When Norwegians Eat

Why lunch is early and small

The Norwegian packed lunch, the matpakke, descends from the Oslo breakfast designed by the physician Carl Schiøtz and given free to Oslo schoolchildren from 1932: wholemeal bread with margarine, cheese, milk, half an apple and half an orange. The scheme ended in the late 1950s and parents simply carried on packing the same thing. That is an Oslo story rather than a Bergen one, but its effect is national — lunch here is often something brought from home and eaten quickly, which is part of why dinner arrives early. What Norwegians eat for lunch.

Dinner, and then supper

If the working day finishes mid-afternoon, the evening meal follows it rather than waiting for the evening proper. What surprises visitors more is the second event: kveldsmat, a light supper later on, which is bread-and-something rather than a meal. It is one reason an early dinner does not feel as early to the person eating it as it does to the person watching.

What this means for booking anything

Kitchens keep their own hours and they vary street by street, so treat the evening as shorter than you would at home, and if you want to eat after something else, book the something else earlier. A three-and-a-half-hour food walk that starts mid-afternoon finishes at a sensible Norwegian hour and generally removes the dinner question altogether. Tour lengths compared.

The two eating days that do have a date

Fårikålens festdag, the feast day of the national dish, falls on the last Thursday in September, and fårikål is an autumn dish for good reason — mutton on the bone, cabbage and whole black peppercorns. Bergen has its own: the city council formally made 28 January Persetorsk Day in 2024, after the idea started as a joke on social media. Persetorsk is pressed cod, cured a long time in salt and sugar, served with egg butter, boiled potatoes and vegetables, and it is traditional Bergen Christmas food. Persetorsk, the Bergen dish · Norway’s national dish.

Eating at somebody else’s table

Two and a half hours with about a hundred and five minutes of it at the table, in a private house, with home cooking and conversation about life in Norway. Capped at four and not private. There is a small dog in the house, so participants must not be allergic to dogs. Pickup from the Hurtigruten Terminal, Loddefjord Terminal or Deli de Luca Jernbanestasjon.

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