Tromso fishing trip: a fjord cruise with a line over the side

The same warm current that keeps these fjords open brings the fish. Every winter the skrei — Arctic cod that have spent years feeding in the Barents Sea — migrate south to spawn along this coast, and they have done so for as long as anyone has kept records.

That migration built northern Norway. Stockfish, cod dried on wooden racks in cold air without salt, was the export that paid for the churches and the towns, and it fed medieval Europe on fast days. The racks you see on the shore from every boat here are not decoration; they are the industry, still running.

For a visitor with a rod, the practical effect is that you are fishing a working ground rather than a tourist pond. Cod, haddock and coalfish come up on hand lines with several hooks, the crew rig and unhook, and the technique takes about thirty seconds to learn: drop to the bottom, wind up two turns, jig gently.

Quotas and rules apply to visitors as well as to the fleet — there are limits on what you may take out of the country, and the boats know them. What you catch on the day is generally cooked or kept by the operator, and none of it is wasted.

You will see them from every boat here: rows of wooden frames, two or three storeys high, standing on the shore. They are hjeller, drying racks, and they are the reason this coast has been inhabited for a thousand years.

Cod hung on them in February dries in cold, dry Arctic air without salt or smoke. The result, tørrfisk, keeps for years, weighs a fraction of the fresh fish, and was northern Norway’s export to Europe for the whole medieval period. Bergen grew rich on it. Catholic Europe ate it on fast days. It is still made the same way and still exported, mostly to Italy and Nigeria.

The racks are hung from about February and stand full into May, which is why a winter or early-spring sailing sees them at their most striking. Later in the year they are empty skeletons on the shoreline.

One sailing on this site lands you underneath them, which is the difference between seeing a curiosity from a boat and standing in a working industry that predates every building in the town.