The women farmers driving Trondheim’s sustainable food movement

Nicola Williams, a writer from France, is well-acquainted with fine dining. Her curious palate led her to Norway’s unexpected food hub, where she met the remarkable women behind its success.

Hotels in the city boasting their own orchards with 4,000 fruit trees. Restaurants sourcing a single cow from a local farm, meticulously butchering and serving every part in exquisite dishes that creatively utilize every bit. Culinary innovators replacing imported ingredients with foraged local delights like wildflowers, berries, mushrooms, and even wood ants in place of lemons.

Once the Viking capital of Norway, Trondheim has long been a destination for those seeking ancient Viking relics and witnessing royal ceremonies in Europe’s northernmost Gothic cathedral. Today, the city’s vibrant food scene—emerging as a model for sustainable dining—has become its main attraction. Trondheim is earning increasing recognition in the culinary world: it will host the Bocuse d’Or Europe in 2024, was designated a European Region of Gastronomy last year, and boasts an impressive collection of Michelin stars for a city of its size.

To truly experience the culinary landscape, you must journey to its origins.

Discovering new flavors

“You have to try this!” urges Elin Östland, picking a vibrant lime-green shoot from a blackcurrant plant and offering it to me. The flavor is astonishingly potent and leaves a lasting impression as we stroll through the heated greenhouse at biodynamic farm Skjølberg Søndre, home to over 80 varieties of vegetables, fruits, herbs, and a spectrum of exquisite edible flowers grown from seed.

This small-scale farmer acts as the gardener for produce-focused chef Heidi Bjerkan at Trondheim’s Credo. As such, Östland can remind the Michelin-starred chef if she forgets to tend to the restaurant’s expansive kitchen garden—while also introducing her to new, experimental flavors that may feature in Credo’s acclaimed zero-waste tasting menu, which includes 20 to 25 courses and has garnered international acclaim.

“Heidi visits our farm, and we explore the garden, sampling parts of the plants you wouldn’t typically taste,” says Östland. “For instance, Solomon’s seal is a woodland flower often considered poisonous, yet its spring shoots are safe to eat. They have a flavor reminiscent of asparagus with a slight bitterness.”

“We often think of plants as having a brief lifespan and a single taste, but that’s not the case,” she continues. “Take parsnips: the sweet roots are delightful—but if left in the soil through winter, their seeds that bloom in spring become plump, juicy bursts of strong citrus flavor, like biting into an unpeeled orange.”

Exciting guided tours of the farm’s cellar—located an hour’s drive south of Trondheim—showcase the family traditions of preserving and fermenting vegetables, as well as utilizing every part of the meat. As we settle down for a Saturday lunch in the chapel-like outbuilding where Carl Erik’s great-grandfather stored grain, I notice several Mangalitsa pork legs—salted for two months and air-dried for three—swaying from the wooden ceiling. Carl Erik shares his ancient family recipe for smoked pig’s heart with us.

“We keep our livestock numbers limited to what our land can sustain,” Östland explains. “This way, we can trace the exact source and quality of everything we consume.” The milk from their 10 cows—a heritage breed from Norway listed on Slow Food’s Ark of Taste—is transformed into 4kg (9lb) of butter and up to six liters of sour cream weekly, all destined for Credo. Any food waste is composted and returned to the soil. As I leave, clutching one of Östland’s exquisite homemade cardamom buns and promising to return for an overnight stay (the farm offers four cozy B&B rooms), she reveals 15 gleaming white duck eggs nestled in an incubator by the front door.

“About 60% of these will hatch—they're Indian Runners. I’ll let them roam the garden each evening, and they’ll take care of any slug issues,” she beams. Her ducks are undoubtedly the finest natural pest control, thanks to her passion, dedication, and unwavering love for the land.

Ost-most: reinventing pairings of food and drink

Exploring farms marked with a “Host & Producer” sign is the ideal way to journey along the Golden Road, a food-themed route starting in Trondheim that meanders through apple orchards, cider distilleries, artisan cheese dairies, and farms offering Aquavit infused with local caraway. At the restaurant in Inderøy’s hilltop Øyna Hotel, which overlooks the Trondheim fjord and the snow-capped peaks beyond, we swirl and savor apple juice in elegant, tall-stemmed tasting glasses, much like we would with fine wine.

