Norweigan Christmas Traditions: Pinnekjøtt

Last year, I highlighted a Norwegian Christmas tradition that I'm not particularly fond of. In general, this blog has presented Norway in a more negative manner, which is a bit unfair, given that I live here happily. Norway has many wonderful foods, despite the widespread rumors of rotten fish or jellied fish or pickled fish. Although Norway does in fact have these things and on the West coast there is a great love for fish, Norwegians do enjoy non-disgusting-fish things.

The country has three main Christmas foods and their prevalence is mostly regional. On the East side, they eat ribbe, which is a pork rip roast, crackling intact, cooked crispy, so the meat is dry and inedible—mostly ignored—and skin becomes a tasty treat to be immersed in gravy. The West and North often eat pinnekjøtt, which I will describe later. The masochists choose lutefisk. There is rumor of a disturbing growing trend of frozen pizza, but I've never met anyone who has done this.

I feel fortunate that my wife's family prefers pinnekjøtt, as it's among the most delicious foods in Norway. Like most of Norway's traditional foods, it begins with a salt brine. Immersed in this are the entire ribs of a lamb or sheep, then they are hung to dry and stored in raised barn. In the area around Bergen, the ribs are also smoked to prevent mold growth in Hordaland's wet climate. A day before consumption, the ribs are placed in a water bath to reconstitute the meat and extract much of the salt. After soaking, they are placed in a large pan, with birch branches in the bottom and steamed.

No meal of pinnekjøtt is complete without kålrabistappe, which sounds fancy, but merely means “crammed rutabagas”. I know not why they call rutabagas “kohlrabi”, which is almost every single other languages' word for a completely different vegetable (In Norwegian, it is called a knutekål, knot cabbage, which is admittedly a better name). I just find it odd that they haven't taken to the Brits name for rutabagas. I imaging most Norwegians would love the chance to call their Christmas dinner “mashed Swedes”.

Rarely though is kålrabistappe merely rutabagas. It also contains carrots, some potatoes, lots of butter and cream, and disturbing amount of the liquid lamb fat skimmed from the steaming pot. This fat is often used as a gravy in the meal. This is a meal best served with beer and a shot of aquavit, though now, many try it with highly acidic red wine. It is filling food; often one will overeat before they realize it. Within hours, the houses become toxic, hardly an inviting place for Santa. Most cope with excessive intoxication.

I tried pinnekjøtt during my first visit to Bergen. Throughout our initial courtship, I'd hear impassioned stories of the wondrous “stick meat” (there is currently a debate if the name refers to the sticks in the bottom of the steaming pan or is a description of the food itself—each piece is in fact a stick of meat) and though it did not sound appetizing, Michelle had always been trustworthy about food. I'll admit, that I found it to be good, not great. To my surprise, many don't like it. I can understand a hate of lutefisk, but there is nothing challenging about lamb ribs. I've grown to love and I am nearly as excited as my wife for Christmas Eve. I may not believe in Santa anymore, but I do believe that I love lamb.

On Michael Brown

I have been an expatriate of the United States for a few years now and though I don't want to start a long story of why I left my home (if you wish, you can just read the entire blog to get much of the narrative), there have been some recent current events that have transported me to that first day I ever uttered resignation toward my ancestral home. It was in February of 2000, when I was just a boy of 16. I stood with my childhood friend Nathan Meints and watched in dismay as police officers Edward McMellon, Sean Carroll, Kenneth Boss and Richard Murphy were acquitted for the murder of Amadou Diallo. My teenage brain could not comprehend that the state of New York would allow four men to shoot at an unarmed 41 times without consequences. It was the first time I looked at the United States as a country I might not want to live in.

I was more idealistic then. Although I felt too young to make a real stand against injustice, I was just over a year away from turning 18, voting age. I thought my voice would matter, that democracy would do its job. Then once again, in front of a TV in January 2001, I swore to abandon this nation as I watched a man who was not legally elected assume the presidency of the United States.

These are the things that make a man feel powerless.

Now, many years later, long after I've given up on trying to change the place I call home, unarmed citizens continue to be murdered out of racism-fuel fear. Michael Brown is dead. Now so is Eric Garner. And still these cases are not being prosecuted.

It can be dangerously easy to speculate upon a butterfly's wings, but that doesn't mean one can't see where the winds they create blow. This is a not a minor problem. This is not a simple case of a mistake made in a highly-dangerous, passionate situation. This is becoming a trend. All of this is a symptom of institutional racism that we all suffer from and no amount of voting for Obama is going to fix it. The failure of the US government to make reforms or even take some of these cases to trial is communicating a frightening ideology, that it is acceptable for police officers to kill people if they feel scared.

I am not a police officer, but I respect them immensely. They are doing a far more dangerous job than I'll ever do and they are risking their lives to protect people. They are expected to make immediate decisions of whether a threat is innocuous or deadly. However, when there is little accountability for when they choose wrongly (or in the case of Amadou Diallo, when they empty their chambers, reload, and continue shooting a clearly subdued suspect), people are going to choose the option that offers the most personal safety, every time. We are poor judges of this. We (as in all of us, black or white) are more likely to assume somebody is armed if they have darker skin (see Keith Payne's many experiments).

There is surely a voice out there saying that most of the crime in the USA is committed by African Americans anyway, so this bias is backed in statistics. Well, if you travel to other countries you will quickly learn that crime is not race-issue, but a socioeconomic one.  I'd start listing sources and throwing out more hyphenated words such as self-fulfilling prophecy, but it would bog down the fluidity of this impassioned rant, and if people take all I'm saying at face value without any independent research or background knowledge, then this world is in a sorry state indeed. No matter your race, nationality, or religion, there are good people and bad people. Assholes and saints. An anti-social individual from a poor background becomes a drug dealer. An anti-social individual from a rich background becomes a CEO. (this is of course using the psychology's definition of “anti-social”). It's just that one is demonized more than the other. In reality, we should all be fearing white people, because I never heard of black man in a hooded sweatshirt stealing $700,000,000,000. I've also never heard of a CEO being shot at 41 times when pulling out a pen. With the widening wealth inequality, how long will it take before it isn't African Americans being harassed, arrested, shot at, murdered by police, but anyone who isn't the ruling oligarchy?

By not acting, the United States government is sending a clear message: that this behavior IS tolerated. Much like a parent who doesn't punish a child for wrong-doing, the accountability moves up. Every Diallo, Brown, or Garner that goes unchallenged gives the police more power. It desensitizes the people against these types of killings and leaves us in fear. Talk you all you want of the fear police officers face in the ghetto, but imagine the fear of a ghetto-dweller who could be shot by those meant to protect him/her when they pull out a wallet.

I'll digress for moment here. My friend Manda and I once had a buddy over—as one can guess from context, he was African American. He stepped out for a smoke and never came back. We called his phone, but got no answer. A week later, (he was a flaky guy) he finally picks up and explained that he was dragged from our front steps and taken into custody. We asked why he didn't protest, have the police knock on our door to vouch for him and he said, “Man, when you've been tossed into the back of cop car enough times for nothing, you learn pretty quickly not to argue.” For a country that's proudest trait is freedom and equality, we sure don't know how to show it.

The powers of the United States police force is getting out of control, both through implicit messages and explicit legislation. Today it may be Michael Brown dying, but unchecked it could become anybody. By a lack of action, the government is saying that the police force has the right to kill whoever they deem a threat. Since the police is an arm of the government, one truth is evident: the United States government can kill whomever they consider dangerous. Today's Michael Brown is tomorrow's Thomas Paine.

This sounds like a big jump in logic, because it is. The United States government is not abusing its power (*cough). The United States government is not incarcerating dissenters, radicals, writers—yet. But the power is building. The precedent is growing. The desensitization is festering. There is a fine line between a protester and a terrorist, and sometimes all one needs to make that step is a little bit of fear. And once the police force decides that the two are synonymous, the First Amendment is jeopardy.

It's easy for me to sit here in my home, to bitch about my estranged home from within a country that is in the midst of debate of whether police officers should be allowed to carry a gun, much less use one. But the United States is called the “land of the free and brave” and clearly I'm not in the last category (just as much as the average American is not in the first). I fled the first chance I got and I am not looking back. I love America. I love the people, the land, the culture, but I don't for a minute miss the anger I felt ever single day while living there. That anger though, when mixed with bravery, can spur some people to actually make a change. That discontent is what founded this nation, what forced those few brave founding fathers to reject oppression and form the nation they felt was just.

American needs to start getting mad over this stuff and they need to be brave, and thank goodness, many are. Protest. Stand up for your rights. Write your legislatures. The United States is still a democracy, but a litmus test is needed. Citizens need to pick an issue—and this is an excellent one—and show that we the people still have a voice. If reform is passed, or even if these cases go to trial, maybe this exhibits that the people still rule the United States, instead of its inverse. But, if this gets ignored, fended off by another unrelated scandal, ignored, or talked down as a non-problem, then clearly the United States government needs a new label than “democracy”. I'll give you a hint: it also starts with a 'D'.