Matpakke: How Norwegians Eat on a Budget (And Why You Should Too)

Norwegians do not complain much about food prices, and the reason is not that they are all rich. It is that most of them are not buying lunch. They are eating a matpakke: four slices of bread, one topping each, wrapped in greaseproof paper at 06:30 and eaten standing up at 11:00. Do the same on a port day and Norway stops being the country that charges 65 kroner for a coffee.

This is the single biggest saving available to a cruise passenger in Norway, and it takes about six minutes to organise.

What a matpakke actually is

Not a packed lunch in the picnic-hamper sense. A matpakke is deliberately plain. Four slices of kneippbrød or another dense wholemeal loaf, buttered, one topping on each slice, stacked back into a brick and wrapped in matpapir — the waxed greaseproof paper that every Norwegian supermarket sells in rolls. No lettuce, no mayonnaise, nothing that leaks. A child's matpakke and a construction worker's matpakke look the same.

The point is friction removal. It survives four hours in a rucksack, it does not need refrigeration, it does not need a table, and it does not need you to be anywhere in particular at 13:00 — which is the real cost of a restaurant lunch on a seven-hour port call.

The arithmetic

Bought ashore, a light lunch in a Norwegian port is 200-350 NOK a head in a harbour-front restaurant. A coffee is 50-65 NOK. A cardboard cup of fresh shrimp at Bergen's fish market is 120-150 NOK. A family of four eating one casual lunch and one round of coffees each day of a Norwegian itinerary is spending real money on food they will not remember.

The same family's matpakke ingredients — a loaf, butter, a pack of sliced cheese, a tube of kaviar, a cucumber, a bag of apples — comes to under 200 NOK total at a discount supermarket, and makes lunch for two days. That is not a marginal saving. That is the price of an independent excursion for one person.

What to buy, in order of usefulness

Bread. Anything labelled grovbrød or kneippbrød. Norwegian bread is dense and slightly sweet, and it holds up in a bag far better than a baguette.

Brunost. Brown cheese — Gudbrandsdalsost in the red wrapper — is caramelised whey, sweet and fudgy, and it is the one Norwegian food you should not go home without trying. Buy it pre-sliced unless you are willing to also buy a cheese slicer.

Kaviar in a tube. Not caviar. Smoked cod roe spread, mild and salty, sold in a toothpaste tube for about the price of a bus ticket. Squeeze it on buttered bread. This is what half of Norway grew up eating.

Leverpostei. Liver paté, sold in a foil tray, eaten cold on bread. Better than it sounds and cheaper than everything else in the shop.

Makrell i tomat. Mackerel in tomato sauce, in a small tin. Divisive even among Norwegians. Try it once so you have an opinion.

Knekkebrød. Crispbread, if you cannot be bothered with a loaf. Weighs nothing, never goes soft.

Cucumber, tomatoes, apples, bananas. Fresh fruit and vegetables are one of the few grocery categories where Norwegian prices are not shocking.

Skip the pre-made sandwiches at petrol stations and kiosks. They cost four times what the ingredients do and are the one genuinely poor-value item in Norwegian food retail.

The supermarkets, and the trap on Sundays

The discount chains are Kiwi (green), Rema 1000 (blue), Coop Extra and Bunnpris. Prices between the first three are close enough that you should just use whichever is nearest. Meny is the upmarket chain — better bakery counter, noticeably higher prices.

Typical hours are 07:00 to 23:00 Monday to Friday and 08:00 to 23:00 on Saturday. On Sunday, Norwegian supermarkets are closed. Only small shops under 100 square metres may open, which in practice means a handful of Bunnpris and Joker branches, plus 7-Eleven and Narvesen kiosks at kiosk prices. If your ship is in port on a Sunday, buy your food the day before. This catches out more cruise passengers than any other Norwegian rule.

Two more things. Bottles and cans carry a pant deposit of 2-3 NOK, refunded by the machine at the shop entrance — feed your empties in and the receipt comes off your next shop. And alcohol above 4.7% is sold only at Vinmonopolet, the state off-licence, which closes at 15:00 on Saturdays and does not open Sunday at all. Beer in supermarkets stops being sold at 20:00 on weekdays and 18:00 on Saturdays.

Where to walk in the main ports

The rule that works everywhere: walk two streets back from the water. Everything on the harbour front is priced for people who have four hours ashore. Everything three minutes inland is priced for people who live there.

In Bergen, the cruise berths are Skolten, next to Bergenhus fortress and about 15 minutes' walk from Bryggen, or Dokken further south, which is a 25-30 minute walk or a shuttle ride into the centre. Head inland from Torgallmenningen and towards the bus terminal and you are in ordinary-shop territory within a few minutes.

In Stavanger, the quay is in the middle of town — the old wooden quarter of Gamle Stavanger is a ten-minute walk, and the pedestrian shopping streets behind the harbour hold the everyday shops. This is the easiest port in Norway to reprovision in.

In Tromsø, ships use Prostneset right by the centre, with the main shopping streets immediately behind it. Storgata and the side streets off it have what you need within five minutes of the gangway.

Ålesund, Trondheim and Kristiansund all follow the same pattern: compact centre, everyday shops one or two blocks behind the tourist frontage.

What is worth paying for anyway

Being thrifty about lunch is what buys you the things actually worth eating.

A bakery cinnamon bun. Kanelbolle or skillingsbolle, from a real bakery rather than a café chain. Warm, cardamom-heavy, the size of a fist.

Pølse i lompe. A hot dog in a soft potato flatbread, from a kiosk or a supermarket hot counter. The default cheap street food of Norway and reliably better than it has any right to be.

Shrimp off the boat. In Bergen, Stavanger and Ålesund, fishing boats sell cooked shrimp by the bag directly from the quay. Buy a bag, some bread and a lemon, and eat it sitting on the harbour wall. This is a better lunch than anything you will be sold indoors, and it is the one seafood purchase worth making.

A waffle with brunost and sour cream. Often served at church halls, museum cafés and community events for very little, and it is the most Norwegian thing on this list.

What is not worth it: the tourist-priced seafood platters at the covered fish market stalls, bottled water anywhere, and any café that has photographs of its food on the sign outside.

The tap water

Drink it. Norwegian tap water comes from mountain lakes and is among the best in the world, and there is no reason to buy it. Fill a bottle from your cabin tap before you go ashore, top it up at any public tap or restaurant, and never pay for water in Norway. On the Bergen and Tromsø waterfronts there are public drinking fountains running through the summer.

Bringing food off the ship

Check your own ship's policy before you build your matpakke at the breakfast buffet. Many lines prohibit taking food ashore, and some Norwegian ports enforce restrictions on fresh produce and dairy leaving the vessel. The safe version is to buy your ingredients in a Norwegian supermarket, which is cheap enough that it hardly matters, and to fill your water bottle on board — that part nobody objects to.

The real point

The matpakke is not a hardship measure. It is what Norwegians genuinely do, and it is why a country with the highest food prices in Europe does not feel like one to the people who live there. Adopt it for the walking-around part of your day, spend the saving on the fjord ferry, the funicular ticket or the bag of shrimp on the quay, and you will eat better and see more than the passengers queuing for a 300-kroner lunch across from the pier.