The Tantes

Within a few weeks of being settled in our home in Norway, we invited my husband’s three “Tantes” (aunts) over for dinner. I was pleased they were our first dinner guests since they are all such fine old ladies.

They couldn’t have been more impressed with our place, and how “koselig” (cozy) it was. They wondered how I knew what to ship over since I didn’t know what furniture I’d end up with and it seemed to them everything matched perfectly. They thought our living situation was more than a miracle (it was – we lived RENT FREE) so they were just shy of genuine shock over the whole situation because nothing is free is Norway. They squealed for a very long time over every decorative detail, and again at dinner over all the things they tasted (I made American food). Tante Kari had never eaten yams in her entire life (she’s 81) and she wondered if I added food coloring to them to get them that orange. I was glad they were so pleased with the food since it was a genuine challenge to make that dinner.


I shipped over my beloved Cuisinart food processor so I could make some of my favorite things like Potato-Cheese soup. It needs to be pureed and I discovered too late that it was a waste to bring that machine. The electrical converters I brought to deal with the voltage differences between America and Europe only go up to 85 watts and that food processor sucks at least 110, so it blew a few fuses before I gave up trying to use it. I served the worst looking soup in my entire life as I tried to puree it with a hand mixer but the carrots just wouldn’t mush up like the potatoes. I apologized for its appearance, but it still tasted good so I was off the hook for presentation.


Then I made a Lemon-Blueberry bread for dessert that is to die for, but I wasn’t used to the difference in Celsius versus Fahrenheit ovens and I cooked it too hot so that the top burned and the innards were raw. I was quite frustrated with the whole mess but I served it anyway because I had no other options since all the stores are closed on Sundays. Fortunately, I had some Vanilla Sauce. The Tantes all smothered their bread with the sauce and then raved about how good the dessert was. Like I said, they are fine old ladies.

Vowels

The day our boxes we’d shipped from America arrived in Norway, I had to fill out forms and FAX the information to the custom’s office before they would release them. I went to the post office in our little neighborhood to see if they do faxing because it was a lot closer than going into town to the library where I knew a fax machine was available. Up until that point, I’d dealt with the woman at the post office speaking only limited Norwegian and had managed to communicate with her just fine, but that day, I had to speak English because I didn’t know all the words in Norwegian. Almost everyone in Norway speaks English anyway, so it’s easy to default to that in a pinch, but they really do respect and appreciate when us immigrants at least give their language a try.



“Do you FAX here?” I asked the lady behind the counter. “FAX?” she asked, “What is FAX?” I tried to show her with hand signals what the paper looks like when it’s sliding through the machine and I just kept saying, “You know, FAX.” She shook her head and finally said, “No.” Then a woman standing in line behind me said to the woman behind the counter, “fox” and the postal worker said, “Oh yes, FOX – yes, we FOX!” and my task was done.


That day I realized the biggest difference in the Norwegian language was in how I pronounced the vowels. In America, we have “hard” and “soft” vowels, but the Norwegians made up new vowels to represent the differences in sounds, so for instance, the sound an “a” would make in saying the word “apple” would be the Norwegian vowel “æ.” In English, a hard “o” is the vowel “å” in Norwegian, and we really don’t have a sound that comes close to the Norwegian vowel “ø” – except for the sound someone might make when they see something really gross. The Norwegian “i” sounds like an American “e” and the Norwegian “e” sounds like an American “y” unless the “e” is at the end of a word and then it sounds like an “a.”


Learning Norwegian, I discovered, is not for sissies. I quickly understood why the government did not require those over the age of 55 to take Norwegian lessons. At age 51, I found it pretty hard to shed old habits, especially verbal ones.

Cakes

Norwegians love their cakes, and with good reason. It’s too bad we even have to use that word in English to describe what they call “kake” because I’ve never tasted anything in America that comes close to the heavenly mouthfuls of dessert I ate while in Norway. Cakes are served at birthday parties, confirmations, baptisms, and any time someone wants people to show up, because if it’s an occasion for a cake, a large turnout is assured. Many churches even have cake and coffee after the service as a guaranteed way to keep people lingering around and visiting with one another. No one passes up the opportunity to eat cake (and as my bathroom scales can attest, either did I.)



