MacGougan at Large

Notes on A Trip to Norway - 7

Fishermen’s Cabins

An iconic sight along the Norwegian coast, especially in the Lofotens, is the traditional fishermen’s cabin. It’s a modest, single-story structure sitting on pilings at the edge of the water and has a distinctive red color with white trim. They often appear in groups; a little neighborhood of red cabins over the water.

Here are some examples.

We stayed in two different fishermen’s cabins - one in Nusfjord and one in Reine. They were both very nice - larger than a standard hotel room and comfortably furnished.

Among other amenities, they had modern bathrooms with heated floors that were very handy for drying out gear after hikes in the rain.

I felt a little sheepish about our level of comfort on hearing that the cabins were originally occupied by fifteen or more men in rows of bunks and with a hole in the floor in lieu of a bathroom. (This is why I say “fishermen’s cabin” rather than “fisherman’s cabin”.)

The red color we were told was a sign that the fishermen were poor. Red paint was the cheapest, and in the stratified society of times past only the wealthy few had the big, white houses, while a handful of middle-class entrepreneurs could paint their homes or shops yellow.

No negative connotation seems to have carried forward. Later in our trip, we stayed at an Airbnb on the water in southern Norway, near Arendal. It was a modern, three-bedroom house on the solid ground of a point overlooking a channel and some small islands, but was painted to look like a fishermen’s cabin.