Recipe
🥗 STARTER
Bergensk Fiskesuppe
Bergen’s creamy fish soup: salmon and cod in a gently sweet-and-sour broth with root vegetables and chives.
Norwegian · easy · serves 4
prep 20 min · cook 30 min
~808 cal · 46g protein · 12g carbs · 63g fat · 1g fiber · 7g sugars · 34g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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Fiskesuppe is the creamy fish soup of Norway's rain-lashed west coast, and Bergen, the old Hanseatic port, has ladled it out from its fish market for centuries. Built on a made from the day's catch, it is thickened lightly with cream and filled with pieces of white fish, root vegetables, and often shellfish.
Bergen's version has a quirk that surprises outsiders: a discreet lift of sugar and vinegar stirred in at the end, a sweet-and-sour note locals consider essential and visitors never see coming. It is a legacy of a coastal larder that once leaned on preserving, and it keeps the rich soup from feeling heavy.
It is unapologetically weather food, the warm bowl you want when the fjord is grey and the rain is sideways, which in Bergen is much of the year. Served with good bread, it is less a starter than a whole meal and a defence against the cold.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally nut-, egg- and pork-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 4
10 oz salmon fillet, chunked
10 oz cod fillet, chunked
1 leek, fine matchsticks
2 carrot, fine matchsticks
1 cup celeriac, fine matchsticks
5 cups fish or vegetable
1 cup heavy cream
2 tbsp butter
1 cup sour cream (romme, full fat)
2 tbsp flour (to thicken)
1 cup small fish balls (fiskeboller)
Hard to find? extra chunks of firm white fish - tinned Norwegian fiskeboller from a Scandinavian grocer are the real thing; failing that, more fish keeps the soup honest
1 tbsp white vinegar
2 tsp, Bergen’s secret sugar
3 tbsp chives, snipped
Instructions
1
Soften the vegetables in butter without coloring, 5 minutes.
2
Add the stock and simmer 15 minutes until just tender.
3
Knead the flour into a little soft butter and whisk it in to thicken the broth lightly, then stir in the cream and sour cream and balance with vinegar, sugar, salt, and white pepper, it should taste rich, then brightly lifted.
4
Slide in the fish and the fish balls (or tofu and mushrooms) and poach gently 4-5 minutes. Never boil after this point.
✎ Chef’s note
Once the sour cream is in, keep it below a simmer or it will split. The sweet-sour balance is the whole identity of the Bergen soup, so taste and adjust the vinegar and sugar at the end.
5
Shower with chives and serve with crusty bread and fjord-appropriate weather.
Bergen fish-market tradition.
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
Vestland (Bergen). The everyday dish is raspeballer, dense potato balls bound with flour and simmered in salted broth, eaten with salt meat and a sweet swede mash. In Bergen they belong to Thursday, a habit left over from the days when shops stayed open late and restaurants fed the shoppers cheaply.
🗺️
Norway. Norway dries its cod two different ways and the difference matters. Torrfisk is hung on wooden racks in the cold Lofoten air with no salt at all, a trade that has run for centuries; klippfisk is salted first and then dried. Lutefisk is dried fish brought back with lye. The salmon on modern menus, by contrast, is overwhelmingly farmed.
🌍
Europe. A surprising amount of European cooking is under five hundred years old. Tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, maize, beans and chocolate all crossed from the Americas after 1492, and none of them was trusted quickly: the potato took most of the eighteenth century to be accepted as food rather than animal fodder across much of the north.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from Norway
FårikålNorway's national dish: lamb and cabbage layered with whole peppercorns and simmered until tender.
Norwegian Vafler (Heart Waffles)Soft, cardamom-scented waffles cooked in a heart-shaped iron, served warm with brown cheese, jam, or sour cream.
FiskekakerLight pan-fried fish cakes bound with milk and potato starch, a Norwegian everyday staple served with vegetables.
Browse all Norway recipes →
Good to know
You’ll need: Whisk.
Storing it: Soup keeps 3 to 4 days refrigerated and freezes well. Reheat gently and loosen with a little water or stock if needed.
Make it a Norway meal
RømmegrøtDessert
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Frequently asked questions
What is Bergensk Fiskesuppe?
Bergen’s creamy fish soup: salmon and cod in a gently sweet-and-sour broth with root vegetables and chives.
Where does Bergensk Fiskesuppe come from?
Bergensk Fiskesuppe is a Norwegian dish from Vestland (Bergen), Norway.
Can Bergensk Fiskesuppe be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Bergensk Fiskesuppe recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions, including several at once such as gluten-free and dairy-free together. Treat them as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Bergensk Fiskesuppe safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Bergensk Fiskesuppe take to make?
About 50 minutes total (20 minutes prep, 30 minutes cooking), serving 4.
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