Mid-June on Vestvågøy island, Lofoten, in northernmost Norway, and the verge is flecked with magenta fireweed, snow buttercup and Arctic cotton grass. Below, the midnight sun glances off Mærvollspollen, a tributary of the Steinsfjord, from which rise boulder-strewn scarps and scratches of scree. But come December, this slope of land, at 68 degrees north — well within the Arctic Circle — will tumble into the 24-hour darkness of the polar night. Spring here skitters in for a dizzy week; summer follows with a blinding intensity and, come autumn, the winds wail in, along with the frosts, prevailing until May. It is a bewildering backdrop for a farming or horticultural life.
Even more so, if one’s background is tropical agriculture in the Philippines, as it was for Netherlands-born couple Marielle de Roos and Hugo Vink, who moved to start their farm, Lofoten Gårdsysteri, in the crepuscular days of December 2000. But as any Nordlander will tell you, the Norwegian Arctic is blessed by the Gulf Stream, which stretches the milder climate north. “We are the equivalent of the tree line around the world: like the Alps at 2,000 metres or the eastern Himalayas above 4,000 metres,” says Martin Hajman of Tromsø Arctic-Alpine Botanic Garden, the world’s northernmost. “In all these areas, people live and try to survive by growing plants.”
As world climates keel towards the more extreme and unpredictable, hard-won wisdom from the north — practical, scientific and philosophical — has increasing resonance beyond the region.
De Roos’ 1.2ha biodynamic plot nurtures more than 35 varieties of vegetables, 140 milk goats for their own cheese products and an allotment-kitchen for the local school. “We can grow on the flat fields, and on the steep mountains the goats get their food for many months. It’s a big responsibility to have this arable land, and you have to feed people. There has to be production.”
It was not the plan to move to Norway’s Arctic region, but like many others, de Roos and Vink struck out on a whim. “We were surprised and inspired by the fact that there was still small-scale agriculture in Norway, compared to the rest of Europe,” says de Roos. “So we thought, ‘that could be fun, running a farm for a year’ . . . Then this farm came up for sale.” Their long-term survival comes down to basic principles: centring soil health and biodiversity; connecting to local community and farming networks; aligning with new knowledge and traditional lore alike; and an unerring, one-eye-on-the-weather fleet-footedness.
“Most things — besides kale, in my experience — are best to sow outside, because they adapt to the weather,” says de Roos. “Planting out [indoor-cultivated seedlings] is very hard for plants. You need the perfect greenhouse to be able to adapt plants a little at every stage. We sow outside and get good results.”
Pak choi and green beans are sown late, to prevent running to seed in June, while strawberries and parsnips ripen with intense sweetness under the midnight sun. De Roos and Vink have recently been trialling varieties of roots, salads and kales for Solhat, an organic seed supplier in the south. Their investigations follow a line of Norwegian growers, notably Frederik Schübeler (1815-92), the “father” of Norwegian horticulture, whose experiments into the polar limit of seeds were published in three huge volumes in the 1880s.
Mari Marstein of Schübeler Gardens Network (named after Frederik Schübeler) explains how “Northern Norway has a specific selection of perennials”. She espouses the likes of Primula x pubescens, Aconitum napellus (monk’s hood), Saxifrages, Filipendulas and Ranunculus aconitifolius (fair maids of France), “[which] is in fact very difficult to grow in south-east Norway because the summers are too hot and dry”. In Tromsø, the Botanic Garden’s 100-odd species of peony (a fraction of the several-thousand-strong “Arctic-Alpine” collection), respond so well to the cooler, damper climate that they reach record-breaking heights. “They don’t get the message to flower in spring, so they keep stretching and stretching until July or August. You can walk amongst them and have flowers under your nose!”
“Understanding propagation is just about remembering how plants do it in nature,” says Hajman. His Himalayan species are sown outside in pots, left to overwinter under snow (permitting frost stratification), defrosted in a cold greenhouse in February, then placed in plastic boxes to mimic a humid mountain spring, encouraging germination. “The only challenge is to find our plants again in February, under 2 metres of snow!” he says. “We have to put long sticks in the pots so we can shovel them out.”
“It makes sense to grow perennials in Arctic and mountain regions,” agrees Stephen Barstow, former head of the Norwegian Seed Savers (KVANN); he advises growing them as edibles. “The Sami people in the north ate a lot of vegetables — foraging in spring and preserving them for winter. So, foraging and domestication of wild plants is one solution [to a harsh environment].” Angelica, rhubarb and alliums thrive in the north, he says. “The root system [of perennials] is ready to start growing in early spring, and maximises the solar energy throughout the season, whereas annuals take a long time to start growing.” The most important lesson, say young potato farmers Fonn-Holand, in Steigen, north of Bodø, is “simply grow a vegetable that enjoys the climate and soil you have. It will taste the best and the production will be more sustainable.”
Growing against the grain is another route, especially on a small scale, recommends Hajman. “We are very keen on rock landscaping. In one square metre you can achieve several microhabitats, just by placing stones — a vertical crevice, with water running through; a flat area, which becomes icy; a horizontal plane, where the plant is ‘sandwiched’ and protected from rain and ice. Alongside, you could create a boggy habitat. Or scree — with zero organic matter, just gravel and sand — for plants that are intolerant to wet. Combine these with north and south exposures and you can have all the combinations of dry and hot, dry and cold etc.” Lebanese Veronica caespitosa or South African delosperma thriving at 70 degrees north? Hajman and team make it happen.
