Fjordin Crossin

At the Port of Hoodsport dock on a June Saturday, a sailboat comes down the canal from Union under a red and white striped sail, decorated with a dragon and hand-made shields. Its captains, Brian and Chris Lundeen, are in costume. The organizers call them “our very own local Vikings,” and their boat is the ship that carries a barrel of The Hardware Distillery’s Dill Aquavit across Hood Canal. This is Fjordin Crossin. Its ninth edition is set for Saturday, June 12, 2027, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Hoodsport Marina.

Fiddles to the dock

The barrel reaches the water on foot. The 2027 schedule, marked subject to change, starts the parade at 11 a.m. at the distillery on US 101. Scandinavian fiddle and accordion players lead it, the organizers name the Sons & Daughters of Norway at its head, and anyone who wants to may fall in behind. At the dock the distillery launches the barrel of aged Dill Aquavit. It rides from the Port of Hoodsport toward the middle of the canal and back. When it returns, in the schedule’s words, the aquavit “has been officially ‘Fjordin Crossin.’”

A horn from the Viking boat starts the Paddle the Canal Challenge. Kayaks, stand-up paddleboards, canoes and any other craft without a motor follow the sailboat out, using it and a YSS Dive boat to mark the turnaround. The race page says plainly that paddlers cross the fjord “though not the entire way,” for reasons of safety, time and private property. The race is professionally timed, though many entrants paddle slowly with friends and family. Each entrant receives a knit Scandinavian “tophue” with the festival logo. A water station hands out sliced oranges. Prizes go to the fastest and to the Best Dressed, since Scandinavian costume is encouraged. Children under 10 ride in the same boat as an adult, and pets aboard wear safety vests.

The start has moved with the water. In 2026 the Lundeens’ horn sounded at 1 p.m. sharp. For 2027 the race page sets it at 11 a.m., “earlier than previous years due to the tide and safety,” while the schedule page lists the crossing at 11:15. The race page counted 160 paddlers in 2025. After the 2026 festival, the eighth, the organizers posted “over 200 paddlers, 25 vendors,” and an apology: with the rolling tide and the crowd of boats, some bibs never read at the timing line.

The Grotto under the dock

Low tide makes room for a bar. The Aquavit Grotto is set up under the Hoodsport dock for those 21 and over. It pours Hardware Distillery aquavit cocktails, an IPA brewed for the festival at Potlatch Brewing in Hoodsport by Cody Morris, son of the distillery’s founders, and wines from the Hoodsport and Stottle wineries. All bar proceeds go to the Salish Sea Rotary of Mason County, which gives them to Hood Canal School and other local districts for youth groups, nutrition, science fairs and similar projects. Beach seating faces the water.

The food runs to the shore and the old country. Fjord Oyster Bank serves oysters; a 2024 account has it roasting Sea Nymph oysters on the beach under a Scandinavian-inspired topping created by the late chef Xinh Dwelley. A roasted pig meal is on the vendor roll. The 2026 list also named The Tides Restaurant, Wild & Woodsy Catering with its beach boxes, and Honey Bee Pizza & Grinders, which came down to the beach with scratch-made cinnamon rolls. The Puget Sound Norwegian Elk Hound Association and Sons of Norway set up among the craft tables. In 2023, Jan Morris described the elkhounds brought for children to pet as “surprisingly small” dogs who “love to be petted.” That year the Salmon Center and YSS Dive stocked a touch tank with sea stars and other creatures from the canal. Jeff Slakey of Tracing the Fjord serves as MC, making announcements and playing music through the day. At the merchandise table there are wooden aquavit cups and steel steins.

Awards come at 1 p.m. A 2024 account describes the day as beginning with the falling tide and closing as the water comes back in at 3. After that the festival’s own schedule sends people up the highway into Hoodsport, to the shops, restaurants, distillery and brewery.

The dock has no parking. A small yellow school bus runs from the lot at Hood Canal School, at US 101 and SR 106, about ten minutes from the event. Spectators who want the water can book the Lady Alderbrook through the Alderbrook Resort. In 2024 that boat made a two-hour cruise toward Hoodsport, serving aquavit cocktails to guests who cheered on the paddlers.

