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Take a selection of over-ripe cheeses. Place them in the midst of a pile of dirty, wet soccer kit. Leave for a week. Now you have the nose-numbing smell of rakfisk, one of the great Norwegian delicacies.
I am in the small town of Fagernes, about three hours from Oslo. There is snow, spectacular scenery - and that odour, ever present, hangs in the air.
Rakfisk is trout sprinkled with salt and fermented in water for - depending on how smelly you like your fish - up to a year. |
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As the dark sets in and the weather turns cold, Norwegians flock to a festival here in Fagernes devoted to this most, well, captivating of foods.
"You eat it raw, and then swallow a glass of aquavit," says Havard Halvarsen, full-time local firefighter but also the so-called "Rakfisk General", in charge of running the festival.
All around us people are eating little cubes of the fish and knocking back quantities of drink.
"Some people like the aquavit more than the rakfisk," says Havard. "The drink can kill the smell." I try a few pieces. If you can avoid passing it under your nose, it is not bad - not unlike a slice of sushi that has been on rather a long bus journey. |
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