The Mummified Cod | "Norwegian Food"

Source: "Norwegian Food: Do they really eat this?" 

You can mummify all kinds of fish, but Norwegians use cod. 

First, you clean the fish and remove the blood and guts.

You then hang it on a drying rack made of wooden stocks called “hjell” in Norwegian.

You let the fish hang in the cold wind for three months where it dries thoroughly. 

What was a 10-kilogram thick and soft cod turns into a hard and thin one-and-a-half-kilogram stick so hard that you could hit someone with it.

It is eaten by many Norwegians as a snack, but also used as dog food.

The fact that the fish is dried on stocks has led to the English name "Stockfish" and the Italian "Stoccafisso".

In Norwegian, we call it “tørrfisk”.

Stockfish is one of the Norwegian fish traditions presented in “Norwegian Food: Do they really eat this?” (Norsk versjon “En smak av norsk kultur: Det unike og merkelige vi spiser”)

Read more about our amazing Norwegian friends in our Norwegian Toolkit 

By Julien S. Bourrelle

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