Hurtigruten’s New Culinary Ambassador Safeguards Sámi Food Heritage

Of the eight annual seasons observed by the Sámi, giđđageassi (“spring-summer”) promises a moment of calm. The reindeer calves have been born and taken their first stumbling steps. The snow and ice have retreated, the midnight sun warms the land, and the grazing is good. For the roughly 10% of Indigenous Sámi people across Northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia who make a living with reindeer, there’s time to catch a breath. But not for Máret Ravdna Buljo who’s been fielding media since February when the Norwegian cruise line Hurtigruten announced her appointment as their newest Culinary Ambassador. The news, and interest, is evidence of a shift in attitude toward Sámi foodways, which not too long ago were largely either derided or ignored.

Born into a herding family in Finnmark county, Buljo runs the reindeer farm Boazovázzi on the Nordland county island of Hinnøya. This is where I meet her in June to learn about her work as a custodian of Sámi food culture and how she plans to approach traditional culinary practices within the commercial setting of a cruise ship.

Dressed in gákti, the traditional ceremonial and reindeer herding clothing, Buljo patiently lets our small group pet her reindeer before inviting us inside her riverside lávvu (a tepee-style dwelling) for lunch. Because their culture was forcibly suppressed for over 100 years — from the mid-19th century to the late 20th — many Sámi have grown distant from their food, she explains while kneading dough and placing it on the árran (hearth). “We have been assimilated and Norwegianized,” and so much knowledge has been lost, she says, now passing around a plate of biltong-like salted, smoked, and dried reindeer meat. “That’s why I choose to keep our traditions alive.”

Buljo’s efforts to preserve and revitalize Sámi culinary culture have included interviewing elders and documenting traditional butchering techniques. Together with her co-authors, she compiled elders’ recipes in a cookbook “Eallu: Indigenous Youth, Arctic Change and Food Culture,” which was named Best Book at the 2018 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. In 2019, she became the first Sámi to receive the Ingrid Espelid Hovig Food Culture Award. She’s using her increased profile to reinvigorate parts of culture that the state tried to erase; to bring more visibility to Sámi food, and show that it can be eaten cross-legged on a lávvu floor, as well as seated at a table. “I’m always missing Sámi food in restaurants,” she says. “You don’t find Sámi food on plates.”

That’s where the partnership with Hurtigruten comes in. For more than 100 years, Hurtigruten has traveled into the Sámi homeland (Sápmi) in Northern Norway. “Sustainability, Norwegian ingredients, local roots, and storytelling are central to the development of all our food and drink concepts,” says Hurtigruten’s culinary director, Øistein Nilsen, “but we have long felt that one aspect was missing … the Sámi food culture [which has] had a great influence on how we in the Nordic region preserve and prepare food.”

Through her role as culinary ambassador, Buljo is developing menus and dishes and bringing Sámi cuisine — and the stories and ethics behind it — to travelers. From late September, her menu will be served in all Coastal Express ships’ Brygga bistros, as well as in the Árran restaurant on the Signature voyage ship, MS Trollfjord. Travelers can choose dishes including smoked reindeer souvas with flat bread and, Buljo’s favorite, bohccovuoivvas, reindeer liver burger with lingonberry dressing.

Inside the lávvu, Buljo tells us to take a sip of just-brewed birch leaf tea, then drop in a couple of slices of the reindeer tongue she’s just passed around, which gives it a gummy consistency. “This is the food we eat mostly in spring and summertime because we don’t have fresh meat,” she explains. Tongue is not on Hurtigruten’s menu, but she wants us to understand the relationship that the Sámi have with the reindeer they slaughter each fall. “In our tradition, we don’t take only the best part of the reindeer,” she says. Almost every part is eaten: Pancakes are made with the blood, the eyes are simmered in soup, the heart is stewed.

“When you use all the reindeer, that is to honor the reindeer,” she explains. But, from interviewing elders, she’s learned how deeply Sámi have internalized prejudice and accepted the lie that, rather than an expression of respect for their place in nature, Sámi eat every like this only because they’re poor. “They’ve learned to be ashamed of their own culture, especially food,” she says as we pick up grilled reindeer ribs to eat with our warm bread. She’s made the bread with olive oil, but privately she likes to follow the old ways by using reindeer brain, which functions like egg and makes for an airy dough: “I’ve put life back into that recipe,” she says, “to decolonize my thinking.”

“There are things I cannot put on [Hurtigruten’s] menu,” Buljo says. Sámi practice is to slaughter reindeer without damaging the brain, but commercial slaughterhouses use stun guns. This is one of the limits of working within a commercial context. But, having become “a bit of an activist,” she sees the potential of her new platform to slowly make changes to policies, minds, and appetites. Because Sámi believe that slaughtering calves disrupts the balance of the herd, she’s dismayed by Norwegians’ taste for calf meat. That’s why she’s made ample use of fat in her Hurtigruten menu. “You only get a lot of fat from adults,” she says with a smile. “So, I am making a change.”