‘Like doomsday’: why have salmon deserted Norway’s rivers – and will they ever return?

North Atlantic populations are at a historic low, and this year 33 of the country's rivers were closed during the fishing season as salmon farming and the climate crisis threaten the fish's future

What is Norway without the fjords and the mountains?" asks Ann-Britt Bogen from her candlelit kitchen, the wild Gaula River flowing by outside the window, the hillside covered by low-lying cloud. For centuries, the river, which runs 153km (95 miles) from the mountains near the Swedish border to Trondheim fjord, has attracted salmon - and fishers - year after year.

But this spring the salmon, particularly the medium and larger-sized fish, did not come back from the ocean, raising such alarm over the collapse of the salmon population that the river, along with dozens of others in central and southern Norway, was abruptly closed for the first time.