Thanksgiving

Pulling off the traditional Thanksgiving meal when we lived in Norway was a bigger challenge than I anticipated. I couldn’t get all the ingredients and the largest turkey I could find was only nine pounds. If it weren’t for American friends that had earlier come for a visit, I wouldn’t have been able to make pumpkin pie. They brought canned pumpkin, vanilla and brown sugar, things not available in Norway. A Norwegian cousin also made a quick trip to Kansas for his job, so he brought me back pecans for pecan pie, otherwise that wouldn’t have been on the menu, either.




I had to buy several foil packages of spices with unknown names, then open them up like Christmas presents to see what was inside. I was looking for things like nutmeg and cloves, but ended up with several unusable powders I didn’t recognize. Unfortunately, I never found everything I needed, but I seemed to be the only one that noticed things were missing from the recipes.



My cornbread recipe has a can of creamed corn in it and is always a huge hit. I was so bummed that I couldn’t make it because not only is creamed corn not available, but I couldn’t find cornmeal anywhere. I thought I hit the jackpot one day when I bought a box of something with corn on the front, but when I got it home, I discovered it was cornstarch.



We still had much to be thankful for though, and we were glad to share our American holiday with our Norwegian relatives. As is our tradition, we went around the table and everyone said two things they were thankful for. It took some of them a while to come up with something, as giving thanks isn’t really a Norwegian thing. It was fun to watch their expressions as they tasted foods they’ve never even heard of, like stuffing and yams with marshmallows. The pumpkin pie didn’t go over too well, (they all said it must be an acquired taste) but we were glad for that - all the more for us.



Except for eating turkey and pumpkin pie, it didn’t feel much like our traditional Thanksgiving back home because both Kaleb and I had to go to school that day and the day after. The night before, when I baked the pies, I stuck the knife in to see if they were done. I let Kaleb lick the knife and with a dreamy lilt in his voice, he said, “Ahhhh, it tastes like home.” And I guess that is what was missing on that Thanksgiving Day. Thanksgiving is an all American holiday that plays out best at home.

Sizes

 

They have a saying in Norway that, “Everything is bigger in America,” and while that may be true, from my perspective, things are just smaller in Norway.  The roads in Norway are very narrow, and often have only one lane.  Every so many meters there will be a little bulb-out spot where one car needs to go when encountering another car so they can pass each other.  Often times that means someone has to back up to reach it.

Cities are much smaller in Norway and to my knowledge, there’s not a single “McMansion” or “Starter Castle” in the whole land.  Houses are all very moderately sized and when Norwegians have come to visit us in America, they just laugh at the lavish homes we have here.  They also laugh when we arrive at the airport with our many large pieces of “American luggage” as Norwegians usually just travel with one small carry-on bag, even if they are crossing continents.  Cars are smaller in Norway, as are parking places, so I was always challenged to find a spot big enough for our American made “mini” van. 

I do see a lot of wisdom in the smallness of things, though.  The washing machines are much smaller and as a result, don’t hold as many clothes, therefore, I had to do laundry more often, and as a result, needed less clothes, which was good because the closets are smaller and don’t hold much. 

The refrigerators are smaller and that’s good because I never lost track of anything in them which  saved us money on our grocery bill, which was otherwise HUGE.  

The size of products available in the store is much smaller than in America.  (Oh, how Norway needs a Costco to really shake things up.)  Mayonnaise comes in a tube the size of toothpaste and the largest container of flour or sugar in the whole land never exceeds a kilo (about two pounds).  At first I was frustrated by this, but one time when I needed to take the bus home after grocery shopping, I realized why everything was so micro sized.  Many people don’t have cars, so walking or taking public transportation is their only option.  Groceries are heavy.

I buy Oxi-clean at Costco in a two gallon bucket but in Norway it comes in a container the size of yogurt.  Cookies also come in a much smaller pack but that actually worked to my advantage because when I got stressed out and ate a whole package – it wasn’t nearly the same number of calories.  I guess that’s why the people in Norway are smaller, too.

Fall Festival

Norwegian schools take a week long break about every six weeks of classes.  Since the school year starts in the middle of August (and goes until the end of June), that means the Fall Break happens in early October.  All the schools have a little “Høstfest” (Fall Festival) right before the break.  It was no different in my Norwegian class. 

