed to harvest mushrooms and berries and so on.”

We emerge from the dappled gloom of the woods into a dazzling morning. The sun has crested the mountains ringing the valley and the world looks freshly decorated — the forests a luminous green, the sky a dazzling blue, the painted barns the brightest red. A few last ribbons of mist drift across the still waters of the fjord. As we walk along a gravel track towards the hotel, Mariann points out the homes of her grandparents, her aunt and uncle.

The Øyes have been rooted here for generations. Mariann learnt how to bake from her grandmother, to milk a cow from her grandfather, and the traditional times to start picking rhubarb and stop picking apples from her great grandmother. The combined necessities of self-sufficiency and community dictate what ends up on the dinner plate, too — everyone I meet seems to forage, hunt and fish, and if a villager has surplus produce, they share it. “The local postlady really likes to go picking, so she comes to the hotel and delivers berries along with the post,” Mariann says with a laugh. “She left 25kg of lingonberries one day — we made a lot of jam that week!”

If the mountains are Mariann’s playground, Union Øye is Anette’s. With its dark, antique-filled interiors and chalet-style architecture, there’s a hint of Wes Anderson about the hotel. Built in 1891, it opened up Sunnmøre to international visitors — guests including Kaiser Wilhelm II, Arthur Conan Doyle and Karen Blixen were drawn to the untamed nature outside the walls and orderly comforts within.

Pre-refrigeration, produce for their meals was kept fresh using blocks of ice carved from the surrounding glaciers. The rest was cured or pickled. Anette adheres to some of that philosophy today, inspired by old cooking techniques to create the clean, honest taste that defines New Nordic cuisine. “To survive the short growing seasons and long winters, you have to save for later,” she tells me. “If you don’t use the produce right away, you dry or pickle it, so you have a nice stash for winter. And you have to savour the few ingredients you have.”

She shows me round the kitchen gardens that she maps out each January, pointing to lovage, sage and edible flowers. “This is the fun time,” she says, uprooting some spring onions. “You harvest what you’ve been growing all season, then you decide what to make with it.”

A few hours later, I get to enjoy the results in the hotel restaurant. Every dish is a delicate, richly flavoured but unfussy little portrait of Sunnmøre. There’s brioche with mushrooms picked from the forest; sorbet made from sorrel, also from the woods; soup with Jerusalem artichokes grown on a neighbouring farm; and duck brought to the door by local hunters. “People like to hear the story of their food,” Anette says as she delivers a blackberry compote topped with edible flowers from the garden. “And here on the plate, we tell them.”

The old ways

Driving south out of Øye, my speed soon slows to walking pace, so distracting are the views. Mountains crowd the landscape on all sides, and streams rush down their sides, regaining their composure in small lakes.

Some 30 miles on, Norway stops being quite so dramatic — but it is no less distracting. The mountains soften into hills, with pastures dipping to meet the waters of Storfjorden. Goats, cows and sheep appear in their tall grass. In these bucolic surroundings, the farm that now bears the name of ‘Skarbø’ has stood for over a millennium. I’ve come to meet its current incumbent, Kristine Skarbø, the eighth generation of the family to work its land.

“My great grandfather found a Viking sword when he was in the fields down there,” Kristine says as we walk along neat lines of apple trees that run to the fjord. Ever ready with a laugh and an anecdote, she has something of the Vikings’ roaming spirit herself, having spent years travelling and working in Japan, the US, South America and Spain. “I was very curious what was beyond the mountains,” she says, “but part of me always wanted to come back.”

She and her family have barely stopped since, planting 20 varieties of apple tree in the orchards, introducing cider-making, producing cheese from a small herd of dairy cows, opening a farm shop and supplying local restaurants and hotels, including Union Øye. They invite guests to sample the produce at Skarbø, too, and I’m soon sitting in an old turf-roofed storage house, part-built in the 1600s, in anticipation of a feast. Around me are ancient farm implements, battered wooden skis and hefty iron cowbells. “My ancestors kept pickled vegetables in here and hung dried meat from the ceiling,” Kristine says. “They’d salt fish in barrels and dry it here too.”

The Skarbø forebears would recognise the farm-made produce on the table, if not the sophistication brought by the current line. There’s courgette soup from garden-grown produce, elk meat salami with juniper, a rich cheese served with red berry chutney, and a hard cheese with honey and walnuts. Each is paired with a different cider — among them, sparkling Petrine that fizzes in the glass and drinks like a tart wine, and a sweeter rosé. “My ancestors worked very hard to make this land arable,” Kristine says as she delivers the final course, a chocolate brownie with apple sorbet. “It’s my responsibility to keep everything in good shape and pass it to the next generation.”

Something a little stronger than cider waits at my last stop. An hour’s drive north is a hotel that takes its name from the fjord it overlooks. Open less than 20 years, the dark-timbered Storfjord Hotel looks like it’s been here forever — perched on a hill, wood smoke hanging on the otherwise menthol-fresh air, it’s fully settled into its woodland setting. Orcas can often be seen in the waters below, chasing mackerel from the coast.

With the light fading over the fjord, I descend to the hotel’s wine cellar for an introduction into Norway’s national drink: aquavit. “You find its roots in the 16th century,” sommelier Sandra Knutsson says as she pours the spirit into a glass. “The church used it to cure disease.”

The base ingredients are caraway or dill and it must have a minimum 37.5% ABV, but there are few rules otherwise. We try heavy varieties flavoured with ginger and cardamom and lighter ones that sing of freshly cut grass. “Farmers used to make their own aquavit as it’s so easy,” says Sandra, smartly dressed in black blazer and skirt. “You use potatoes or grain for the spirit, then add whatever herbs or spices you have.”

‘Using whatever you have’ could be the national motto, and I encounter it a final time the following morning. With the mountains across the fjord glowing in the sunshine, I make my way down through the trees to a smart wooden boathouse, metres from the water. Inside, in an open-plan kitchen and dining room decorated with boating paraphernalia and antique cooking utensils, Storfjord’s head chef Florian Harnisch is delivering a cooking lesson to two hotel guests. Having sampled the New Nordic tasting menu in the restaurant, they’re keen to learn some of the magic.

In a neat brown apron with a pair of tweezers tucked into the pocket, Florian is busy filleting a halibut caught along the coast just a few hours previously. The bones and head, he explains, will be kept and used for a stock. Over a couple of hours, he pulls out an array of fresh, locally sourced ingredients to go onto the chopping board or into the cooking pot. There’s honey from Storfjord’s own hives, mushrooms picked by his girlfriend, salt made with seaweed from the fjord, and reindeer steaks from a local herd. “Local produce is really important in this part of Norway,” Florian says, adding dots of dill mayonnaise to steamed mussels. “But our growing season is very short, so you also have to think how to keep the produce.”

A neat demonstration of the point is found on a long table set against the wall a metre from Florian’s worktop. Here are jars of every shape and size, with every type of fruit and vegetable in them — plums in square jars, lingonberries in squat jars, carrots in tall jars, elderflowers in round jars. It’s a world of culinary foresight taking its cue from the past — each plant pickled or fermented, turned into vinegar, oil or jam, ready to last through the winter. “If you really want to stick to Nordic ingredients, preserving food is the most important thing,” Florian says.

As he and his guests sit down to enjoy the fruits of their labour, I’m reminded of Anette. Another chef busy preparing for the lean times in her own kitchen, far across the mountains — savour what you have now, she’d said, and save what you can.