The Bread Season

I was thinking the other day about bread (maybe it was the smell from the local bread factory in my old home town). There are a lot of first grain harvest ceremonies from a lot of cultures in the late summer/early fall, but I'm not aware of a strong Scandinavian equivalent (if there is one, my Norwegian ancestors neglected to carry it with them to Texas).

Norway has such limited agricultural land (only about 3% of the total land mass, which consists largely or steep slopes and has heavy precipitation), and it also has a relatively short growing season due to the cold climates in  many areas. But none of this stopped Norwegians from loving their porridge and bread! (it just makes it that much more special...) That's why the height of festivity on Yule eve was a bowl of porridge. And pieces of bread have been found in Iron Age graves, possibly as left as burial gifts.

Porridge was the main means of consuming grains (initially barley and rye, and later wheat and oats) until early in the Common Era, when Norse mercenaries picked up baking tips from the Roman armies they served with and brought them home. And Scandinavians have been bread crazy ever since. In fact, it's said that Norwegians probably eat more bread than any other Europeans. They've even got some breads including potatoes, the labor-intensive lefse being the most notable.

My favorite, probably because it's the one my family always had on special occasions, is the humble flatbrød (flatbread), a type of traditional unleavened bread. It's dry, flat, and crispy, and we used to have it during the Yule season. It was actually originally the bread of farmers and peasants, and was a popular winter bread because you could make a great batch of it in the autumn and it would last through the winter (or even longer, if the weather was dry), stored in barrels or stacked on shelves. In fact, it's said by some that the older it is, the better it tastes (something I can't verify, because my mother would have never let me eat something that old).

The processes of both brewing and baking have something of the holy and mysterious about them, even today. One takes these seemingly inert ingredients, —grain and milk, honey and water, —and adds this magical substance known as yeast (in reality the living cells of a small fungus), and after a period of hours or months, the original ingredients have mysteriously changed, transformed themselves into something else—the bread rises, the ale or mead ferments. In earlier times, when fermenting was left to the mercy of wild yeast from the air, this change must have seemed even more miraculous.

Happy Thorrablót!

So, tonight I'm going to celebrate Thorrablót by honoring the god Thor and consuming what remains of the Yuletide eats and drinks.

The Þorrablót is actually a modern festival that started out in the mid-1800s when a group of Icelandic students in Copenhagen got all excited about Icelandic nationalism and held a dinner party honoring their country's traditional foods and customs. They also honored Thor, probably because his name sounded kind of like Thorrablót.  The festival later became popular throughout all Iceland by the mid-twentieth century and is still celebrated today. Some modern followers of Asatru also celebrate the holiday in honor of Thor.

It got its name from the historical Icelandic calendar name for the month of Þorri, which covered the period from mid-January to mid-February.  The Orkneyinga saga mentions a legendary Norwegian king named Þorri ("frost"), the son of Snær ("snow"). Other sources claim that the Kvens (a Finnish population in northern Norway) celebrated a yearly sacrifice at mid-winter.

However, sadly, etymologically the name Þorrablót has nothing to do with the Norse god Þórr, despite the similarity in their names. And it was never a truly ancient, traditional Heathen festival. So all the modern celebrations are non-traditional.

 If you really want to celebrate in the traditional Icelandic manner, folklore has it that on the first morning of the month of Þorri, the head of the house would go outside in the cold only partially dressed: barefoot, dressed in only his shirt, and partly barelegged (one trouser-leg went on his leg, while the other trouser-leg dragged on the ground). He then proceeded to hop on one leg all around his house and bid Þorri welcome to his home.  (Then his wife treated him specially nice the rest of the day, which is also known as Bóndadagur, or "Husband's Day").

Then you can feast on such traditional Icelandic treats as hákarl (rotten shark's meat), svið (boiled sheeps head), blóðmör (congealed sheep's blood wrapped in a ram's stomach), or súrsaðir hrútspungar (the testicles of rams pressed in blocks, boiled and cured in lactic acid), along with a healthy draught of Brennivin (a type of Icelandic aquavit also known as Black Death--you'll need it to wash down all that food).

But it's winter, and it's cold and wet, and all the fun of Yule and my birthday are over, and I really have to get seriously back to work now, and hey, I need a festival. And Thor is just fun, you know? So, here's to pork and beer, here's to Thor, and a big Texas welcome to Þorri!!

It's been a tough year

It's been a long time since I posted. Kind of got distracted by little things, like Hurricane Ike. I tend to be cynical, but was still caught off-guard by how poorly support systems (insurance companies, homeowners associations, the government) perform in such disasters (and I had relatively minor damages compared to some people down on the coast). Safety is an illusion.

Took about eight months to return to "normal" (or at least not abnormal). Finally got to do a lead in a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta (Ruth in Pirates of Penzance) and a minor role in Rice University's The Threepenny Opera (the show that made me want to get into theatre in the first place).

Now I'm trying very hard to get back to a normal work schedule for the new year (and not inclined to very much--they say that Norwegians used to celebrate Yule until Easter...I'm half Norwegian, can't I celebrate until, say, February?)