“This one leaves a honey-like sweetness on the palate. We can detect flavors of gooseberry, lemon, and even pineapple – it’s incredibly sweet,” the female sommelier explains, guiding us to the local blue cheese on the platter selected by head chef Maren Myrvold. Down the hill in their orchard, Myrvold and her husband Yngve cultivate seven of the roughly 400 apple varieties found in Norway. In their farm shop, they offer their organic, cold-pressed Inderøy Mosteri juices in slender glass Bordeaux bottles, each adorned with a château-style label that specifies the varietal. Travelers can stop to chat about apples and sample the juices, or ascend to the hotel restaurant for ost-most, the local teetotaler alternative to cheese and wine.

“We want our juices to be seen as unique, high-quality products with their own home and story – and yes, there are vintage variations, just like with wine,” Myrvold shares as I inhale the fragrant aroma of an Elstar (it smells like a pear!) and savor bites of mature Gammel Eric cheese made by a local artisan cheesemaker.

“In Inderøy, we have a vibrant community of food producers – everyone supports one another. Many friends lend a hand during our harvest in September and October,” Myrvold explains. Last year, they handpicked 20,000 kg of apples.

“Astrid Aasen at Gangstad Gårdsysteri in Inderøy was the first dairy farmer in Norway to produce cheese directly on her farm using milk from her own cows. She was a trailblazer – an inspiration for women and farmers alike.”

Why focus on apples? “We want to utilize – not waste – the fruits that our garden provides and revive local history. Fifty years ago, women living in small cottages by the fjord didn’t have jobs, so they grew apples, strawberries, and blackcurrants to sell to a juice factory that opened in Nord-Trøndelag in 1938. These women were hard workers and innovators. So why can’t we do the same?”

Revitalizing the beverage scene

Back in Trondheim, Norway’s sole master tea blender is developing a cold-brew pairing menu for Sanoi, the new fusion bistro led by chef Jonas Naavik, who put the city on the European culinary map in 2019 with his Michelin-starred restaurant Fagn. Hanne Charlotte Heggberget’s Gravraak Teateliér, a tea atelier and boutique, is nestled in a side street of Bakklandet, Trondheim's oldest district, where 18th-century wharf houses overlook the Nidelven River, and locals fish for wild salmon from June to August.

“Customers often ask me for recommendations and what others enjoy drinking. But that’s irrelevant, as this is a personal sensory journey. I guide them through a world of aromas and flavors,” Heggberget explains, offering me a tin of Black Viking tea infused with marigold and rosebay willow to smell. Its scent is fruity and malty.

After 18 years as a lawyer, Heggberget relocated to her husband’s ninth-generation farm on the slopes of Vassfjellet in 2016. She embraced farming as a sensory experience for him after he lost his sight, and today she blends Norwegian flowers, herbs, heathers, and berries—many of which she forages and cultivates around Trondheim—with rare grand-cru teas sourced directly from tea growers worldwide.

“I became a farmer overnight. I began taking walks with my husband, who could smell the wild herbs, so I decided to start growing them,” she shares.

“Each morning, I rise early and make my way up the mountain, gathering various things—herbs, sweet birch leaves as they begin to sprout... I hibernate in winter!” she chuckles. When I ask what fuels Norway’s robust tradition of female entrepreneurship, her quick reply is, “Passion—not money.”

My last stop is Britannia Bar, located in the iconic Trondheim hotel where English aristocrats, anglers, and afternoon tea enthusiasts mingled in the 19th century. The signature cocktails here are inspired by thrilling tales from local history. The elegant, spicy “Journey” cocktail draws feminine inspiration from Trondheim’s formidable businesswoman Catharina Lysholm (1744–1815). In 1805, this trailblazer boldly dispatched her merchant ship loaded with aquavit across the equator, creating unique new flavors in the form of Linie Aquavit: potato-distilled liquor cleverly aged in sherry-oak casks for four months at sea.

How to make it a reality

Norwegian offers direct flights up to five times a week from London Gatwick and Manchester to Trondheim, starting at around $110 round-trip.

The female-led B-corp Up Norway connects travelers with local producers, creatives, and eco-conscious thinkers on customized, regenerative journeys across Norway. Their maximum-exploration, minimum-impact five-day trips start at $3235 per person, which includes accommodation, meals, activities, transport, and a handy digital itinerary app with chat support.

Nicola Williams visited Norway as a guest of Norwegian Air Shuttle, Up Norway, Explore Trøndelag, Visit Northwest, Moloen at Veiholmen, Øyna Kulturlandskapshotell, and the Britannia Hotel.