The High North Tour 2021: “It is Difficult Now”, says Taste of North Entrepreneur

“As for the traditional hanging of cod for our own lutefisk production, the situation is very uncertain”, says Sigurd Rydland.

You will not find Korsnes unless you have decided to go exactly there. If you drive along the E6 road towards the north, the sign leading there pops up just before you arrive at the quay for the Lødingen ferry. If you take this detour in summer, you may also see some impressive petroglyphs.

Brazil hard hit

Now, however, it is winter and Rydland has a gloomy perspective for the season.

“We now see that there is dried fish in storages that was purchased at a rather high price last year. Hanging fish now for our own production is probably not as smart as it usually would be. This is not the year to use liquidity and gamble on producing good, dried fish for lutefisk production”, Rydland says.

“However, lutefisk accounts for only 20 percent of our turnover. The rest is about klipfish, where most of our produce goes to the Brazilian market. A market that has taken quite a blow. We had a disastrous drop in exports in 2020, and it appears that will apply for 2021 too. Things are really tough at the moment.”

Watch the whole interview [with English subtitles] with the serial entrepreneur Sigurd Rydland on top of this page.

This article was originally published in Norwegian and has been translated by HNN's Elisabeth Bergquist.