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Tamara Singer - a Lower Hutt kid turned Arctic seaweed entrepreneur
Once a sports physiotherapist, Tamara Singer now runs a gourmet seaweed business in a Norwegian archipelago where Vikings have lived for 11,000 years.
RNZ Online
3 min read
Tamara Singer harvesting seaweed in the freezing waters of Lofoten Islands, Norwayandreasfromnorth
When she’s not walking the dog, playing cello with the tiny local orchestra or shuttling her kids to activities, Tamara Singer can be found wading through icy seas with armfuls of seaweed.
She and Angelita Eriksen - a Norwegian friend who introduced her to her husband - own Lofoten Seaweed, a sustainable seaweed business that supplies high-end restaurants and gourmet food shops.
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At low tide, she and Eriksen don seven-millimetre wetsuits, gloves and booties and head into “ridiculously cold” seas to hand-harvest seaweed growing in some of the cleanest ocean water on the planet.
They are best known for Truffle Seaweed - a type that only grows in Norway and Iceland and actually tastes like truffles.
Tamara Singer (L) and Angelita Eriksen harvesting seaweed in the freezing waters of the Lofoten Islands
Richard Walch
At this stage, food shopping in the Arctic is a lot more limited than in central Otago, she says.
“When I come back to New Zealand I get so excited going to the supermarket. The range of dairy products, yoghurts, hummus… whatever it is, there's so many options.”
Many people assume New Zealand and Lofoten have a similar look, Singer says theyre equally beautiful but quite different - mostly because in Lofoten there’s dramatic rocky mountains dropping straight into the ocean.
Tourism boomed in Norway in recent years and every year Lofoten just getting more and more tourists, Singer says - ‘It's going to be the next Queenstown’.
With evidence of Viking settlements dating back 11,000 years, Lofoten is a historic part of Norway, she says.
Singer’s family’s home - which will remain neighbourless because it’s next door to a Viking habitation site - is just 20 minutes drive from the “amazing” Lofotr Viking Museum.
Tamara Singer, Co-Founder of Lofoten Seaweed
David Maupile
While Norway's winter temperatures hit hard most homes there have decent insulation and triple glazing, Singer says, unlike the South Island flats she once lived in where windows got iced up on the inside.
“I always say I'm warmer in Norway than I was in New Zealand.”
At the moment, Singer and her family head back to Aotearoa for a visit every couple of years and her husband is very keen to move here.
Although Singer says she can't wait to come home, too, business-wise it’s not the right time quite yet.
“This baby, Lofoten Seaweed, it's something that I have to see through a little bit so I'm not quite ready yet.”