A Norwegian birthday party is not at all like an American party where we serve one cake, big or small, depending on the number of people expected – Norwegians serve several cakes; chocolate cake, cheese cake, fruit cake, marzipan cake, “soft” cake (nut cake is my favorite). Often they plan to have one cake for every two people in attendance. They also have out bowls of candy, cookies, Jello in several flavors, and lots of ice cream… all with Vanilla Sauce at the ready. Cousin Kari says, “We don’t leave until all the cakes are gone.” And they aren’t kidding. (The parties often go until the wee hours of the morning.)


The only weird custom I noted about the whole cake thing is that they don’t cut them symmetrically. If it’s a round cake, we Americans might cut things in nice pie shaped slices… but not Norwegians, any old miss-shapen hunk out of it will do. Same thing with the rectangle cakes – no square cuts for them – they just slice off a piece any old which way and eat as much as they want.


Considering how many ways Norwegians are orderly and precise, it surprises me they are so sloppy with their cake cutting. I guess it’s gotta come out somewhere.

Houses

There are some interesting differences between houses in America and houses in Norway. In Norway, every room has a door threshold that sticks up from the floor anywhere from half an inch to several inches. It’s hard to get used to stepping over it and I discovered it’s a great way to stub a toe. Some people call the thresholds, “Troll traps” because certainly, if a troll were in a house, he wouldn’t be smart enough to step over it, so when he stubs his toe, he’d yell, thus altering you to his presence. It was obvious when I was home, too.

Bathrooms in Norway don’t come with towel racks or toilet paper holders. They are stand alone items that move with the occupant. No windows in a Norwegian house have screens and all windows pivot open so the top half of the window is inside the house and the bottom half is sticking out. There are too many lawsuits in America to make that feature practical here, as walking around a house actually requires a person to pay attention so as not to bash in their head on an open window. Everyone hangs their bedding out the window on either super hot days or super cold days to kill the dust mites. It’s strange to see windows wide open when it’s minus ten degrees outside, but they do it.


It’s safe to say that no house in Norway has wall-to-wall carpeting – everyone has tile or wood floors (some have linoleum) and everyone takes their shoes off when entering a house. Norwegians care deeply about the condition of their floors. Even at my son’s school, visiting parents must either take off their shoes as they enter the building, or put on little surgical looking footies to cover over their outdoor shoes. Most Norwegians have “innesko” (inside shoes) that would never have stepped a foot outdoors.


Some of the most expensive differences we encountered were that all light fixtures, heating elements, appliances and closets also move with the occupant. It’s hard enough to move into a house that is stripped of an oven, refrigerator, all lights and heaters, but ya gotta wonder why they made closets a portable item.


Norwegians figured out how to cross the Atlantic 500 years before Columbus, so why don’t they just build closets into the bedrooms since everyone needs one anyway? Go figure.

Vanilla Sauce

Norwegians are crazy about their “Vanilla Sauce.” There is nothing in our world that can compare to it. They put it on nearly everything sweet - fruit, jello, pudding and ice cream are the most common things . As one cousin says, “The blueberries are just an excuse to have Vanilla Sauce.”



In every house in the whole of Norway, you will find Piano brand “Vaniljesaus.” Even at the neighborhood grocery store they have our equivalent of a salad bar, but with fruit only and the “dressing” is Vanilla Sauce.


I can understand the craze, that stuff is good! It tastes like the custard inside a donut, only with more vanilla flavor. It’s made from whole milk, cream, sugar and powdered vanilla. We’ve had it many times in Norway as it’s a common after dinner treat (sort of a pre-dessert.)


Tine, a Norwegian company, makes Vanilla Sauce, and on the front of the carton it says “original recipe since 1971,” which is about when the craze started. There used to be a rum flavored sauce that was used on many things, but once the vanilla flavor hit the stores, it became a national sensation.


