Steamed sheep head and the global condition

Last night, after the fjord boat delivered us to our destination in Gudvangen, we went straight into a group of waiting buses who took us to Voss to then catch a train to go to Bergen. Complicated, but smooth. The government and tourist companies have packaged all this together as part of "Norway in a Nutshell," making it easy for people to put a lot of different modes of transportation together. Sandy and I stumbled into it by deciding which things in Norway looked like fun to do, and then beginning to assemble the pieces ourselves, but found ourselves in the middle of very smooth global tourism management that had brought people together from all over Asia, North America and Europe for this package of trains, ferries and buses.

The bus driver from Gudvangen to Voss was a very chatty local man who told us whose house had been smashed by an avalanche last year, how many Olympic skiers came out of Voss, etc. But his favorite anecdote was about Ivar Løne, whose farm we passed, who is called the sheep head king. He produces half sheep heads, all nicely cleaned and ready for steaming, which -- he assured us -- produced a rare delicacy, once you got past eating the eyeball. You can see Ivar here holding one of his real sheep heads, next to a rock someone found for him which certainly looks a lot like a sheep head, too.

You can see here another sheep head sitting in a very posh Bergen deli all ready to take home. The driver assured us that even the King of Norway and foreign mutton fanciers get their sheep heads from this farmer in Voss who produces tens of thousands a year, processing them from all over the country, singeing off the hair just right. People come from all over Norway to eat them in Voss, too.

Now the dirty little secret, according to Sandy, is that this tradition originates in Iceland back in the days, pretty much any time before WW II, when it was a fairly poor colony of first Norway and then Denmark. Steamed sheep head was quite nice compared to some of the fish-related things they had to eat. (Iceland is surrounded by a lot of cod and other fish.)

Once Iceland was independent after 1944, they suddenly did a lot better in the lucrative global cod market, which has been making people rich in Norway ever since the German Hanseatic league started buying dried cod in Norway and selling them to protein deprived people in Portugal, Italy, and other places in the 1300s.

Funny how global trade and culture interact. Various forms of dried, salted cod fish, known as bacalhau in Portugal, became the main national delicacy there. I have never quite understood (or learned to enjoy) that. The thing that many Icelanders ate as alternative to cod, when the richer members of society got the good parts of the sheep, was steamed sheep head. Now Norway has a thriving trade in that and think of it themselves as a delicacy. Watch out Colonel Sanders, the next global food craze is on its way.