Food & Drink

Koldtbord (cold tables) consisting of smoked salmon, fresh lobster, shrimp and hot dishes are often found in hotels and restaurants. Open sandwiches topped with fish, cheese, meats and salads are also popular. Main dishes include roast venison, lutefisk (hot, highly flavoured cod) and herring prepared in a variety of ways.

Meat and Game

High cuisine is very reliant on game, such as moose, reindeer and fowl. These meats are often hunted and sold or passed around as gifts, but are also available at shops nationwide, and tend to be served at social occasions. Because these meats have a distinct, strong taste, they will often be served with rich sauces spiced with crushed juniper berries, and a sour-sweet jam of lingonberries on the side.

Preserved meat and sausages come in a bewildering variety of regional variations, and are usually accompanied by sour cream dishes and flat bread or wheat/potato wraps. Particularly sought after delicacies include the fenalår, a slow-cured lamb's leg, and morr, usually a smoked cured sausage, though the exact definition may vary regionally.

Lamb's meat and mutton is very popular in autumn, mainly used in fårikål (mutton stew with cabbage). Pinnekjøtt, cured and sometimes smoked mutton ribs that is steamed for several hours, is traditionally served as Christmas dinner in the western parts of Norway. Another Western specialty is smalahove, a smoked lamb's head.

Seafood

A large number of fish dishes are popular today, based a large variety of species, such as salmon, cod, herring, sardine products and mackerel. Seafood is used fresh, smoked, salted or pickled. Variations on creamed seafood soups are common along the coastline.

The one traditional Norwegian dish with a claim to international popularity is the smoked salmon. It is now a major export, and could be considered the most important Norwegian contribution to modern international cuisine. Smoked salmon exists traditionally in many varieties, and is often served with scrambled eggs, dill, sandwiches or mustard sauce. Close to smoked salmon is gravlaks, (literally "dug salmon"), which is salt-and-sugar-cured salmon seasoned with dill and (optionally) other herbs and spices. Gravlaks is often sold under more sales-friendly names internationally. A more peculiar Norwegian fish dish is Rakfisk, which consists of fermented trout, a culinary relation of Swedish surströmming.

The largest Norwegian food export in the past has been tørrfisk, (stockfish in English, in Portuguese 'bacalhau') - dried codfish. The Atlantic cod variety known as 'skrei' because of its migrating habits, has been a source of wealth for millennia, fished annually in what is known as the 'Lofotfiske' after the island chain of 'Lofoten'. Tørrfisk has been a staple food internationally for centuries, in particular on the Iberian peninsula and the African coast. Both during the age of sail and in the industrial age, tørrfisk played a part in world history as an enabling food for cross-Atlantic trade and the slave trade triangle.

Due to its availability, seafood dishes along the coast are usually based on fresh produce, cooked by steaming and very lightly spiced with herbs, pepper and salt. While most coastal Norwegians consider the head, caviar sack and liver an inseparable part of a steamed seafood meal, most inland restaurants will spare diners this part of the experience.

Fruit

Fruits and berries mature slowly in the cold climate. This makes for a tendency to smaller volume with a more intense taste. Strawberries, blueberries, lingonberries, raspberries and apples are popular and are part of a variety of desserts, and cherries in the parts of the country where those are grown. The wild growing cloudberry is regarded as a delicacy. A typical Norwegian dessert on special occasions is cloudberries with whipped or plain cream.

Dairy Products

Dairy is still extremely popular in Norway, though the variety of traditional products available and commonly in use is severely reduced. Cheese is an export, in particular the plain-brand favourite Jarlsberg cheese. The sweet geitost or brown/red cheese (not a true cheese, but rather caramelized lactose from goat milk or a mix of goat and cow milk) is very popular in cooking and with bread. More sophisticated or extreme cheeses include the gammelost (lit. "old cheese"), an over-matured, highly pungent brown cheese.

Desserts

German and Nordic-style cakes and pastries, such as sponge cakes and Danish pastry (known as "wienerbrød", literal translation: "Viennese bread") share the table with sweet breads - "kaffebrød" (literally: "coffee bread", named for its accompaniment, not ingredients), waffles and biscuits. Cardamom is a common flavouring.

Drinks

Coffee

Coffee is an extremely common part of social life, enjoyed both before and after dinner, with bread, desserts and liquor. The average Norwegian consumes 160 litres of coffee per year, or 10 kg per person. 80% of the population drinks coffee.

Alcohol

Aquavit (schnapps) is popular to drink, otherwise alcohol is limited and expensive, though wines and beers are available.

Both industrial and small-scale brewing have long traditions in Norway. Restrictive alcohol policies have encouraged a rich community of brewers, and a colourful variety of beverages both legal and illegal. The most popular industrial beers are usually pilsners and red beers (bayer), while traditional beer is much richer, with a high alcohol and malt content. The ancient practice of brewing Juleøl (yule beer) persists even today, and imitations of these are available before Christmas, in shops and, for the more potent versions, at state monopoly outlets.

Cider brewing has faced tough barriers to commercial production due to alcohol regulations, and the famous honey wine, mjød (mead), is mostly a drink for connoisseurs and practitioners of the native religion.

Distilled beverages include akevitt, a yellow-tinged liquor spiced with caraway seeds, also known as akvavit, aquavit or other variations on the Latin aqua vitae - water of life. The Norwegian "linie" style is distinctive for its maturing process, crossing the equator in sherry casks stored the hull of a ship, giving it more taste and character than the rawer styles of other Scandinavian akevitter. Norway also produces some vodkas.