Scandinavian Nisse Traditions and Christmas Blog Party

Jul or jol is the term used for the Christmas holiday season in Norway. Originally, “jul” (or “jol”) was the name of a month in the old Germanic calendar, corresponding roughly to the time from mid-December through mid-January, and the concept of “jul” as a period of time rather than a specific event, prevails in Norway.

Photo by Nati on Pexels.com

Share the festivities by posting your favourite TREATS & TRADITIONS for the season later today and visiting our blogger Holiday party!

You are invited to post photos, essays, jokes, recipes … anything you’d like to share at our virtual holiday social.

Scandinavian Tradition of Jul

Whereas the start of “Jul” proper is a five-week event it consists of five phases: Advent, Julaften, Romjul, Nyttår, and Epiphany, which is the thirteenth, and final day of the season.

Day 12: Traditions (in Sweden)

Scandinavian Nisse Tradition

Once a mythological elf, in modern times, the bearded man, or elf, called “Jule Nisse,” sometimes makes an appearance in Norwegian homes, and if he does, he brings gifts. Classic songs have been written about the nisse, and nisse figurines are found in a wide variety of shapes and styles, used as decoration in the home.

Fjøsnisse, the one that eats porridge in the barn, a guardian of good/bad luck, seems to be dying out in the minds of Norwegian children. Television, globalisation and mass-marketing are gradually replacing him with Santa Claus.

“The American nisse is here to stay,” ethnologist Ann Helen Bolstad Sjelbred recently reported. Lots of children growing up in Norway today, she said, barely know who the barn nisse is, and expect the new nisse to bring them presents.

Meanwhile, the Norwegian towns of Drøbak, Røros, Longyearbyen and Egersund have each been claiming the Norwegian Nisse as their own. Local politicians in Drøbak, south of Oslo, even passed a resolution declaring that their town is his official home.

thesandychronicles.blog/friendly-friday-challenge-holiday-treats-tradition

Later today I will compare this to an Australian Christmas posting for a joint Holiday blogger party, posting simultaneously around the world, at 8pm, Australia E.S.T. in conjunction with the Friendly Friday Blog Challenge. Join us then.

Sandy has all the details.

Bushboy’s Last on the Card Challenge

Norwegian Rosemaling

Why wouldn’t I use Brian’s challenge to post a pic of my favourite art?

This isn’t my original design but I was inspired to adapt a similar design that I used as the basis for this practice in colour.

Healthy Waldorf Salad with a Twist

I was skimming through an old recipe book today, deciding whether to keep or throw it out. I do have an excess of household ‘stuff,’ that’s been in storage for well over twelve months awaiting our relocation into a modern new house by the beach, so even with the massive amounts of cupboard space the new house has, I still would like to downsize as much as I can.

So it was in a somewhat semi exhausted state from unpacking, I happened upon the recipe book. Truly, it might have just been easier to toss the whole thing out and start with fresh recipes, but handwritten old favourites evoke family memories too, so I knuckled down with a cuppa and flipped through the yellowing, slightly food stained pages. That’s when I found a recipe for “Avocado Norwegian,” that I had torn from Brisbane’s first ever vegetarian restaurant’s cookbook. The recipe is a form of salad topping an avocado half.

The recipe before the Fusion

Now normally the thought of chomping into half an avocado, (even one with a delicious topping), as one would an apple or pear, turns my stomach, but for some reason I saved this recipe and thus, gave it another look. I thought anything remotely connected with Scandinavia always deserves my attention.

I decided it might work better if I changed it a little and gave it a bit more flair. After all, who doesn’t adapt recipes? 

With the addition of a few extra ingredients, served on a bed of spinach/kale mix, and garnished with dill sprigs, I created a kind of Norwegian Waldorf Salad Fusion.

As an added bonus, the avocado is another way to add Vitamin C, E, K, and B-6, as well as riboflavin, niacin, folate, pantothenic acid, magnesium, and potassium, beta-carotene, and omega-3 fatty acids into your diet. It surely packs a nutritional punch.

This is the final recipe for Avocado Norwaldorf Salad

Serves approximately 2 people

• 2 sticks celery
• 1/2 cup Fresh walnuts
• 1 -2 red apples – I used a Royal Gala variety
• 1-2 green apples – such as a Granny Smith
• Fresh mint leaves, roughly torn
• 1/3 cup Dill Pickles, roughly chopped
• Jarslberg cheese, cubed – amount depending on personal preference
• Mayonnaise to cover
• 1 tablespoon of Dijon Mustard or Dijonnaise
• Dill sprigs for garnish
• 1 Avocado, peeled and diced into large chunks
• Squeeze of Lemon juice (optional)
• Seasoning to taste

Mix ingredients together, adding Avocado last.

