The Klippfiskmuseet, part of the Nordmøre Museum, is housed in an old warehouse on Innlandet and tells the history of the dried and salted cod trade that built Kristiansund. For roughly three centuries, klippfisk was the city's main export and its economic reason for being: fish caught off the coast, dried on the rocks (klipp means rock or cliff in Norwegian), then packed for markets across Catholic Europe. The museum displays the tools, the trade routes, and the social history of the industry in straightforward, well-captioned exhibits.
The building itself is worth a look — a substantial nineteenth-century merchant warehouse, the kind of structure that once lined the Kristiansund waterfront before the 1940 bombing cleared most of the old town. The exhibit closes the loop by showing how the trade collapsed in the mid-twentieth century and what replaced it. If you eat at one of the town's restaurants, order the klippfisksuppe (salt cod soup) or the local klippfisk ball — the museum gives context that makes the meal more interesting.