Lutfisk is what happens when you want to export large quantities of fish from the north of Europe to the south in the middle ages when there is no refrigeration and salt is an expensive commodity.
Instead you dry the fish, which preserves it, and export it like that.
Well in the south it then has to be soaked in water for a long time to be edible again.
Most of the nutrients will have gone and it taste almost nothing - but it's still fish, which was the point of the export.
Because during the middle ages Europe was of course Catholic and they where forbidden to eat meat on any holy day. The problem was that every single village and trade had their own saints and every saint had a holy day so there was a huge amount of days they where only allowed to eat fish, so the Mediterranean fish stock soon got over fished and depleted.
Thus they had to import huge quantities of dried lutfisk from the north of Europe where fish was plentiful.
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@Drachenfrau
Actually no...
Lutfisk is what happens when you want to export large quantities of fish from the north of Europe to the south in the middle ages when there is no refrigeration and salt is an expensive commodity.
Instead you dry the fish, which preserves it, and export it like that.
Well in the south it then has to be soaked in water for a long time to be edible again.
Most of the nutrients will have gone and it taste almost nothing - but it's still fish, which was the point of the export.
Because during the middle ages Europe was of course Catholic and they where forbidden to eat meat on any holy day. The problem was that every single village and trade had their own saints and every saint had a holy day so there was a huge amount of days they where only allowed to eat fish, so the Mediterranean fish stock soon got over fished and depleted.
Thus they had to import huge quantities of dried lutfisk from the north of Europe where fish was plentiful.
So that's the explanation for lutfisk. :-)