So rather than go to Spring Camp Dogwood… my husband and I…
and about four dozen other intrepid Norskephiles trecked up to the hinterlands
of Minnesota for a weekend of fun, frolic and lefse. (No Lutefisk… thank you Jesus!) I had no idea what to expect really… a
frustrating weekend trying to ask for toilet paper in Norwegian while superior
Counselors secretly snickered behind their bunads?
Here’s what I learned at Skogfjorden….besides Norwegian:
1.
Norwegians eat better breakfasts than we
do. They call it “frokost” and it’s one
of the six meals they eat in a day.
(Well… it SEEMS like six.) It’s
typically a bit of a buffet of sliced tomatoes and cucumber, ham, turkey and
some sort of salami, pickled herring, smoked salmon, mackerel, sliced onions,
pickled beets, three cheeses: brown, herb and Jarlsberg Swiss, gherkins, hard
boiled eggs…and a couple kinds of bread.
I think I identified a potato bread, some sort of røgbrød
(ryebread) and the ubiquitous flatbread.
(What we call crackers… or Wasa.)
There was usually also some fruit, muesli… and Scandinavian style yogurt
which is a little more runny than the Baltic-style we’re used to thanks to the
nice folks at Dannon. Bread and cheese
and toppings were made into several small open faced sandwiches. (Which are eaten with a knife and fork…
unless you’re JUST having cheese and bread… then you can pick it up with your
fingers.) A little butter, mayonnaise
and mustard was also part of the “spread” and could be used to zip up the
sandwiches.
2.
Norwegians drink coffee like they have a
hollow leg. Thank God the Skogfjorden
policy was to switch the “big pot” to decaff after 2pm… or I would have been a
shaking insomniac by Sunday. Kaffepause
usually happened two hours after eating anything… and consisted of coffee and
some sort of small snack. A raisin roll
with brunøst. (Brown cheese.) A slice of spice cake. A cookie.
A roll of lefse with butter and sugar.
And more coffee… and more coffee.
But not with dinner. Coffee is
for AFTER dinner.
3.
Norwegian adults drink milk as a
beverage. I don’t mind this… I’m one of
the few people I know who really enjoys drinking a glass of milk, and doesn’t
suffer any ill effects. But it’s fun to
see a table of adults look at a half-gallon of milk on the table like it was a
jug of snake venom.
4.
Formiddagsmat or “Lunsj” is pretty
simple. Either a nice selection of
salads and bread and maybe a soup, or a simple one pot dish like
meatballs. One day we had pea soup and
pancakes. Norwegians are pretty enlightened
on the pancakes… cream and jam. Not that
I don’t like American pancakes… I do!
But bringing them away from the breakfast table to position as a
side-dish for lunch or dessert… mmmmm.
5.
Actual dinner… well… besides the one meal we
had shrimp at… was even more simple than lunch.
The shrimpalicious dinner consisted of a composed salad of shrimp,
shellfish and veggies. The chef at
Skogfjorden was nice enough to make me a shrimpless version. And because the peel and eat shrimp for
dinner would have covered me in hives… I got a replay of the kjotballer from
lunch. Everyone seemed appalled that I’m allergic to shrimp. I have the mild version
of the shrimp allergy. And so far… it just makes me itchy and/or causes mild
tummy distress. It’s not like my throat
swells closed and I risk death. Most
commercial “cocktail shrimp” doesn’t bother me at all… it’s been de-shelled and
de-veined and cooked to the point of being almost unrecognizable. It’s handling shrimp that really does me
in. One other lady who just poo-pooed
shrimp rode in on my coattails to get a shrimpless meal. But since she didn’t pre-notify them… hers
didn’t include a salad-for-one. Snap!
6.
Norwegian folk dancing is a lot like Irish Folk
dancing… but not at the same frantic pace.
Tim and I actually kept up for the first few dances, but I quickly got
exhausted… and we were cruelly out-polkaed by a bunch of people in their 70s. The
music is… lively. But there’s something really haunting about the sound of a Hardanger
fiddle. Like it’s hard to play sad music
on a banjo… it’s equally hard to play purely happy music on a hardingfele… the
instrument is designed to cry.
7.
My Great Grandparents came from a very nifty
country. Looking at Norway now… one could wonder why anyone would want to leave…
but when my Great Grandfather left… the land-laws had just changed (making it
hard to “break up” land if you wanted to leave it to multiple children… rather
like the “entail” property laws of England) and there was nothing for a sixth
son to do but leave. And the potato
famine of Ireland didn’t stop there… but also devastated the Scandinavian crop…
causing mass emigration in the mid 1800’s. So coming to America meant a better
life. And life here IS good… but like almost all mixed-breed Americans… I’m
occasionally nostalgic for some sense of cultural unity. I love America… don’t get me wrong… there are
things that we take for granted… and I don’t mean life, liberty and all that…
though it’s pretty nice… I’m thinking about going to the store and being able
to pick from more than one brand of maxi pad.
(I’ve been to Turkey… it’s Orchid or bust over there.) We have amazing
cultural diversity here… we’re just too myopic to see it… and too divisive to
really appreciate it. But if I had to pick a people besides Americans to claim
as my own… I think I’ve been more influenced by my Norwegian relatives… Grandma
Helen, Mom… than I have any of my Scotch-Irish relations… cause my father did
little more than provide me a last name.
Most of all... I wish my mother had known about Concordia Language Villages when I was little... because I looked at some of their Summer programs... and I would have had a blast. I'll have to save my pennies to send my Goddaughter when she's old enough...
Most of all... I wish my mother had known about Concordia Language Villages when I was little... because I looked at some of their Summer programs... and I would have had a blast. I'll have to save my pennies to send my Goddaughter when she's old enough...
