The Susanne

Today so far has been won­der­ful: prob­ably the best 17. May in years. When we woke this morn­ing we were greeted by snow­flakes fall­ing out­side our window. The Boy­friend and I dressed and shared a quite eleg­ant yet simple break­fast of cham­pagne, some rye crack­ers, grapes and fenalår before set­ting out on today’s adventure.

As we left the flat after break­fast and made our way towards the city centre and the royal castle, the tem­per­at­ure had risen slightly and snow had given way to heavy rain and sharp wind. We met up with The Boyfriend’s brother and pro­ceeded through the throng of rev­el­lers towards the castle to find a good place to spot the King and also watch the children’s parade - and we suc­ceeded beyond expect­a­tion. It was freez­ing, it was wet, my shoes were a touch too high and about a size too big, a man kicked me with his muddy shoe and we only man­aged to catch occa­sional glimpses of the Royals whenever a strong gust of wind would blow aside a branch of the tree which obscured our view of them. Yet is was bril­liant! We waved our little flags and shouted HURRA! with the chil­dren, we spot­ted a rel­at­ive of The Boy­friend and The Brother in one of the march­ing bands and we really had a great time.

After a while I found I could no longer ignore the pain in my feet, and as we were just about frozen through we left the cel­eb­ra­tions and made our way back home where I cooked up a gigantic (at least for three people) brunch. Actu­ally I hadn’t meant for it to be quite of that scale but I found as I was cook­ing away that I simply couldn’t stop. One thing inspired me to make another and in the end I’d made, clock­wise from bottom left: scrambled eggs with chives, warm potato salad, tomato and moz­zarella salad, a plate of smoked salmon and my spe­cial gravlaks (which turned out great I might add. A tad salty, but tasty!), mus­tard sauce for the salmon and aïoli, both home made, fresh baguettes (which I only heated up so no credit there), a plate of cured ham and fenalår (cured leg of lamb), and asparagus with cured ham and parmesan. It was quite a feast!

All this took about an hour to get ready, so luck­ily I thought to serve up a cheese, cured ham and rye crack­ers plate to sus­tain the two hungry men whilst they waited, as well as some italian ice cream cake which I’d pre­pared last night. We feasted upon all this for a while until we were well and fat, and then lounged about for a while trying to catch our breath. The Brother provided some enter­tain­ment in the form of his lovely guitar play:

After brunch we sep­ar­ated for a few hours to get some rest before the evening’s shenanigans: we’re going to a con­cert! Farm­ers Market are play­ing at Rock­e­feller and I’m well excited. I know Stian Carstensen’s music from his Christ­mas Jazz shows home in Eids­voll, which are simply bril­liant. He is a musi­cian quite dif­fer­ent from any other I can think of: incred­ibly tal­en­ted in both tech­nique and per­form­ance, as well as dazzlingly cre­at­ive and ener­getic. I simply can’t wait!

I’m quite excited about the upcom­ing hol­i­day 17. May. It’s the Nor­we­gian Con­sti­tu­tion day, cel­eb­rat­ing the day in 1814 when a con­greg­a­tion of the finest men of our nation com­pleted our con­sti­tu­tion and declared our inde­pend­ence from Den­mark. Of course, we were to be sub­jug­ated to Sweden for another ninety-​one years before finally achiev­ing com­plete inde­pend­ence in 1905. But we still cel­eb­rate 17. May as the most import­ant date in our nation’s his­tory. The day is tra­di­tion­ally cel­eb­rated with every­one dressed up in their best, many wear­ing folk dress, all gath­er­ing in the streets to par­take of or watch the many 17. May parades.

The best known and prob­ably most endeared parades are of course the children’s parades. The Nor­we­gian poet Henrik Werge­land fathered the idea of the national day being the day of our nation’s chil­dren. He also penned the song ‘Vi ere en nasjon vi med’ (lit­er­ally trans­lated ‘we are a nation, we also’) which is sung by chil­dren in the parade. The parades are fron­ted by march­ing bands play­ing this and other songs such as the national anthem, with school chil­dren fol­low­ing, singing, shout­ing ‘HURRA’ and waving flags. It is truly a sight. In Oslo the children’s parade fin­ishes out­side the royal castle where the royal family gath­ers on the bal­cony, for the people’s view­ing pleasure.

At Eids­voll, where the con­sti­tu­tion was cre­ated, there is also a spe­cial pro­gramme on each 17. May. The set­ting is per­fect for the cel­eb­ra­tions on this day: the house where it all took place making a mag­ni­fi­cent back­drop whilst the people gather in the grounds for speeches, music and games for the chil­dren. This is the 17. May I grew up with. We would get up early, gather at my school and then pro­ceed to the start­ing place for the parade before, after an excru­ci­at­ingly long wait, the parade would get under way and finally we’d end up at Eids­vollbygnin­gen where our par­ents awaited us, cheer­ing, their pock­ets con­tain­ing money for the hot dogs and ice cream we so longed for. 17. May is the one day a year when chil­dren can eat all the ice cream and all the hot dogs they like.

This year, I’m host­ing my first 17. May break­fast. The Boy­friend and I decided on a quieter and less stress­ful route this year, no stu­dent party and no train ride to the Nation’s cradle which is where my par­ents live and is the scene of my child­hood. Instead we’re having The Boyfriend’s brother over for break­fast early in the morn­ing and then we’ll head down town to see the children’s parade and try to get a glimpse of the King.

As far as I’m con­cerned, I don’t mind going the whole day without so much as a mouth­ful of ice cream or hot dog. What I could never do without on this day though, is salmon. Smoked salmon and gravlaks. Which dir­ectly trans­lates to dug salmon or dig-​salmon. It has noth­ing to do with dig­ging though: gravlaks is simply fresh salmon mar­in­ated in a mix­ture of salt, sugar, fresh dill and some cognac for three-​four days. Many people con­fuse gravlaks with the very different-​tasting rak­fisk. Whilst gravlaks is fresh salmon and deli­ciously tast­ing, rak­fisk on the other hand is fer­men­ted fish. Some do say that gravlaks is basic­ally the same product, having simply gone through a quicker pro­cess not includ­ing micro-​organisms and that the final result is much the same; but I do not agree with this com­par­ison at all. To me, there is a clear dis­tinc­tion between the fla­vours and also, there is of course a vast dif­fer­ence between decom­pos­ing fish and fresh fish. And just to make it clear: no one will be served rak­fisk at my table. Ever.

Today, my pas­sion for improv cook­ing has lead me to mar­in­ate half a side of smoked salmon. Yes, it might be super­flu­ous, as the fish is already ‘prepared’, it might not turn out well at all, but I’d quite like to see the result anyway. I made the mar­in­ade using the usual ingredi­ents: salt, sugar, pepper and heaps of fresh dill. As we don’t have cognac in the house (The Boy­friend is more of a whisky drinker) I poured a shot of whisky over my little exper­i­ment instead. I’m excited to see the result on Sat­urday: I’m sure I’ll eat it even if it doesn’t taste great con­sid­er­ing the amount of work I have ahead of me in the days to come. The salmon must be turned over sev­eral times a day, and prefer­ably left out of the refri­ger­ator for a few hours each day in order for the fla­vours to prop­erly impreg­nate the fish.

Excited? Oh yes, I should think so!