Journalism // Outlaws in the Arctic (SUITCASE Magazine Vol. 29)
I arranged a trip for myself and photographer Johan Lolos to the Lofoten Islands in Norway to participate in the hotel Holmen's "Kitchen on the Edge of the World", a seasonal culinary retreat run in partnership with the chef Valentine Warner with a rotating calendar of other star chefs. For this summer solstice edition we were joined by renowned fish chef Nathan Outlaw, cocktail wizard Nick Strangeway and Bridget Nicholls, the founder of the insect festival Pestival. In addition to lots of feasting, during the four-day trip we also took part in workshops in cookery, knife-making and pottery, went hiking, fishing and kayaking, and listened to talks and performances by a local string quartet. Read the full article here: https://suitcasemag.com/articles/outlaws-arctic-fishing-foraging-edge-of-world
I remember once as a child walking to school in a snowstorm, uncharacteristic of north London suburbia. I had an illicit packet of pear drops in my pocket and, as I popped one into my mouth, the delicious discordancy of the winter blast and the boom of summertime on my tongue bloomed like a hot tear landing on ice. Although it might seem utterly insignificant, the moment returns to me more than once during my time on Moskenes, the most northerly inhabited island on Norway’s Lofoten archipelago.
This is proper fairy-tale country – not the sanitised twittering of a Disney drama, but rather the unbridled, noir-ish sting of a Grimm fable. The weather is brutal, the living equally so, and the Norse gods that rule over its humpbacked peaks are a far cry from the velveteen, indolent deities of Roman or Greek myth. Yet amid the canine-toothed mountaintops and silvered seas hides Holmen – a hotel, yes, but also a giant pear drop clinging to the craggy coastline, a nugget of decadence against the howl of the wild.
It’s the thrill of this juxtaposition that strikes me repeatedly during my four nights here for the Kitchen on the Edge of the World, a food-centric retreat bringing Michelin-starred chefs into the wilderness. While the cooking is, obviously, outstanding, it’s the clash of luxe and low-key – zhuzhed-up hot dogs conjured over the campfire, shots of potent aquavit downed on a bone-white beach, the nightly return to the kitchen for five-star feasts – that make it a truly visceral experience which drinks down the perilous landscape to the last drop.
The modest building where we gather was once a fish factory, erected in the 1900s by Rasmussen’s family, while the newer surrounding cabins were constructed using the same techniques and materials. Inside, sea-glass chandeliers, colossal fish skeletons and hunting implements hang from the beamed ceilings, and sheepskins from local producer Lofoten Wool drape across leather sofas.
We cluster along the long tables in front of the open kitchen as Warner settles into his natural role as dinner party host, introducing us to Outlaw – whose cooking is apparently akin to “a bear wrapping tiny, exquisite Christmas presents” – and presiding over the plates of halibut sushi, Lofoten lamb in seaweed and langoustine, crab and dill-flecked barley that emerge. The latter is so good it almost moves me to tears, my heightened emotional state the only explanation I can muster for subsequently drinking far too many aquavit espresso martinis – that, and the fact that without the wagging finger of dusk there’s no boundary to deter you from indulging late into the night.
Wind-blasted and sodden, we return to see resident potter Gunvor Tangrand wandering the decking in a tartan dressing gown, clay smeared on her cheek and tangled in her hair, the Arctic Circle’s answer to Kate Bush. After warming up with Outlaw’s debut dinner of slices of raw scallop served in the shell, salt cod with crab sauce and halibut with fennel bake, Tangrand and I wind up tipsily heading into her potting shed for a midnight plate-spinning lesson, clasping bowls of red wine and tripping over wires in an attempt to find the power switch. I silently thank the Norse gods that she’s in charge of ceramics rather than knife-making.
The next day I swap stone and clay for slate-tipped sea, crashing into clusters of black mussels wrapped around the pillars of the jetty while kayaking in the bay of the nearby village of Sørvågen. Lunch is located on an isolated island that we reach by RIB boat, bouncing across the current and scrambling over the spiky shoreline to a makeshift campsite where our chefs are cooking hot dogs over a fire, served airport junk-food style with pimped-up prawn-and-dill mayonnaise and crispy onions. I feel the last vestiges of my soft city lifestyle slipping away as I join British knifemakers Alex Pole and Ed Hunt to hammer out my own “Viking lady’s knife” in their temporary forge, striking the metal rod until it curves like a duplicitous, flirtatious smile. I hastily wrap the blade in three layers of hiking socks in order to get it home without slicing open my suitcase.
Our final night coincides with Midsummer’s Eve, the celebrations beginning with a performance by a Norwegian string quartet in the humble room above the kitchen. As the wind and the mountains beat against the windows and the strings soar, I feel like I’m on a train carriage rattling through the sky, insulated from the world outside alongside my fellow passengers.
In Norway the tradition is to mark midsummer with a bonfire, so we troop outside and huddle around the flames in a scoop of rock drinking mugs of aquavit, caraway, raspberry and Lofoten tea. Tangrand has already singed off half her fringe finishing off her ceramics in a raku firing over the blaze – she’ll later fall into the water attempting to retrieve a bird’s feather that she tells me represents a guardian angel’s visit – and as Rasmussen’s teenage daughter threads together a wildflower crown, Nicholls reads out her poetic homage to “the 24-hour dawn chorus everywhere, an ecosystem teeming in harmony”.
Following Outlaw’s final feast of cured salmon, seafood risotto and grilled monkfish, the evening ends as all good dinner parties should – anarchically – with half our group following Rasmussen’s daughter in the midsummer ritual of jumping off the jetty into the sea. It’s a fitting conclusion to a week of immersing ourselves in the marrow of the moment, a madcap, marauding community at the edge of the world.
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