“Microclimate is key when buying a farm,” says Lisa Massahi, co-owner with husband Parsa of Polarhagen, a veganic-biodynamic smallholding and kitchen near Leknes, Lofoten, now in its second year. “We lose sun here in the winter, but our south-west-facing slopes allow vegetation to take full advantage of the sunlight . . . so it evens out the short growing season.”
Guided by agroforestry and permaculture (an approach based on working in harmony with nature), the couple are creating zones across the site: planting fruit trees as windbreaks underplanted with bushes and vegetables, and digging swales for drainage. “In the lower parts of the farm, which are peaty, acidic and very wet, we are planning a wetland reservation for birds,” says Massahi.
Inside the greenhouse, parsley, strawberries and nasturtiums spill from calf-feeders turned planters. “Our mission is to show that you can grow food anywhere, even here, so there is no excuse,” says Massahi. “Vertically, horizontally — it doesn’t have to be the traditional tractor way.”
Gisle Melhus and wife Åshild Jacobsen are not your typical farmers, though their farm, Myklevik Gård on Lofoten, is a traditional fishermen-farmer’s plot: long and thin, with access to both shore and common mountain grazeland. Formerly a screenwriter and a marketeer, the couple moved to Vestvågøy’s southern shore via a circuitous route: their dream house-build fell through, Mkylevik came up for rent, then one night, recalls Melhus, “Åshild came inside from looking at the aurora, and said to me, ‘maybe we should just stay’. The farm is a hard mistress, but it gives me an intense feeling of purpose — this little place is no one’s responsibility but mine.”
Now a few years into supplying vegetables and meat for the restaurant market, the couple’s early lessons have been practical — restore the terraces, sow rocket to draw cabbage moths from the brassicas — as well as philosophical.
“Yes, you might get things wrong,” says Melhus, “but just keep going. I have a lot of weaknesses as a farmer, but perhaps my biggest strength is not fearing being a ‘newbie’. I find a person who knows a lot and I ask them stupid questions, then less and less stupid questions. Then I stop listening to advice and just put some seeds in the ground.”
Lofoten Gårdsysteri’s de Roos has also “been learning by doing”, she says, “but also by doing research, by taking soil samples”. Goat manure, seaweed, crops of rye, barley and clover rotated with the potatoes, and lime — to balance the mineral PH of the rocky fields — has radically improved their soil. “The first years we were ploughing, the birds didn’t follow us, but now!” She waves her arms skywards.
The importance of soil health is a common refrain. At Kvitnes Gard, Vesterålen, the esteemed farmhouse restaurant-hotel by chef Halvar Ellingsen, temperatures might descend to -10C. Regardless, all vegetables for the restaurant have been grown on site since 2020, thanks in part to a root cellar for celeriac, beets and kohlrabi, kept at 0C to 4C (formerly lined with juniper to deter the mice, now patrolled by a cat). “We’re exposed at Kvitnes, but we manage,” says Ellingsen. “The biggest thing is: you have to understand your farm and start building the soil — then the weather becomes a bit less important.”
All newly cultivated ground is prepared with a crop of fava beans underplanted with potatoes, fertilised by the pigs for a month pre- and post-harvest. Wool, shell-sand (dredged from the fjord) and homemade biochar (from used stock bones) supplement compost, some of which is made using the bokashi method. Raised beds and portable pots (such as for the 400 young asparagus plants) are key, says Kvitnes co-owner and manager Cathrine Thoresen. “If you have poor drainage it will get too cold and the vegetables will struggle.”
“In some ways you become a slave of nature,” says Utrech-born Judith Van Koesveld, of Judith’s Urtehage (herb garden), Lofoten. “And in other ways, you just have to relax,” she laughs. The results speak for themselves: robust rows of lovage, cornflower and mallow — grown for her range of herbal teas and pesto, in combinations with foraged birch, meadowsweet, crowberries and lingonberries.
“Our philosophy is to create spaces for the wild plants to come in — when I see there is a place they would like, I help them. I let Anise hyssop flower because then the neighbour’s bees come,” says Van Koesveld. “I was never really a farmer, never really a gardener, and now my concern is about the plant world. She laments how botanical protections are reserved for rare species (“when the whole world listens”), but meanwhile, “all the ordinary plants get threatened. It’s about having an eye for what we still have around us.”
Tuning into the surprising variety of botany on one’s doorstep, even in the Arctic, has also been the lesson for Lofoten-born plantswoman Ingunn Rasmussen. A decade ago, she had been “practically living” in her beloved, 500-species-strong garden in southern Norway, until she migrated back north to establish Holmen Lofoten, the fabled culinary hotel on the breathtaking tip of Moskenes island.
“I built my garden in the south from zero to more or less a park,” says Rasmussen. Leaving was a wrench, and her new plot is currently unfit for a garden. Turning to wild plants has been the answer: “That’s why I love foraging. I’m always going out and picking something; it’s the Band-Aid on the wound.”
An autumn walk with Rasmussen reveals citrusy sorrel thriving beneath the cod-drying racks, yarrow and lady’s mantle in the verges, and rowan and reindeer moss trimming the lighthouse. “On the beach there is much you can eat: wild rockets, kales. We counted 11 edible seaweeds,” says Rasmussen. “Most of what we use for Kitchen on the Edge [the hotel’s chef residency series] are considered weeds, but I love that we are using plants people don’t want.”
An avid collector of gardening books, Rasmussen was recently thumbing a new volume of medicinal Norwegian plants. Expecting to find one or two she recognised as local to Holmen, Rasmussen found herself adding sticky notes to more than 100 pages. “I think it’s time to buy the second volume,” she says, with a wry smile. Even as an expert gardener, there’s always more to learn; lessons can come from anywhere.
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