Eunice Stoen: Transcript

Norwegian cook
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My name is Eunice Stoen. I’m from Decorah, Iowa. And my father was a Lutheran pastor. I was born up in Virginia, Minnesota, up on the Iron Range, and I lived there until I was about five years of age. Then my father took a pastorate in Hawkins, Wisconsin, and we lived there ‘til I was thirteen and starting as a freshman in high school. Then we moved to a rural parish north of Decorah, called Big Canoe Lutheran Church, where we lived in a big six-bedroom parsonage with a huge lawn. And it was a wonderful place to grow up.

The parents on both sides of our family—they’re all from Norway originally, not our parents but the grandparents came from Norway, so we’re third generations, and fourth and fifth even. My husband’s [great-grand] parents immigrated here in 1850. And they didn’t have enough money at that time, so they went to Wisconsin and did lumbering until they had enough money to buy their section of land. And we live on one of the farms.

Decorah’s full of Norwegian culture with the museum, the college, and the different places. And they celebrate a Nordic Fest, which is 100% Norwegian, but the whole town participates. A very artistic community, and cooking food is a big part of it. Both in the homes, in the churches, and in the restaurants, it’s just a given that in Decorah you’ll find Norwegian food.

The most popular and the most controversial food is our lutefisk, which is a Norwegian cod from up in the Lofoten Islands in Norway, and dried, soaked in lye water, and then it’s frozen like a big chunk of wood when it’s shipped over to America. And then we soak it in water two or three times before we cook it. It’s a lot like cod you’d buy in a restaurant with melted butter. That’s the way it’s served there, too. It’s reconstituted back to its original form and steamed or boiled and served with melted butter. And it’s one of the delicacies. A lot of the churches have annual suppers based on lutefisk.. And they also have, of course , Norwegian meatballs and rutabagas.

And that’s about the only time most people—you never see it on a menu in a restaurant as a rule. It’s sometimes used in soup, but it’s a root vegetable, which the Norwegians had a lot of because of their short growing seasons. Potatoes, and beets, and rutabagas, and this type of food were very common, and they still are.

Lefse’s probably the second most popular of the Norwegian delicacies. It’s a potato-based product with lots of butter. And it’s rolled out like a piecrust only very, very thin, almost translucent, and served with butter and probably brown sugar. And sometimes they’ll roll up a sausage or the lutefisk in the lefse and eat it that way. But usually it’s served with a dinner—the way you would serve a dinner roll or bread. Well, usually the lefse would be served in conjunction with a church supper or some special occasion like a wedding, maybe an anniversary if they’re all from Norwegian backgrounds. That’s one of the things they would serve in the side line with the rolls. And especially at Christmas—most people would have lefse in the home at Christmas.

The Norwegians use a lot of different type foods. And of course a lot of it is when the immigrants first came over here in the 1850s, most of them--they wanted things different. They didn’t want to teach their children the language. They spoke Norwegian to speak over their children’s heads, but the children are getting English in the schools. And they wanted everything American. They wanted to be an American. But, now in later years, it’s kind of just the opposite. Every family is trying to go back and find their ethnic roots. And in Decorah that’s very easy to do. A lot of people in Decorah have taken trips to Norway only to just look for roots. They aren’t sure there’s cousins or relatives over there. There probably are, but they want to find them.

I’ve been to Norway a couple times, and I plan to go again. I felt at home when we got off the plane. It was just, I don’t know, because airports are airports. But this was a smaller airport. And we got on the bus and the scenery, and it’s so many shades of green. It’s kind of like Iowa in the spring. It’s more shades of green than you imagine.