Not Good Enough for the Poor, but a Luxury for the Rich

Today wild Atlantic salmon is considered one of the finest things you can eat, both expensive and hard to get. It has not always been like that. A few hundred years ago, salmon was the staple food of the poor and was held in low regard. In fact, lumbermen in Sweden and Norway often had clauses in their work contracts guaranteeing that they would not be served salmon more than five days a week. In Sweden’s northernmost regions, money was scarce but salmon was plentiful, and as late as the seventeenth century taxes were still paid in the form of salmon.