A barrel that came home unsold

The ritual borrows from Norway. Seattle magazine, in June 2019, told it this way. In 1805, Linie aquavit, a Norwegian potato-based spirit, was shipped from Norway bound for the East Indies. It failed to sell there and was returned in 1807. When it was opened, its drinkers judged that two years of rolling in sherry barrels, and the changing temperatures aboard ship, had matured it into a darker, smoother, sweeter aquavit. A 2024 account by Rachel Hansen adds that Linie aquavit still crosses the Equator on the deck of a ship and returns by way of Australia. The festival’s own race page has the old voyage going to the West Indies, “For our local twist, replace the West Indies with Hoodsport.”

The water is the other half of the name. Hansen writes that George Vancouver charted the area in 1792 and labeled it a canal by mistake. What he had found, in her account, was the only true fjord in the contiguous United States, cut by glaciers and more than 600 feet deep in places. The county’s event listing calls it the largest fjord in the lower 48. Jan Morris put it to Seattle magazine: “The fact that we are on a fjord, which is similar to the fjords of Scandinavia, makes it seem like the right place for aquavits.”

The hardware building

The parade starts at a building E. H. Harris put up in 1930, split into two shops. Mr. and Mrs. Guhr ran a grocery there called the Canal Table Supply, and George “Scotty” Lavender and his wife, Harriet, ran an electric shop. Later owners shortened the grocery’s name to Canal Supply and sold clothing, fishing tackle and notions there, with a Washington State Liquor Store inside. In 1957 the building became Nickels’ Mercantile and V&S Variety, and from 1996 it was G & M True Value Hardware. After a 2010 sale it stood dormant.

Jan and Chuck Morris bought it in 2012, after moving from Seattle. They opened The Hardware Distillery Company as a retirement hobby, with no experience. “We always enjoyed spirits, but did not think of operating a distillery until later in life,” Jan told Seattle magazine. Chuck, whose son had already made his name brewing beer, added: “Unlike Cody, we decided to delve into the more mature art of distilling.”

The distillery’s history page, drawn from Jean L. Bearden’s 1987 history of Hoodsport, recalls an older trade on the same shore. In the Prohibition years, bootleggers ran their product across Hood Canal at night and counted forfeited bail as a cost of business. When drinking became legal again, the first legal alcohol in Hoodsport was beer that Rose Millo served at her soda fountain, next door to the hardware building. The page hopes for “a grand adventure with our distillery, but without the shoot-outs, car chases, and boating adventures.”

Seventy paddlers and a 90-pound pig

Rachel Hansen, writing in 2026, says that seven years earlier Chuck and Jan decided Hood Canal deserved its own version of the Linie ritual. Seattle magazine’s count runs further back: the crossing on June 29, 2019, was already the third annual. That year the barrel sailed at 1 p.m. aboard the 34-foot cabin cruiser Twanoh, from Hoodsport to Tahuya and back, and was poured afterward at an Aquavit Garden at the port. “While impossible to replicate the voyage of old, we have our own little traditions,” Jan said.

The festival paused for COVID. When the fifth edition came on June 17, 2023, the Lady Alderbrook, a regular at the festival from the start, carried the barrel. The distillery now ran the day with Kerry Myers, whose Be The Traveler Concierge shares the organizing today. The two describe the event as a volunteer-run nonprofit with a board of directors. A free shuttle ran for the first time. The paddle had drawn perhaps 30 entrants in most earlier years, and that day it drew more than 70, among 300 attendees. “It was our biggest turnout ever, by far,” Morris told the Shelton-Mason County Journal. Chance Horton finished first in 18:11, one second ahead of Lukas Hansen. “The racers knew each other well enough that most of them wound up cheering for each other,” Morris said.

The Skål Beer Hall of Seattle cancelled on short notice that year. Chef Patchen Gallagher of Nina’s Lake Cushman Cafe served extra helpings in its place, and his old-world roasted pig, an estimated 90 pounds, was soon turned into sandwiches. Under the dock, Morris said, the Grotto was “super-busy the whole time, then rang in the last call for drinks right as the tide came in, and everything floated away.”