In Norway, Kids Slice Out Cod Tongues for Serious Money

In Norway, Kids Slice Out Cod Tongues for Serious Money

Source: smithsonianmag

1/12/2022

Pay a winter visit to Norway’s remote Lofoten Islands, north of the Arctic Circle, and it’s impossible to miss the rows of headless fish carcasses hanging from wooden racks to dry. Follow the snaking two-lane road from village to village and you’ll arrive at the dock of H. Sverdrup AS fish factory in a town called Reine. When I visited, a group of kids with sharp knives and bloody smocks stood huddled together for warmth. School had just ended, and they were waiting for more cod heads to arrive.

The kids are known as tungeskjaererne, or tongue cutters. It was early March 2020, the middle of fishing season, when Arctic cod known as skrei migrate to the Norwegian coast to spawn. Cod tongue, tender and jellylike, is a local delicacy. “The best meat of the fish,” said Jakob Arctander, a local fish exporter. “It’s got the consistency of filet mignon.”