Norwegian baking through the seasons

“Nevada Berg takes readers back into her Norwegian kitchen, offering a year’s worth of new baking recipes in this seasonally focused, gorgeously photographed celebration of slow Nordic living.

Nevada Berg’s first cookbook, North Wild Kitchen, was chosen as one of the year’s best cookbooks by the New York Times. Now she returns with all new recipes for mouthwatering baked goods that will transport readers back to the Norwegian landscape.

Organized according to Norway’s five seasons, the book features ninety sweet and savory recipes and includes traditional baked goods for Norwegian holidays and other celebrations and special occasions.

Stunning photography captures the delicate details of Nevada’s mountain farm home, showing how the seasons shape what’s going into the oven and onto the plate each time of the year: Rustic Spelt Crackers, Candied Almond Cake, Wild Blueberry and Oregano Bread, Troll Cream Oatmeal Cookies, or Lefse with Cinnamon Buttercream.

Each recipe is introduced by a brief mood-setting text, incorporates the best ingredients each season has to offer, and is also entirely adaptable to anyone’s pantry.

Steeped in Nordic tradition, but delivered with a thoroughly modern twist, this new collection will enlarge Nevada’s growing fan base while delighting home cooks who have already discovered the pleasures of her unique sensibility.”

– Prestel Publishing –

Click here to buy Nevada Berg’s cookbook from Amazon.com.

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Norwegian wood | The art of chopping, stacking, and drying firewood

In addition to writing bestseller historical novels and more, Norwegian writer Lars Mytting has penned a fascinating non-fiction book about the art of chopping, stacking, and drying firewood.

Norway has long, dark, and cold winters, and the historical Norwegian household needed large amounts of firewood to keep warm.

In his 1815 book about practical farming, Norwegian farmer and army officer Lorentz Diderich Klüwer wrote: “Firewood cut and prepared during January is the best, as it contains a minimum of sap. It gives off more heat – and burns longer.”

Lars Mytting expands on and details this valuable knowledge – passing on the torch from his Norwegian ancestors.

Click here to buy “Norwegian wood” from Amazon.com.

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Norwegian to English dictionary | The best for genealogists?

In North America and other parts of the world, there are millions of descendants of the nearly 1 million Norwegians who emigrated in the 1800s and early 1900s.

In family homes worldwide, there are diaries, letters, and postcards stashed away – historical documents written in a family language long since forgotten.

An old letter is like a time capsule, a direct link to the person who wrote it – and can often tell us much more than any old photo.

Whether you are studying old Norwegian documents or are interested in the Norwegian language, then Einar Haugen’s Norwegian-English dictionary may be the tool for you.

Einar Haugen’s Norwegian-English dictionary was first published in 1965 by the Norwegian publishing house Universitetsforlaget, and it is still in print.

The dictionary includes older style and dialect words. Words like laup, tjuagutt, budrått, and eldhus will not appear in more contemporary dictionaries.

Here, at norwegianroots.no, we sometimes use the book when stumbling upon unfamiliar Norwegian dialect words in Norwegian texts; we are Norwegians using Einar Haugen’s dictionary to understand Norwegian – via English. How about that?

Click here to buy Einar Haugen’s dictionary from Amazon.com.

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Growth of the soil | Homesteading in the Norwegian mountains

As a young person growing up in Norway, my dream was to emigrate and become a homesteader somewhere in the North American wilderness. The problem was that I was born 100 years too late. An alternative escape was to read books and continue dreaming.

One of the books I read was Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil – Markens Grøde – the novel that earned him the 1920 Nobel Prize in Literature. In the novel, we meet Isak, who creates his homestead kingdom somewhere in the Norwegian mountains.

When nearly one million Norwegians emigrated in the 1800s and early 1900s – primarily to North America – their ancestors had already been homesteading across the Norwegian landscape for thousands of years.

Recently, I reread Hamsun’s momentous novel, this time in English, translated by Sverre Lyngstad, who has translated several of Knut Hamsun’s books into English. The book had lost none of its glow. It remains a vital part of the journey of my life.

LA Dahlmann

Click here to buy “Growth of the soil” from Amazon.com.

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