The teachers of the Aalesund Adult Learning Center (where I attended) instructed all their students to make some food from their home country and bring it to share with everyone on the day of the party.  Before we sat down to our feast, however, we played little games that had to do with learning the Norwegian language.  There were classes from all levels of learning, so just giving the instructions for the game was a challenge, since it was done in Norwegian and it was obvious most of us were clueless.   We had some good laughs that day as we all interpreted things quite differently.

The food was the highlight of the party. Everyone was so excited to have others taste their special dish from their home country.  I liked the oatmeal cookies from another American best, as I’m not much of an “adventurer in eating” kind of gal and most of the other food looked scary.  I made a salmon/cream cheese spread for crackers which got gobbled up quickly.  Everyone started asking for the recipe.  No one had ever heard of some of the ingredients, so I had to explain exactly which store to go to and on which shelf in that store they would find things like horseradish and liquid smoke (I was shocked myself when I found them in Norway.)  It was fun to share good food.  One woman from Urkraine, who spoke very little English and no Norwegian, came over to me with her eyes wide open and a mouth full of the stuff I made and just said, “Boom-ba!”  Whatever that means in her language, I have no idea, but I think she really liked it. 

We were all having a good time until the Russian women got out the vodka and things got a bit out of control.  The Good Teacher Inga about had heart failure over that one, as there is a strict rule about no drinking at school, but she turned the other way and just let them have their fun (I could tell she was more than a little nervous though.)  That was the day I learned that in Russia, if there is a party, or if there is food, there is Vodka – even if it is ten o’clock in the morning.

Tunnels

Norwegians have mastered the art of tunnel drilling like no other country on earth.  Since Norway is 97% solid rock, they have learned how to make lemonade out of lemons.  It’s impossible to go on any length of road trip in Norway without going through a tunnel.  Often, when the scenery is just drop dead gorgeous, the whole world blacks out as the car gets swallowed up by a mountain and spit out into another world on the other side.

Many coastal ferries have been replaced by undersea tunnels.  I don’t mind going through mountain tunnels so much, but I always get a little freaked out when driving under a fjord and water drips on my windshield.  It’s a sobering thought to realize just one crack in the earth or decent sized tsunami, and I’m done for.  Just to get to the airport where we lived in Norway, we had to drive through two of them.  The islands are so close in one location that they were not able to engineer a safe incline down under the sea and back up again, so they corkscrewed the tunnel down on one side.  Clever.

Some tunnels are free, some cost between fifteen and fifty dollars.  The majority of tunnels are miles long, and Norway proudly holds the record for the world’s longest auto tunnel, at more than fifteen miles in length.  Norway also has the deepest sea tunnel as it goes over a thousand feet down into the earth. 

In the summer the tunnels aren’t much fun as they are so dark and boring, but in the winter they are a nice respite from the snow and ice covered roads, since they are dry.  Norway requires all vehicles to have studded tires in the winter, so there is always a foggy haze inside the winter tunnels, however, as the bits of concrete being chewed up by the snow tires float in the air.

Norway is now in the process of building the world’s first ship tunnel straight through the middle of a coastal mountain.  They say it’s all about safety, but I think they just want bragging rights because no one else in the world has done such a thing.

Norwegians are famous for their stubborn streak and I’m sure it’s in part because they all really do live between a rock and a hard place.  Since they’ve managed to conquer their rocky environment with tunnels, maybe now is the time to conquer that hard head of theirs.  It sure would make them easier to live with.

Halloween

In 1953, when my husband, Kory, immigrated to America, he didn’t know anything about Halloween.  One night when his family was sitting around the table eating dinner, the doorbell rang.  Kory’s father, Halvor, got up from the table to answer the door.  He was greeted by a group of kids dressed as bums and other such unsavory characters, expectantly holding open bags out in front of them.  They said something to him in English he didn’t understand, and he responded to them in Norwegian something they didn’t understand.  He slammed the door shut and went back to his dinner.  After this scenario repeated a few more times, Halvor returned to the dinner table and sternly admonished his four boys that they should, “Never go around begging like that!”  The next day at school, Kory and his brothers found out what all the begging was about, and every year after that, they joyfully participated in this unusual American tradition.

Even now, Norway doesn’t really have Halloween, but the times, they are a changin’.  The prevalence of American media in their culture is messing with all kinds of things, and now after seeing it on TV, Norwegian children want to go trick-or-treating like American kids.  When we lived there, the newspapers all ran articles reminding people what Halloween was and that kids shouldn’t bother to go to homes where the porch light wasn’t on, as many Norwegians are adamantly against this “celebration.”

