New Words

In my Norwegian language class one day, we learned what Norwegians call popular food items.  Many of these words are nearly identical to what we call them in English, so it was a day of feeling rather triumphant in the otherwise abysmal world of trying to learn a foreign language.

Potatoes are called “potet”, bread is called “brød,” and milk is called “melk.” These are the staples in every Norwegian home, so learning these words took the fear out of going hungry should I ever need to ask someone for a bite to eat.

Our teacher also taught us that certain foods last longer than others and that’s why so many fresh produce items aren’t available in Norway – because they won’t survive the trip so far north - like I hadn’t figured that one out already.  She also told us about some foods that become poisonous after awhile.

In describing the poisonous food, I heard her say the exact same word that she used a few days earlier when she was teaching us the names of all the family members. The word that caught my attention was “gift” (pronounced “yift.”)  It’s the Norwegian word for “married,” but as we all learned during our food lesson, it’s also the Norwegian word for “poison.” 

I brought up the irony of “gift” being used for both “married” and “poison” and asked our teacher why that would be.   I got her to think a minute, but she was not able to answer my question. 

There were several Spanish-speaking students in our class too, so I also pointed out that the Spanish word “esposa” means “wife,” but it also means “handcuffs.”  I don’t like those “coincidences” one little bit, but I must say, it makes certain words easier to remember – like the English word “but” is “men” in Norwegian.  There are so many things to remember when learning a new language I must do what I can to help the process. 

I never could connect the dots on why a “child” is called “barn” in Norwegian, though.  I know as a kid, my mother used to ask me if I was “born in a barn” when I left the door open, so maybe there’s something there -- she is full blooded Norwegian, after all.

We studied weather words that same week too, and we learned that if it’s cloudy they say in Norwegian it’s “skyet” (pronounced “she-it”).  And here all these years I thought my mom was swearing when she’d say a certain word in a particular kind of way, but as it turns out, it seems, she was just talking about the weather.

My Norwegian Classmates

The year I attended Norwegian language school, we had 28 students from 18 different countries. Most of them were women married to Norwegians. It made for some interesting coffee breaks as we tried to communicate with one another. I found many of my classmates’ stories quite interesting.

Several women in class were from the Ukraine.  Many Ukrainian and Thai women meet Norwegians via the Internet and marry them without ever spending much time together first. One woman knew no Norwegian and very little English, so I often wondered how she communicated with her husband and then I saw them together during lunch one day. Even though they’d been married a year, they still acted like lovebirds - there was a clue. He was a balding, forty-ish, not so great looking guy and she was in her early twenties and quite the Ukrainian hottie. Norwegians aren’t dumb, that’s for sure.

The woman that sat behind me was from Germany. She is a pediatric doctor, her husband, a dentist. The Norwegian government solicited them both because there aren’t enough medical professionals in the country. German dentists are the norm in Norway.

The woman that sat next to me became my partner when we practiced our pronunciation. Her name is Vestina and she is from Lithuania. She was 22 and she moved to Norway with her boyfriend to work also, but on the opposite end of the spectrum from the doctors and dentists. Fish factories hire people from Eastern Europe to do the grunt work that no respectable Norwegian citizen wants to do. Not a single Norwegian was on the payroll at their factory, including their boss, who was from Canada.

We had a lot of turnover in our class, but My Pal Vestina (above) and I stayed on the whole year and ended up lifelong friends.  In many ways, she reminded me of myself when I was her age. We were very competitive with each other in comparing our test scores and we could crack each other up with just one look.

I found something to like about most everyone in our class, but Vestina was much more selective.  Any woman from the Slavic countries that didn’t dress to the hilt with high heels and stylish clothes insulted her greatly, and she vehemently hated them.  I asked her why we were friends since it was obvious I didn’t dress like that.  She said I was fine because I’m “older than her mother and no one cares what old people wear,” but it’s an insult to her generation if women neglect their looks. 

Up until then, I’d considered us equals, but she set me straight.   

Norsk Food

Every August, our hometown of Ålesund holds a matfestival (food festival) right next to the harbor. The best part is watching the chefs compete in making cool looking uncooked food.  Presentation is everything. 

Inside the tents are all kinds of food displays and samplings to be had. If a person actually liked Norwegian food, they’d hit the jackpot by going there – but I’m not particularly fond of all the sausages, cold smoked and jelly-ish salmon, or whale meat.

While walking through the festival tents the year we lived there, I did manage to get a free cup of coffee and a few chocolates that were to my liking, but then I needed to leave quickly to escape the aroma of all the dried fish and sausages.

I swear, you could cram anything in a tube and call it pølse – which is Norwegian for sausage - and Norwegians would eat it. They have every kind of pølse imaginable – even something called “blood sausage” – which doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what it is.  They sell big ol’ coils of lamb sausages in the grocery stores that you just grab and yank off however much you want and pay for it by the kilo. They are as crazy about their pølses as they are about their cakes and vanilla sauce.

