Stockfish from the Lofoten Islands

 

I have just returned from the Lofoten Islands and the first thing that comes to mind as a vegetarian is stockfish. But that has a completely different reason. During the trip we talked about stockfish, including how it is prepared, and I saw it in various forms in the Viking Museum or for sale. The decisive factor for this blogpost has been a report on a quiz show on German television [1] in which the correct answer was that stockfish is salted and dried. That is wrong (!) and the story went so far that a guide from the Lofoten Islands contacted the German television program and protested vehemently. She was right, of course, because if you look it up, stockfish is not salted [2]. Klipfish is salted, I will explain the difference here [3]. Let's first look at the terms stockfish and klipfish in different languages:
Stockfish and klipfish (English)
Tørrfisk og steinbit (Norwegian)
Tørfisk og stenbider (Danish)
Törtfisk och stenfisk (Swedish)
Stockfisch and Klippfisch (German)
Sztokfisz i klipfisz (Polish)
We may see an origin of the term in the North Germanic languages in a term for drying. In these languages the term stone (stein or sen) is used for the fish to dry on rocks. In the West Germanic languages, but also in Polish, for example, the term goes back to the rod (Stange) or stick (Stock) on which the fish was hung to dry. The languages mentioned use cliff instead of stone for klipfish.

For stockfish mainly codfish was caught, i.e. cod that was not yet sexually mature (German uses Heilbutt, whereas mature cod is sold as Dorsch). After the tongue and entrails have been removed, two at a time are tied together by the tail fins and then hung over the sticks or rods/poles. According to recent research, this was already common practice in the eighth century. In the late Middle Ages and at the beginning of the modern era, stockfish was a sought-after commodity that was sold as far as the Mediterranean via the Hanseatic League. The Hanseatic League even had exclusive trading rights for this commodity. Stockfish was the most important commodity for Norway and the north of Norway. Stockfish is very hard and you could even kill someone with it, but I strongly advise against that. It has a long shelf life, i.e. for over a decade. This made stockfish ideal for storing as food for times of need. The fishing season begins around late November and lasts until around March. Little by little, the fish is prepared and then hung to dry for months. Racks can still be seen on the Lofoten Islands today. I also show a picture where you can still see the heads of the cod; this is due to tourism. Stockfish is very expensive today. So you could buy fresh fish more cheaply. But that's a completely different question.

The clipfish was - and this is the big difference - first salted and then dried on rocks and you can see that in the shop when stockfish and klipfish are next to each other in the display: the salt is still visible in the clipfish.

As I have just found out, there is also boknafisk. This is a dried fish that has only been dried for a short time and the word bokna probably comes from the northern Sami word boahkku.

Klipfish

Stockfish

Links and Annotations:
[1] I have to pass on that one because I don't have a TV and don't know the program in question.
[2] For stockfish: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockfisch and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockfish as well as https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%B8rrfisk. The English article differs slightly from the German one, the Norwegian article differs considerably.
[3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klippfisch. Not in English on Wikipedia.

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