Serve with:

Camembert cheese wedges on a bed of Spinach/Kale/Lettuce

Enjoy! Healthy, tasty and definitely worth a second look.

Lingonberry/ Cranberry Slice – Tantalizing Tuesday

Well known in Scandinavia, the lingonberry is related to the cranberry, bilberry and blueberry. Berries are a great addition to one’s diet. Why? Because they contain powerful antioxidants  and provide many health benefits when we eat them. And why not enjoy them in a delicious dessert slice. This slice can be served hot or cold.

More information on the health benefits is given below but here is the Scandinavian recipe:

Lingonberry  / Cranberry  Slice

 

Base:

4 1/2 dl (almost 2 cups) Plain white flour
1/2 dl (2/3 cup) Sugar
1 tablespoon Baking powder
150 g(5 ounces, almost 2/3 cup)
Unsalted butter
1 Egg
2 dl (3/4 cup) Lingonberry  or cranberry jam/ plum filling/ or your favourite preserves

Streusel topping:
1 1/2 dl (2/3 cup) Oatmeal
3 tablespoons Butter
1 dl (1/2 cup) Sugar
1 teaspoon Vanilla sugar (1/2 teaspoon extract)

Pre – heat the oven to 200 degrees C (400 degrees F).
Combine flour, sugar, and baking powder then cut in the butter.
Add the egg and mix well. Spread into a greased 20×30 (8×12″) pan.
Spread the preserves quite thickly over the batter.
Bake 25-30 minutes, until golden.

Cool in the pan and slice while still warm.
Enjoy served warm or cold. Yumm!!!!

 

Animal studies have shown how the lingonberry can lower inflammatory molecules, block oxidants from destroying tissue, and also help the body replace important antioxidants, like glutathione, which is a master antioxidant in our body. Lingonberry has also been shown to increase red blood cell and liver enzymes needed for antioxidant protection. We need antioxidants to protect vessels and nerve tissue, and also to help decrease the damage from inflammation. Proanthocyanidin extracts from lingonberries were also found to be effective against the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus, which can cause a wide variety of infections.

[Credit: http://www.doctoroz.com/article/superfruit-lingonberry%5D

Something nutritious and delicious to Ponder About

Enjoy Scandinavia without the long flight!

A while ago, I was invited to write a post about Scandinavian books and have reproduced some sections and updated others here:

Have you ever dreamt of visiting Scandinavia: the lands that gave us Ikea, Santa Claus, and Hans Christian Andersen? Perhaps you have thought of getting close and personal with a Viking in the fjords of Norway, or the unique landscape of Iceland, but have found neither the time nor the funds?

You can still experience the arctic world without leaving the comfort of your own home through the literary works of Scandinavians. Gaining popularity here not just because they write good crime mysteries, but also because they focus more on story and descriptive plot, giving the reader an impression of, “being there.”

So select your destination and read on:

Denmark

Visit the fairy tale land of Denmark through the eyes of writer Elsebeth Egholm, an excellent crime fiction writer, (Title: Next of Kin), set in the author’s hometown of Århus. Or you could get a feeling for Greenland and snow with Peter Høeg’s thriller “Smilla’s Feeling for Snow”, or even watch the 1997 movie version of the same name, starring Julia Ormond. But if historical fiction is more your thing, Per Olov Enquist will transport you to the Danish royal court of King Christian VII of Denmark and the 1700’s – the time of ‘enlightenment,’ with a tale of romance, lust, treachery and intrigue.

Sweden

A short train ride from Copenhagen, takes one to Sweden, across the Bridge over the Oresund, which is a central theme on the TV series, “The Bridge” (available on DVD). The first season was so popular a second one is set to come. Most people are familiar with Henning Mankell’s ‘Wallander’ books and film, but there are many other Swedish authors whose writings bring Sweden into your own home. Camilla Lackberg is an author who writes about Fjallbacka, a small town on the Swedish Bohuslan coast, with journalist turned home-maker Erica Falck, helping out her policeman husband solve puzzling murder mysteries such as The Ice Princess, which is first in the series.

No one can dispute Stieg Larson’s, ‘Millenium Trilogy’ has brought Swedish crime fiction to Hollywood, and the world, but not everyone likes crime fiction, even if it is Scandinavian. ‘Hanna’s daughters,’ (a story of three generations of woman and their journeys through life’s stages), together with  ‘Inge and Mira’, and ‘Simon and the Oaks’, are three fiction novels of human drama, peppered with a little history, and a central theme of  “friendship,” which the author believes, is more important than family.

Karin Altvegen’s describes marginal life in Sweden’s suburban fringes, in the psychological thriller, ‘Shame” whilst John Ajvide Lindqvist’s “Let the right one in”- is a horror fiction story about vampires, but don’t let that put you off. I would never read a story on vampires, yet this one is a more intimate account of childhood bullying than vampires themselves and, furthermore, was made into a successful movie, then remade by Hollywood. Very atmospheric and highly recommended!

Finally, Lars Kepler is selling out in bookstores as his atypical but brilliant Finnish detective solves even the most brutal and complicated crimes in a most unusual way. I would suggest The Hynoptist and The Fire Witness.

Hungry? Time for a coffee break? Enhance the full Scandinavian experience with an authentic Norwegian Waffle with Swedish Cloudberry Jam and cream?   Recipe found here

Norway

Waffles are delicious while reading works by Norwegian writers: Jo Nesbø with the infamous Harry Hole, Karin Fossum, whose character exist on the fringes of society, or Anne Holt, former Norwegian Justice Minister turned crime writer, with her detective Hanne Wilhelmsen series.Recently, I read “Finse 1222”, set at one of the highest points along the Oslo-Bergen train line, wherein Holt’s descriptions of a winter snowstorm are so real, that when you read it, you will be shovelling snow in your dreams. Again, if you prefer something that does not have dead bodies, I recommend Per Pettersen, (To Siberia, Out Stealing Horses) or Jostein Gaarder (Sophie’s World – a Fiction story that introduces you to philosophy in a fascinating way).

Iceland

Finally, your Scandinavian tour is complete when you get a taste for Icelandic landscapes and culture in Arnaldur Indridason’s police procedurals: Jar City, Arctic Chill, and Hypothermia. (my favourite detective stories), or a depiction of Icelandic rural life, is found in Halldor Laxness’, “Iceland’s Bell.”

Travel fiction of note:

Andrew Stevensen – Non- Fiction; “Summer light”; A Walk across Norway. Not a Scandinavian writer, but nevertheless a great travel account.

True North – Gavin Francis: Travels in the Arctic, following the travels of ancient Nordic explorers.

I recommend checking out Euro crime for seeking details of other Scandinavian authors and further listings of individual Scandinavian titles to ponder about. Bon Voyage!!

 

Something Scandinavian to Ponder About

30 Day Book Challenge – A Book You Wish You Could Live In

DAY 18. – Fishing in Utopia – Andrew Brown

I blame the sadness. It caught me completely off-guard. In my defense, I would claim that I had only recently returned from an exhilarating vacation in Scandinavia, and had almost made it through the mandatory 3 weeks of post-holiday, emotional doldrums, that consistently ‘kneecap’ me on my return to the sunburnt land in which I live, when I borrowed this part-travelogue/ part-memoir, at my local library.

I will admit, of course, borrowing the book was a way to to feed my addiction: this inner longing for a land I had just left, (and would not see again for an indefinite period, or at least until my savings account rose significantly). If I can’t be in Sweden, (or Denmark or Norway ), I fathomed, I can, at least, immerse myself in a book about the place. After all,  a trip in your imagination is a trip, after all. (And at least I won’t have to contend with jet lag).  And so, it was with this mindset that I read Andrew Brown’s book based in Sweden, titled, “Fishing in Utopia.”

The Author is a storyteller and journalist who skillfully weaves a story spanning 30 odd years of his life, first as an English ex-pat married to a Swede living in Sweden in the 70’s, and then later again later in life, both through the lens of a recreational fisherman and the lure of ‘Pike’.

Through his fishing expeditions, Brown encapsulates well that special atmosphere that is the Scandinavian summer, with the long hours of daylight where people languish in a idyllic red timber cottage in the countryside, fringed with crystalline lake waters and air so fresh you would think it is pure oxygen, and where, according to Brown, “everything floats in a quality of light like mercury” or the water “glitters like pollen.” [Reading this, certainly didn’t actively cure my ‘Scandinavian withdrawal’ at all and I began to wish I lived in this book!] To Brown, ‘fishing is a form of inquiry. The patient, watchful wonder of the fisherman seems to me the root of all science’.

Brown goes further than mere descriptive and romantic accounts of Swedish life. He delves deeper into what he sees as the ‘psyche’ of the Swedes themselves, who less than three generations ago, were mere subsistence farmers, conformist, religious, yet fundamentally conservative. Was Sweden in the 70’s really that different with its egalitarian welfare state where poverty and crime was nonexistent and the Prime Minister lived an ordinary life? Judge for yourself:

… its language is shaped by the cold, so that one spends as little time as possible with one’s tongue exposed. How even on wide, open roads its motorists keep to 55 mph. How to be expelled from the consensus there is ‘like being thrown out of a space station’. http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/1736216/the-end-of-eden/

Brown maintains the Swedish individual was less important than the nation as a ‘whole’ : “It was the life of a battery salmon: packed into a crowd in the middle of a boundless stretch of water by a cage of netting that you could not see at all. It appeared to be part of the sea.”

But life changes with the passage of time, as did Brown’s marriage, and Sweden and its people; so that when he returns in 2006, he laments the disappearance of the traditional, uncomplicated Sweden (where Swedish lapland supermarkets stock reindeer blood and industries were owned by the state) and the Sweden he thought he knew had been transformed into a multicultural ‘cafe’ society, now a common phenomena throughout Europe.  Gone is the the socialist welfare state and like many large cities, crime rates and unemployment has risen. This Sweden is seeminlgy more open, and every village, even those villages too small to support a local grocery store has, Andrew claims, ” a Kurdish family running a pizza restaurant.”

So is this so bad?

“I had mocked Sweden for failing to live up to its own ideals, but I had always supposed these were ideals that everyone shared. I had not considered the possibility that some people could want a less equal society.” Even with this statement, I still get the distinct impression Brown has a soft spot for Sweden. After all, his son is there and therefore like me, also a small piece of his heart.

To know Sweden and live there in the 70’s, sounds awfully much like Utopia to me. Yet, while I wait for the development of the time machine that will take me back to the 70’s, I must be content living in my imagination, through this book, and the egalitarian and romantic Utopia those words created in my mind.

Something I often ponder about.

DAY 19. – A favourite author.

 

Back in Bakklandet – Norway

With every tourist arriving in Trondheim, in Central Western Norway, heading for the medieval Nidaros Cathedral and the mandatory picture in front of the “Gamle Bybro” – the 19th C Old Town Bridge, shown below with the iconic carved woodwork, you could be forgiven for asking why you would seek out the back streets of Trondheim?

The eastern side of the Nidelva river, once the haunt of Trondheim’s fishermen, seamen, and labourers features cobble-stoned, picture-perfect alleys of wooden buildings, many dating from as far back as the 17th century, all lovingly restored and renovated into cafes, vintage stores, retro gift shops, galleries and private residences.

On a summer evening in Trondheim, the sun doesn’t really set, the light just dulls somewhat, so one can wander the streets of Bakklandet in safety, and not get lost in some dark alleyway, fearing for your safety.

If you enter Bakklandet by bike, you might also like to experience the world’s only coin-operated, (now card-operated), “cykel tramp” or bicycle lift, up a very steep Trondheim street, (see tramp in action to the right of the photograph below).

I believe, this tramp, takes a little practice to master, so I declined the offer to experiment on this occasion.

The bicycle lift takes you past more ‘old world’ homes, painted in pretty shades of pastels and Norwegian red, to ‘Kristiansten’ fortress, still complete with tower, bastions and whitewashed army barracks and artillery supply buildings from days of old.

The fortress can now be accessed free of charge and was established for the protection of Trondheim from all those marauding Swedes of the past, (at this latitude in Norway, Sweden is less than 200 kms away)

Being a student town, and for that reason alone, Trondheim offers a huge range of options for eating out, and late opening hours to suit any age. One such cafe with especially unique interiors and a friendly atmosphere is the Baklandet Skydsstation, pictured below, and it is not just the food that is good.

This cafe is stuffed with handcrafted cushions, wall hangings and embroidery that screams Scandinavian tradition and fight to divert one’s attention from their food.

The cuisine is freshly-made: waffles and cafe food, and the hot chocolate of gargantuan proportions is topped with a mountain of fresh Norwegian cream. Just what I needed after walking up and down the eastern side of the river.

Frequently overlooked by passing tourists, Bakklandet, the real jewel in Trondheim’s crown is Something to Ponder About this and you can see all of this for the price of a cup of coffee if you wish.

Learning Danish – Fornøjelse Pleasure

Pleasure –  Fornøjelse

from the verb fornøje : to please or delight or gratify

Fornøjelig –amusing, delightful, pleasant

Fornøjelse – pleasure, delight, diversion, amusement.

betale fornøjelse: (to) foot the bill

finne fornøjelse i: take pleasure/delight in

har fornøjelse af: deirive satisfaction from

Det er mig en stor fornøjelse at…   It gives me great pleasure to….

Ja, med fornøjelse: Yes, with pleasure. – in agreeing to do something

God fornøjelse! : Have a good time!

Fornøjelsesliv – entertainment, means of enterntainment

Fornøjelsestur – det er ingen fornøyelsestur : It is no picnic. (metaphorical picnic)

Så kom den næste, han var lystigmager, han var direktør for komedierne, maskeraderne og al den fornøjelse der kan findes på. Hans rejsegods var en stor tønde.

Then came the next, he was merry-maker, he was director of comedies, masked balls, and all the pleasure that can be found. [Source: H C Andersen, posted on http://vandreture.wordpress.com/]

Some Danish words to ponder about for those of us struggling to extend our danish vocabulary.