In Norway, the only cooking vanilla available is in a powdered form. I’m wondering if the reason they only sell it powered is because our liquid vanilla in America is alcohol based. Norwegians tax alcohol so much, they must have been in a quandary as to what to do about vanilla extract. If they taxed it the way they tax one can of beer (which can sell for $13 by the way), no one could afford their precious Vanilla Sauce and there would surely be a revolt similar to The Boston Tea Party. Making their vanilla into a powder solves the whole problem and keeps all the alcoholics from drinking up their national supply of vanilla.


My son, Kaleb, and I had a contest when we moved there as to who could learn Norwegian the quickest. He went to public school and the government required me to go to language school. Everyone entering the country between the ages of 16 and 55 is obligated to take 250 hours of Norwegian – for free. I guess I can thank all the alcohol drinkers of Norway for that, as I’m sure some of the exurbanite taxes they paid filtered down to pay for my free Norwegian lessons. Tusen Takk. (Thousand thanks.)

Pancakes

There are some special pancakes made in Sunnmøre, the area of Norway where we lived, called “Svela.” I never understood why Norwegians eat French fries with a knife and fork, but they eat pancakes with their hands. They sprinkle sugar, jam or a thick syrup on them and roll them up and eat them like a burrito anytime of the day or night. It’s often used as road food, since eating out in restaurants is prohibitively expensive.




Norwegians refer to “Swedish pancakes” (those thin crepe like things filled with goo), as just “pancakes” (pannekake) – because they aren’t about to give the Swedes credit for anything. Pancakes and bacon are a very common item on the dinner menu in Norway, and Norwegians can’t understand how in the world Americans could eat such a thing for breakfast.



The pancakes known as Svela look just like our American buttermilk pancakes, but they aren’t the same at all. The key ingredient in Svela is something called “Hjortetakksalt.”



I bought Hjortetakksalt a few years ago and brought it home so I could make Svela in America. When I opened the package I discovered it’s a powder that smells exactly like strong ammonia (or pee, whichever you prefer). The scary thing is, if you literally translate the name Hjortetakksalt, it means “thanks to the deer salt”… so ya gotta wonder what’s in there. (It’s actually the secret ingredient that makes the pancakes a little bit rubbery so they can be rolled up without breaking.)



One day a neighbor girl, Sabina, went blueberry picking with my son, Kaleb. Wild blueberries in Norway are even more prolific than wild blackberries in the Northwest. I thought I would treat Sabina to good old fashioned American blueberry pancakes – since she’d only ever eaten Svela before.



It was Sabina’s first opportunity to sample some American cooking so she was thrilled to sit down to a plate full of my pancakes – until she discovered the blueberries in them. She looked at me like I was crazy. She preferred the ones without. I guess she’s used to the pee.

About Vanilla

One day soon after we moved to Norway, I spent a good twenty minutes trying to locate vanilla and baking soda in the market.

I had no less than four people try to help me. I bought something called “natron” and hoped for the best.

When I tried to verify that the package contained baking soda, I asked the employee whether I could use it not just for cooking, but to brush my teeth, clean things with it, etc.

I got a most definite “No.” I figured they either they aren’t hip to the many great uses for baking soda, or I got the wrong thing.

As for the vanilla… a customer in the store overheard my repeated description of “black water” which was the best way I knew how to describe vanilla extract in my limited Norwegian vocabulary.

The customer handed me a container with some kind of powder in it, clearly marked “vanila” and wondered what my problem was.

I spoke again in broken Norwegian, saying “No, black water.”

She explained to me in broken English that her daughter-in-law was from Australia and she had the same problem – she wasn’t used to cooking with the vanilla powder.

But that’s all they have in Norway. Go figure.

She also told me her daughter-in-law only lasted five years and then went back home. “Too many differences,” she said.

I don’t know whether she was referring to the marriage, or the vanilla.