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Norway isn’t exactly known for being a soccer hotbed, but one team in the country’s top division recently managed to stage an impressive run in this year’s Europa League competition. Tickets to its semifinal game against Tottenham Hotspur have become a very hot commodity, and one enterprising fan was able to get one thanks to a trade involving some dried fish that’s viewed as a delicacy.
You need to be a fairly diehard soccer fan to be familiar with Bodo/Glimt, a Norwegian club based in a city in the Arctic Circle with a history stretching back to 1916 that’s competed in the Eliteserien (the highest tier of the country’s soccer system) since 2018.
The squad has become a bit of a juggernaut since winning the league for the first time in 2020, as that victory marked the first of four straight titles they’ve earned while achieving some unprecedented success in international tournaments featuring teams around Europe.
That includes a run to the Europa League quarterfinal in 2022 that ended with a loss to Roma, and this year, Bodo/Glimt became the first team hailing from Norway to make it to the semifinal of that tournament when they conquered Lazio to earn the right to face off against Tottenham Hotspur.
The Spurs got a 3-1 win in the first leg of that showdown when the two teams met in London on May 1st, and according to The Athletic, there were around 50,000 Bodo/Glimt fans trying to get their hands on the 480 tickets up for grabs to attend the second leg on Thursday.
That includes Torbjorn Eide, who works at a fish farm in a town around 150 miles north of (and an eight-hour drive from) the city home to Aspmyra Stadion, the venue that can only hold around 8.700 spectators.
Eide decided to get creative after missing out on a ticket by offering to trade 11 pounds of boknafisk, a dried fish that’s traditionally cured outdoors with the help of the wind and sun, to anyone who could hook him up with one (that particular quantity is valued at $243).
He ultimately found a suitor courtesy of Oystein Aanes, who gave him the ticket his brother was unable to use
Edie wasn’t the only Bodo/Glimt supporter who harnessed an unconventional strategy to get a ticket, as the outlet notes another guy was able to swap 11 pounds of reindeer meat for one after drawing inspiration from the boknafish transaction.