I traveled to Norway to eat my way through the country’s famous seafood while sailing through steep-sided fjords and ogling picture-perfect seaside cottages. But somewhere enroute from cod to king crab, I became distracted by the country’s cheeses.
Like many travelers, I arrived knowing only two Norwegian cheeses: mass-market Jarlsberg and fudgy brunost—which technically isn’t even a cheese, since it’s made with curds, by boiling whey until the sugars caramelize. But after a week bouncing northward along the Norwegian coast on board a ferry-cruise-cargo ship hybrid run by Havila, I disembarked, captivated by the country’s small-but-mighty cheese industry.
Of course, I did eat plenty of brunost during my cruise: the classic way—thinly sliced on a warm waffle—but also in a cookie, in soft-serve, and in regular ice cream, the latter topped with raspberry compote, sour cream, and waffle crumble.
Advertisement
Advertisement
But as the ship departed Bergen the first night, I had my first taste of something different, an appetizer of beef carpaccio with shaved Bufar, a cow’s milk cheese from the valleys of Valdres in eastern Norway. Nutty, fatty, full-flavored, it reminded me of an aged gouda. Jan Dahdji, Havila’s executive chef, later described it to me as Parmesan, but with more caramelization.
Intrigued, I ordered more cheese for dessert, this time Nidelven Blå, a blue cheese produced by Gangstad Gårdsysteri, north of Trondheim, served with blueberry compote and crispbread. The dense creaminess moderated the strong blue flavor, leaving me unsurprised to learn that it earned the title of World Cheese Champion at the 2023 World Cheese Awards.
“It’s a top-class product,” says Dahdji of Norwegian cheeses. “Some of our guests don’t understand what kind of cheese they eat.” I certainly didn’t, until I got on board—both literally and metaphorically.
Dahdji previously worked at restaurants like Aquavit and Per Se in New York, before returning to his home country. Now, he takes pride in supplying the ships with, by his estimate, 90% Norwegian products. Even with Norway’s enormous tariff on French cheese, it would be cheaper for Havila to serve imported cheeses. “But this is the way we choose, because it’s local,” Dahdji says. “It’s local as it gets. I think we need to promote ourselves.”
Advertisement
Advertisement
Part of the reason Norway’s artisan cheese industry stayed relatively unknown is that it’s fairly small and fairly new. Only three percent of Norway is arable land, a fact reinforced by the picturesque but now-defunct fjord and mountain farms carved into the steep land rising out of the water along our route, the near-vertical green now dotted only with adorable red summer homes.
Until the beginning of the 21st century, there was little commercial cheesemaking on farms; milk was sent away to cheesemaking facilities. As the Nordic food movement grew, gaining fame for using local products, farmers found opportunities to expand into cheesemaking. “They went back to their roots, somehow, and did it all from the beginning again, and the cheese became a huge success,” says Dahdji. Norwegian dairy traditions came back, plus more. “Now we make our own burrata… We take whatever the French do, what the Italians do, and we do it basically ourselves.”
As we made our way north, I sampled every cheese on the various menus, completing my map of Norway through dairy products: Holtefjell Alpine cheese from Eiker Gårdsysteri, which produces cheeses from its own herd of cows; creams and sour creams from Røros; milder Golvertind and Solglad blue cheeses, the latter of which came with lovely cloudberries.
I ate plenty of seafood over the course of the week, too, and it was exciting, but predictably so. I knew I would be fascinated by blue mussels, the cod museum in Tromsø, and cracking fresh king crab in the Arctic. The cheese, on the other hand, was a delightful surprise. Exactly the kind that makes traveling—and tasting everything in new places—so great.
Read the original article on Travel & Leisure
