When he returned to Bergen in 2012 to open his own place, he first had to figure out his relationship with New Nordic cuisine — an inescapable label for modern Scandinavian chefs. Its commitment to local, pure and beautiful food has proved to be more than a trend: It is a durable international movement, led by chefs like René Redzepi of Noma and Christian Puglisi of Relae in Copenhagen, Gunnar Gislason of Agern in New York and Esben Holmboe Bang of Maaemo in Oslo (the only restaurant in Norway to earn three Michelin stars).

Many of the New Nordic chefs are guided by solemn manifestoes about nature and culture. They often restrict themselves to Scandinavian ingredients, eliminating tomatoes, olive oil and peaches in favor of elderflower, sea buckthorn and pine needles. (The last, Mr. Haatuft said, is part of “the eternal Nordic quest for acid that isn’t lemon.”)

Since he is the opposite of solemn, he coined a new term for the food at Lysverket: neo-fjordic.

“At first it was a joke,” he said. “But the fjords are what make Norway different, and that’s what I want my food to be.”

Many things are different about Norway’s geography, most of which make Mr. Haatuft’s work more difficult. Compared with Bergen’s rugged terroir, the area around Copenhagen, the birthplace of New Nordic, is as bright and balmy as the South of France. Here, rain falls more than 230 days a year, only about 3 percent of the land is arable and the winter is so long that is divided into two parts. (Morketid, the “dark time,” starts in October and lasts until January’s Soldagen, “sun day,” when the sun reappears but the weather grows colder.) Denmark has more sun, a longer summer and land that is flat and fertile enough for farming.