Snack · Wind-Dried Capelin
Ammassat
Photo: Kim Hansen / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0
They're not gutted or salted first — just hung whole on outdoor racks and left to the Arctic wind for days, which does the preserving that salt or a smokehouse would do everywhere else.
Ammassat are small capelin, caught by the netful when they swarm the coast each summer, then hung whole on wooden racks to wind-dry in the open air. Eaten by hand, bones and all, they're a grab-and-go snack sold at Nuuk's open-air market and kept stockpiled through the winter.
Why it's made this way: Capelin arrive in such dense summer swarms that a family can catch a year's worth in days — wind-drying them on the spot preserves that windfall without needing salt, smoke, or a freezer, the same practical logic behind dried fish across the Arctic.
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