[dagw]

Why?

Honestly no idea. They just don't. Growing up the only fish we really ate was fish sticks and heavily processed fish cakes. When going out to restaurants I have no real memory of anybody really ordering fish. Even when I was living in down town Oslo (admittedly 20+ years ago), just getting ahold of fresh fish was hard. The only food store that had a fish mongers and sold fresh fish was the really fancy store in the most expensive part of town. There were maybe two fish stores in all of central Oslo that I knew of, one of which was a high end luxury food sort of place that also sold fancy caviar, foie gras and oysters. Compared to basically any costal town anywhere in Europe where fresh fish is plentiful and ubiquitous, it is really strange.

[epolanski]

I am so confused though.

Some data says Norway is the second country in the world by amount of fish eaten [1][2]

[1]https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/jrc-news-and-upda...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_seafood_c...

[dagw]

The only three possible explanations I can think of are

1) Things have radically changed since I last lived there 20+ years ago

2) My view is heavily biased by only having lived in/around Oslo and the rest of the country eats a lot more fish

3) Norwegians eat a lot of heavily processed fish based foodstuff (fish sticks, fish cakes etc), but hardly any fresh fish.

[kivle]

That would probably be point number 2 in your list. West coast and northern Norway eat a lot of fish/seafood. Also within the last 20 years sushi has gotten a lot more popular here, even around Oslo.

[vidarh]

There are fishing boats selling fish in Oslo harbour... Though a lot of it is probably more for tourists.

But it's more common on the West Coast, I think. Even people in Oslo get impressed by the (rather small) Bergen fish market.

Then again I've never willingly gone looking for fish other than smoked salmon anywhere.