I was offered more than one sample of sausage at the festival, and not wanting to offend the vendors, I just responded with, “I don’t eat meat.”  If it were up to me, I’d just eat their breads, cakes, vanilla sauce and cheeses.  Norwegians make a flavored goat cheese with cardamom in it that tastes almost as good as candy.  My husband and son prefer all their dead creatures, however, sliced and diced and stuffed into little packages.

At the festival there was a whaling ship pulled up to the dock selling fresh whale meat right off the boat. A guy nearby was selling stir-fried whale meat to go.  I’m not an adventure-in-eating kinda gal so I’ve never tried it, but my husband, Kory, says it tastes like something between steak and liver.  It’s very lean and high in omega-3s, but I’m still not going for it.

Norway is so proud of the fact that they still kill those majestic creatures, that one of their politicians designed a T-shirt with a drawing of a whale on it that says, “Intelligent people need intelligent food.”

Kory bought ten of those shirts and gave them to a friend from the Makah Indian tribe, back when they were whaling.

Even though whale meat is one of my husband’s favorite foods and he eats it often in Norway, I haven’t noticed it has made him any smarter, however.

Ambiance

My husband, Kory, retired two weeks before our son was born, so for over ten years we had no schedule, no alarm clock, no rushing out of the house in the morning. Most every day we’d sit at our dining room table, look out over the Skagit Valley while leisurely drinking a cup of coffee and talk about what the day would bring. Sometimes when Kaleb and I homeschooled, we’d stay in our pajamas all day. Our lives in Norway were everything BUT that. Everything had to be planned out ahead of time. I had to double check to see if we had clean clothes for the next day and enough food to make lunches. I had to put a clock in every room because I had to catch a bus and Kaleb had to get to school on time. Kory even had to go back to work to off-set the high cost of living there, so two days a week he was a carpenter again. We were on a schedule with very little time to relax.

One day soon after starting work, Kory discovered they don’t have sani-cans on the job sites in Norway – so he had to drive all the way home to use the toilet. He said his co-workers just head for the nearest bushes, which is OK under certain circumstances, but it wasn’t going to work too well for him that particular day.

About the same time Kory was rushing home to use the bathroom, my Norwegian class was heading off to a concert by Ålesund’s finest string quartet. Norwegians are very much into culture and ambiance. Each morning my school day was started off with a little soft music to settle everyone down. There were always blooming flowers in our classroom and little doilies with candles on the tables in our break room.

In America we often associate candles, flowers and music with relaxation and romance, but in Norway, it’s an everyday thing, even in the workplace. At least in office jobs, anyway. My bus passed by several office buildings and I always saw employees sitting in their break room – complete with flowers, table clothes, candles burning, and I imagine, music softly playing in the background.

At his job, I don’t know that Kory would have cared so much about the ambiance of candles, flowers or music, as much as he would have just liked a toilet to sit on every now and then.

Pancakes

Many areas of Norway have regional foods, which can’t be found anywhere else in the land.  Our corner of Norway is famous for its “svela,” a particular type of pancake.  It’s loved by the locals and is a staple in everyone’s diet.

I weirds me out to watch Norwegians eat French fries with a knife and fork, but then eat svela with their hands. They sprinkle sugar, jam or a thick syrup on them, roll them up and eat them like a burrito - anytime of the day or night. They are also a favorite for coffee breaks on long road trips.  Even the ferries have little café’s in them that are open during the busiest hours, but after hours they all set out a plate of svela and a thermos of coffee with a honor system box.

What we call “Swedish pancakes” - those thin crepe-like things filled with goo – Norwegians just call “pancakes” (pannekake) – leaving off the “Swedish” adjective, 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.  It grosses them out just to think about it.

Svela looks an awful lot like our buttermilk pancakes, but they sure don’t taste the same. The key ingredient in svela is something called “hjørtetakksalt.”

I bought hjørtetakksalt 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 with a strong ammonia smell – somewhat like pee.  The scary thing is, when translating the word hjørtetakksalt directly, it means “thanks to the deer salt”… so ya gotta wonder what’s really in there.  I think hjørtetakksalt  is the ingredient that makes the pancakes so pliable and able to be rolled up so easily.

One day a neighbor girl, Sabina, went blueberry picking with my son, Kaleb. Wild blueberries in Norway are even more plentiful than wild blackberries in the Northwest. I thought I would treat Sabina to our good old-fashioned American blueberry pancakes – since she’d only ever eaten svela and Swedish pancakes 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. She looked at me like I was crazy and wondered why in the world I’d put blueberries inside the pancake batter. She preferred the ones without. I guess she’s used to the pee.