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Posts from the ‘Fishing’ Category

Mar 10

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Epilogue

The night before we left Boston to spend a year on Rødøy, we got cold feet. Sitting among 6 giant duffle bags, we asked ourselves, “Why are we doing this?”

We had a good life and had no need to escape anything. Instead of staying on that path, I resigned from my job and we set off to live on a small island north of the Arctic Circle for a year, with nothing planned beyond the year. It was crazy.

That night, we proceeded to work out all the necessary steps to reverse course. Despite the last minute doubts, we stuck to the plan. And it turned out to be the best thing our family has ever done.

6 months after we came back from our year off, the children are happy and well adjusted socially and intellectually. Kristin is teaching part-time at a private school in nearby Cambridge, and she loves her job. The app I started writing, Voice Dream Reader, has acquired a passionate customer-base around the globe, reaching top 10 grossing educations apps at one point or another in 48 countries. That doesn’t make us rich, but we live comfortably while my work gives me profound satisfaction: I feel closely connected to my customers and I’m making a small but positive difference in their lives.

I’ve changed. I think. It’s difficult to tell because I’m hardly a neutral observer of myself. When I talked to companies about jobs after I came back, I smiled and nodded but my heart just wasn’t in it. Meanwhile, I kept going back to work on my app even when sales had not taken off, stubbornly tolerating being unemployed far longer than the old me would have. Perhaps, the knowledge that we could live happily with less gave me strength. At the same time, I’m a lot less stressed about things, and I sometimes find the level of stress around me incomprehensible. I’d like to think that I became a better person.

But even if we did not end up at a better place after the year, we would still do it again without hesitation. Because we had an amazing year that is a treasure of experience and memory. For that we’re deeply grateful to Rødøy and everyone there. For the rest of our lives, in good times and bad, this year will be a reference point for what life could be.

Here are the photographic highlights from our year living on Rødøy, and below are some representative blog posts:

Island Scenery

Fishing

Miscellaneous

Jun 20

8 Comments

Fish Will Never Be the Same

The coming Saturday we are hosting a midsummer night party, and we will of course serve fish. In the last couple of days I did some intensive fishing, like a man on a mission. Yesterday I caught 6 big pollock. I will make Seilaks: salted, slightly dried pollock flavored with wood vinegar. We also have four salmon fillets hanging outside drying. I will cold smoke them tomorrow with juniper wood. Read more

Apr 1

11 Comments

The Mother of All Cod

It’s been so long since I wrote a blog post that some friends worried if everything is okay. Yes, everything is okay. I haven’t written because there was nothing blog-worthy to write about. The bad weather had a lot to do with it. And I was completely absorbed, obsessed, addicted, in-the-zone, building the next release of my app. I just didn’t have any spare brain cycles to think of what to write about.

But the last 48 hours have certainly been blog-worthy. Read more

Jan 13

9 Comments

Cod Offal

I didn’t know that cod had tongues. I didn’t even know they could speak. Kristin’s father told me about them being a delicacy a long time ago, and I had been anxious to try them ever since. Until last week, I only caught relatively small cod whose tongues were too small. Read more

Jan 9

16 Comments

Here Come the Big Ones

Every year, big arctic cod and pollock (sei in Norwegian) from Barents Sea come to the northern part of Norway to lay their eggs. With keen eyes for beauty, they have chosen Lofoten, a chain of islands about 50 miles north of there, as their favorite spawning ground. Read more

Dec 5

9 Comments

Fishing with the Pros

Two days ago, I went fishing on a real fishing boat! Our next door neighbor Ove and his friend Kjell took me and another foreign resident, Pawel, to get out for a few hours on Kjell’s boat. Read more

Nov 9

18 Comments

5 Best Cod Recipes

I’m sick of cod. Nine out of ten fish I catch is cod. I’ve paid modest amounts for monkfish, halibut, ling-cod, rock fish, and crab, but I have not, and will never pay for cod, because I can pretty much guarantee that on any given day, with enough time, I can catch enough cod on my own.

Read more

Oct 6

14 Comments

How to Salt and Dry Fish

When I go fishing, I rarely catch just the right amount of fish for one dinner. Sometimes I don’t catch anything, so I’d go to the general store in disgrace. Sometimes I catch so much that I feel guilty. When I do have a good day, I need to preserve the extra fish for later, less bountiful days. Surely, preserving food is one of the oldest problems facing humanity. Read more

Sep 19

10 Comments

My Accomplishments in Fishing

I thought I’d hone my fishing skills over a few months and report in this blog on catching “the big one”, complete with a photo of me grinning while holding a biblically sized cod or halibut. But readers demand to know my catch now, so blog on this topic I must.

Fishing on Rødøy started very badly for me. Read more