Key takeaways
- Cured Norwegian salmon with bread, accompaniments and fruit, laid out on a table on the shore rather than served indoors.
- Fresh coffee and tea are served with the picnic, which matters more than it sounds on an exposed Arctic beach.
- The operator states a vegetarian option, though it must be arranged rather than assumed on the day.
- When conditions rule out eating on the sand, the meal moves indoors in miniature: a sandwich, salmon or cheese, and something hot to drink.
What actually appears on the table
The expedition team stops somewhere along the coast, sets up a table, and lays out a spread built around Norwegian salmon. It arrives cured and sliced, generously, on a board, with bread to put it on and butter to go under it. Around it come cheese, preserves, fresh fruit and whatever else the team has brought, and coffee and tea are poured from flasks.
It is a genuine meal rather than a gesture. Guests use the word plenty repeatedly, and several describe it as the highlight of the day. That is partly the food and considerably the fact that you are eating it standing on white sand with the Arctic Ocean a few metres away.
Why salmon, and why it is good here
Salmon is what northern Norway does, and the coast you are driving along is the reason. Cold, clean, fast-moving water suits the fish, and Norway has built one of the world's largest salmon industries out of exactly the conditions you can see from the coach window.
Curing rather than cooking is the traditional preparation and it travels well, which matters for something served on a beach an hour from anywhere. Cured salmon is firm, faintly sweet and needs nothing more than bread and butter, which is the whole logic of the picnic. Nobody is trying to cook you a hot meal on an exposed shoreline, and nobody needs to.
The setting is half of it
The operator makes a point of serving on one of Sommaroy's beaches, and it is not decoration. A table laid out on white sand with turquoise water behind it is a specific and slightly absurd pleasure, and it is what people photograph and remember.
There is usually a fire pit going alongside, which does two useful things at once: it gives everyone somewhere to gather and it takes the edge off a breeze that has crossed a great deal of open water to reach you. On a fine summer day this is one of the better lunches available anywhere. On a rough one it is memorable in a different way.
The salmon picnic laid out on a table by the shore
The wet-weather plan
Stated openly, which is worth crediting. Should conditions rule out the sand, what arrives instead is a sandwich, salmon or cheese, and a hot drink to go with it. That is plainly a lesser version and the operator makes no attempt to dress it up.
It is also the sensible answer. Laying a table on an exposed Arctic beach in horizontal rain would be miserable for everybody, and a guide who insists on the photogenic version regardless is not looking after their group. Guests describe teams reorganising a whole day around a forecast so that the bad weather barely touched them, which is the same instinct applied earlier.
Dietary requirements, honestly
A vegetarian option is available and should be arranged at the time of booking rather than raised on the beach. That much is straightforward and the operator states it clearly among the inclusions, so nobody who eats no meat needs to worry about going hungry.
Beyond that the operator is unusually blunt. Allergy, coeliac and vegan diets cannot be catered for on this expedition. That is a real limitation rather than a formality, and if it applies to you the right response is to eat beforehand and treat the picnic as a stop rather than a meal. Better to know now than to discover it an hour west of Tromso with a table of bread and salmon in front of you.
How long you stop
Long enough to eat properly and walk about, which is the point of building a picnic into a four and a half hour expedition rather than handing out a lunchbox on the coach. The stop is where the day slows down.
It also doubles as the beach visit. You are not eating in a car park and then driving to the sand; the table is on the shore, so the meal and the place are the same event. Most people finish eating and then wander, which is exactly what the schedule expects.
The hot drink, and what to bring
It sounds trivial and it is not. Coffee and tea are served with the picnic, poured from flasks, and on an exposed Arctic shoreline a hot drink held in both hands does more for a person than another slice of anything. Norwegian coffee culture is serious and the flask is a national institution for exactly this reason: the country has a great deal of outdoors and a long habit of eating in it.
Nothing, in terms of food. What helps is warm layers, because standing still to eat on an exposed beach is colder than walking about, and something to sit on if you would rather not use the bench. The other thing worth having is a genuine appetite. The salmon is generous and the team would rather it was eaten than carried back. If you have a large breakfast at your hotel you will regret it around the second slice of bread. Both are easy enough to sort out the night before you travel.
