NORWAY DAY 2011

Norway Day falls on the second Sunday in July each year. This year will mark the 79th year of celebrating on July 10, 2011. It is held at Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis,the home of the Minnehaha Water Falls which due to the heavy rains we have experienced in the past few months was flowing with great force. This day is a celebration of Norwegian ancestry which has become a yearly tradition for many local Norwegian immigrants, their children and now grandchildren. I am a first generation Norwegian-American and I attended my first Norway Day with my father and mother when I was about two years old. I don’t know that anyone would have thought we would still be participating in this celebration some fifty years later, but we are. First there is always a Lutheran Church service (most of the Norwegians are Lutheran) presented by the Mindekirken Church in Minneapolis where services are still held in Norwegian and of course English too. The Nordic dancers perform on stage along with the Norwegian Glee Club which my father has belonged to for over fifty years. This year a newly formed group, Daughters of Norway, had a small choir perform, also. The event consists of booths selling Norwegian and Scandinavian books, sweaters, music and an authentic Scandinavian food booth, Nordic Treats. A number of years back, my sisters and I attended the event and were shocked to see there were no authentic Norwegian foods to purchase. Now it may seem odd, but our mother who is 100% German learned to make the Norwegian foods and taught us, so we decided to sign up to have a food booth at the event the following year. Thus in 2005, Nordic Treats booth was started. We serve Norwegian Meatballs, Klub, Romegrott, Norwegian Heart -shaped Waffles, Norwegian Ferry Boat Pancakes, Sandbakkles, Krumkake, Lefse, and Norwegian little Donuts. We also sell Nordic Photo cards featuring photos I took in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland, a Norwegian Children’s book I wrote, Real Norwegians Eat Lutefisk, with matching T-shirts, a Nordic Family cookbook my sister wrote, Norway Day bookmarks my sister made and other miscellaneous Norwegian items. It has become a family tradition, where each year we add more items to sell to our list and are joined by family members who come great distances to be with us. Last year on probably the hottest day of the year, my daughter and her family came from Oklahoma, my nephew came from California, my sister came from Florida and my son and nephew along with other family friends from the Minneapolis area joined us for another fun and successful year. I am sure my parents never thought that by bringing their daughter to Norway Day over fifty years ago would result in a family tradition of serving Norwegian traditional foods in their very own Nordic Treats food booth years later at the very same Norway Day celebration at Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis!