Today is Norwegian Independence Day. One of the many blessings of marrying into O's famiy has been their love of their Scandinavian heritage. Their family has been in this country for 150+ year, and has managed to keep many wonderful customs and traditions alive, which I think is rather unusual. It probably has something to with the fact that his family comes from southern Minnesota/northeastern Iowa, which has quite a large Norweigan and Swedish immigrant population. Despite the family having been here so long, he is 3/4 Norwegian and 1/4 Swedish.
For a person fascinated by geneaology and heritage, it is so fun keeping these traditions alive for my girls as well. From what I have read, this holiday is celebrated much like our own Indepence Day, with parades and food. We had a nice meal with salmon for a main course and O made rommegrot for dessert(which the kids ate but didn't particularly care for!). It was a porrige with a cheesecake-like taste. I thought it was tasty, if you can get past the texture, which is the case with other Norwegian food as well(lutefisk, ick!).
The bottom two photos are of the Storvik farm in Norway. It was exciting to discover pictures of it online that O's 4th cousin, who lives in Norway, had posted. As it turns out, when I showed O these pictures, he visited this farm when his family lived in Norway for a year when he was 6 years old. I couldn't resist posting the picture of our mealtime prayer. The hand in the fruit bowl - wonder who that could be(Erika!) So Happy Syttendmai everyone, and onward to the next Scandinavian celebration - Midsummer. Maypole anyone?
1 comment:
Oh my goodness, imagine waking up to those views everyday. It would be magical.
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