Norwegian berry lovers have been grabbing buckets and heading for the marshes lately, especially in Northern Norway, to pick their share of wild, golden multer (cloudberries). Many feel pressure to act quickly, before the best areas get picked clean.
“You have to get out there fast,” Per Edvard Johnsen, an avid berry picker outside Karasjok, told local newspaper Finnmark Dagblad last week. “The pickers are out in force.”
Johnsen was also concerned that the berries, considered a delicacy, may ripen and over-ripen quickly because of a spate of relatively warm weather. Some berries on the vast surrounding plateau known as Finnmarksvidda had gone from hard and inedible to perfectly ripe in just a few days.
“It’s been a cold summer, so now all the multer are ripening at once,” he said. Olaf Bull, owner of one of the few companies that makes a business out of picking the berries, agreed, saying that “it’s the weather that decides how much time we have.”
Bull’s firm, Store Tamsøy Ans, reportedly delivers multer to the royal family but Bull denied that, saying that it was his father who used to send berries south to Oslo of his own free will. Last year, though, Bull confirmed he was contacted by the Royal Palace kitchen staff directly.
“We got an official order,” he told Finnmark Dagblad. “We hope to get one this year, too.”
Views and News staff
