SKIVE

I’m forever curious about what foreigners living in Norway notice first about their new homeland.  I asked a British guy, recently settled in Norway, what he found odd or different about Norwegian culture.  His response was, “They don’t put the top piece of bread on their sandwiches.” Since the Earl of Sandwich, from England, is credited with “inventing” that handy piece of portable food, it made sense it was top on his list of puzzlements.

Why the Norwegians forego the extra carbs with that top slice of bread, I have no idea, nor do the Norwegians that eat them several times a day.  What we call “open faced sandwiches,” Norwegians call “skive” – pronounced “shiva,” which means “a shaving or a slice” of something – usually bread, but it can be a cracker, too.

When something is put on top of the skive, that something is called “på legg,” which means “added upon.”  Most på legg revolves around goat cheese or a myriad of sausages, slices of cold, hard boiled eggs, cold scrambled eggs, red peppers, ham, cheese or cucumbers. 

Mayonnaise and caviar come in tubes like toothpaste, to make it easier to squeeze some of it on top of the på legg.  Why they haven’t figured out how to spread it on the slice of bread first, also remains a mystery.

When more than one skive is packed up in a ”matpakke” – food package – for lunch, coffee break or road trip, a little square sheet of parchment paper sits between the slices of skive so they don’t stick together.  Here’s where that top piece of bread would come in handy, but they refuse to go there.  The stores sell these pre-cut pieces of paper so no one has to make their own, and their food-to-go is ready quickly.

Skive is probably the most commonly consumed food item in all the land, since that is breakfast, lunch, coffee break and kveld’s mat. Kvelds mat translates as ”night food” and it is the fourth meal of the day for Norwegians and is eaten right before bedtime.

The best skive combination for me is just fresh bread topped with white cheese and a slice of red pepper or cucumber.  It’s hard not to think of Norway when I eat red bell peppers or cucumbers, since, aside from potaotes, they have to be the most massivly consumed vegetables throughout the country.  The grossest skive combination I’ve seen is a slice of bread with cold, fried fish left over from the night before, topped off with strawberry jam.  And why Norwegians always eat their scrambled eggs cold, I don’t know.  That too seems a little gross.

Probably one of the funniest things I’ve seen though, was walking into a McDonalds in Norway and seeing an old lady eating her Big Mac with the top bun removed.  You’d think, since she paid over ten dollars for that burger, she’d at least want to get her money’s worth, but traditions die hard – even when eating America food in Norway.