Our neighbor girl, Sabina, was counting down the days until she could go door to door and get a bag full of candy, but then was sorely disappointed when she and my son, Kaleb, discovered no one on our block was game. 

Kaleb was invited to a birthday party for a classmate just a few days prior to Halloween, so all the kids dressed up in a costume, much to their parent’s dismay.  One mother I talked to was worried about the affect Halloween would have on smaller children, since all the costumes available for purchase in Norway are quiet gruesome.  She thought children might become afraid of the dark if they saw some of these “creatures” walking around in the evening, or even worse, become terrified if they answered their door to such horrific looking faces.  I had to agree.

As the parents were picking up their kids after the birthday party, I overheard one mother say with a disgusting tone, “If we HAD to get a holiday from America, why couldn’t it have been Thanksgiving?”

Funny Words

I think one of the reasons I liked living in Norway so much, was because I laughed a lot.  Even though Norwegians as a whole are pretty serious and sober people, their language has a way of just cracking me up.  Some of the expressions they use are very funny, as well as the sound of some of the words themselves.  If I didn’t come from an English speaking background, I’m sure I wouldn’t have laughed as much as I did, but there were some words I heard over and over again that never failed to put a smile on my face, like “snart ferdig.”  To properly pronounce those words in Norwegian, one must say “snart far-dee,”  which means “soon finished.”  It made me laugh every time I heard it, or said it.  It’s used often, whether referring to dinner being ready soon or when one would say, “I’ll be done in a minute.”

Of course, “snart ferdig” doesn’t crack me up as much as when I hear someone say “full fart,” which, honest to goodness means, “high speed.”  There are often huge advertisements in newspapers or on the sides of busses for internet service, and those “high speed” words grab my attention every time.  Some neighborhoods have “farts dempre” which are “speed bumps,” and when traveling along certain stretches of highway there might be a sign that says “din fart” which means “your speed” and the digital read-out board shows just how fast the car is traveling.  There is lighthouse in downtown Aalesund with huge letters painted on the side that say “sakte fart” (slow speed) warning boats coming into the harbor not to make a wake.  I can’t imagine the origins of some of these words, but it’s pretty funny for someone from America to live in Norway and see them everywhere.

There are many Norwegian words like “fart” that mean something completely different in English.  Take the word “fag” for instance.  In Norwegian it’s pronounced “fog,” and it means a “subject” that one takes in school, or a particular trade.  I often see burley men driving work trucks with the word “FAG” in huge letters written all over it.  It’s most common on plumbing or construction trucks, and it’s always a sight that gets my attention.

The Norwegian word “do” actually means “toilet,” so I had to be careful not to mix my English with Norwegian too much or I got some pretty funny looks from people when I was talking about what I was about to “do.” 

Dairy Products

Norwegian dairy products, I believe, are far superior to anything we can buy in America.  Even the organic version of milk, cheese and butter from America doesn’t really compare to the quality found in Norway.  Any recipe I made in Norway using their dairy, tasted significantly better than when I’d made the same recipe at home.

The Norwegian government doesn’t allow the use of growth hormones or antibiotics and all the cows are “free range,” so apparently that contributes to the difference.  A happy cow obviously produces good milk, which unfortunately only lasts about a week before it sours in the refrigerator, precisely on its expiration date.  Norwegians don’t pasteurize their dairy products much, either.  I found Norwegian cheese to be pleasantly addicting and I ate it several times every day, otherwise, it started to mold after about a week in the refrigerator. 

The one dairy product I struggled with, however, was whipped cream.  Norwegians are very unconventional when it comes to their whipped cream usage.

I watched Cousin Kari one evening prepare a dinner salad the way her grandmother taught her.  She cut up iceberg lettuce in thin strips and placed it in a bowl.  In another bowl she whipped up a lot of cream, added some sugar and a little bit of white vinegar then mixed that in with the lettuce so it was well coated.  That was all there was to the salad – lettuce and cream.  I actually kinda liked it, but I’m sure it’s because it had sugar mixed in with the cream, which I found out another time, is NOT the norm in Norway.

The first time I discovered the absence of sweetness in the whipped cream was when we were invited to Cousin Birger’s house for dinner.  The dessert was served with a large dollop of whipped cream on top.  After taking the first bite and realizing something was terribly wrong with the topping, I waited until our hosts had momentarily left the table, then I quickly piled on spoonfuls of sugar from the little bowl sitting on the table.  I was in for a bigger shock, however, when I discovered the “sugar bowl” was actually a bowl of salt.  Just when I thought the dessert couldn’t have tasted worse, it did.