The "dinosaur" from Otra
In the far south of Norway, in the Byglandsfjord, there is a special kind of salmon. It is small, often no longer than 28 centimeters. It lives its entire life in freshwater. Byglandsbleka never goes out to sea as salmon usually do.
Around 10,000 years ago, the whole of Norway was covered by a giant glacier. It was so heavy that it pushed our land into the sea.
When the ice began to melt, it took some time for the land to rise from the sea again. Several of the large waterfalls we have today were therefore under water. This made it easy for wild salmon and trout to swim far up the rivers.
Isolated from other salmon
The land continued to rise, and the waterfalls became larger. A river runs from Kristiansand up to Byglandsfjorden. This river is called Otra. At some point, it became impossible for salmon returning from the sea to swim all the way back to Byglandsfjorden. It was simply too difficult to swim up all the rapids in the Otra.
Above these difficult rapids, however, something unique happened. It turned out that a small salmon had survived - completely isolated from the sea. The salmon had mysteriously figured out how to live its entire life in freshwater.
"A breathtaking beauty"
Before 1926, we humans did not know that the Byglandsbleka salmon existed. It was only then that Professor Dahl discovered this small salmon from Byglandsfjorden. He called it "a breathtaking beauty". Previously, people had thought it was a trout.
Fact box
Salmon stock: a distinct group of salmon within a specific area, often referred to as a population. A specific area can for example be a river.
Genetic material: the genetic material in the body, our DNA.
Did you know that...
The Byglandsbleka is not a dinosaur, but we can call it that. It is a salmon that has been isolated from other salmon strains for several thousand years, without the genetic material having been significantly altered. It has not been genetically influenced by other salmon, either wild or farmed.
Byglandsbleka is a genetic treasure. We must take care of the "dinosaur" from Byglandsfjorden.