from the editor darra goldstein

For everyone in the far north,

Survival Cuisine food meant subsistence,

not fine dining

Last november, as the days grew increasingly short, I flew to Tromsø,

Norway, then boarded a ship and sailed far above the Arctic Circle to Kirkenes.
The occasion was the annual conference of the Norwegian Arts Council, which
this year focused on the Barents Sea and its imminent transformation from a
region of pristine beauty to a site of multinational oil extraction. Arts practitioners
and administrators from all over Norway convened to discuss ways in which to
celebrate local culture in the four countries comprising the region: Norway,
Sweden, Finland, and Russia. I went along to see whether food traditions, or
(dare I say) cuisine, could be a useful part of this discussion.
At nearly every meal we ate reindeer and fish, and as we sailed through the
wintry half-light of the Arctic, I kept thinking about what constitutes a cuisine.
For centuries, reindeer have sustained the indigenous Sami, the nomadic people
who once survived by herding them. The Sami supplemented the reindeer meat
with elk and fish, devising labor-intensive methods to dry and smoke them for
long keeping. Coastal Norwegians relied largely on cod, which they processed in
many ways. For everyone in the far north, food meant subsistence, not fine dining.
That’s not to say that people lacked a sense of taste, only that in such a harsh cli-
mate food’s primary purpose had more urgency: calories = body heat = survival.
Now, in affluent twenty-first-century Norway, the foods of the Barents region
are being very differently construed. In the hands of a new generation of talented
chefs, traditional dishes become exquisite and refined. At Vin og Vilt in Kirkenes,
reindeer tongue is smoked and thinly sliced, then served with a garnet beet sauce
and wild mushrooms on the side. Saddle of reindeer is roasted and offered up
with a rich brown sauce and lingonberries stirred lightly with sugar. At Tromsø’s
Store Norske Fiskekompani, boknafisk, once the food of survival, became the stuff
of my dreams: semi-dried cod gently boiled and served with creamed carrots and
an entire bowl of bacon fat. I also savored reindeer bresaola with blueberry vinai-
grette and wild mushroom fricassee, all washed down with icy aquavit. Saithe, a
large, meaty cod, complemented the saltiness of westjfordschinke, the “ham of the
western fjords,” which turned out to be none other than whale.
 It’s easy enough to

manipulate food to construct

an appealing image of the

past. What’s more difficult is

to decide how food can be

used in the future.

The notion of “cuisine” involves not just cooking or the transformation of

foodstuffs by means of processes like curing. It also implies something more, some-
thing that has to do with taste and aesthetics: food that has been artfully prepared.
As I sampled the foods of the far north, I experienced them both within their orig-
inal context—local foods prepared by age-old methods—and outside of it—food
served in restaurants, prepared by professional chefs. It was the duality of the expe-
rience that made me aware of another element that must enter into any discussion
of what constitutes cuisine: self-consciousness, or at least a certain awareness. For
instance, by calling attention to suovas, the traditional salt-dried and smoked rein-
deer meat prepared by the Sami, the Slow Food movement in 2004 turned this
preparation into something beyond subsistence food; it became a product of arti-
sanal craftsmanship, something to be cherished and protected. Traditional dishes
may also be understood as part of a cuisine when they are compared to foods that
have been more recently introduced. Thus, the image of the traditional Norwegian
Christmas dish pinnekjøtt—lamb ribs that have been salted and dried (or salted,
smoked, and dried) and then slowly boiled in water over birch twigs—has changed
now that foreign foods have invaded the Norwegian repertoire. No longer dispar-
aged as old-fashioned and smacking of less abundant times, pinnekjøtt is now
considered a badge of Norwegian identity, an important link in a traditional food
culture that is in danger of being lost. Rescued from ignominy, it commands a
high price at stores such as Oslo’s tantalizing Fenaknoken.
Can the preservation of indigenous foodways actually help a culture survive,
or is the culture already halfway lost when it becomes self-conscious? How much
self-awareness is necessary for cultural coherence in a world of media onslaught?
And how much compromise is possible? Without a distinct identity, indigenous
cultures vanish, but there is inherent danger in devising food festivals and tourist
events to promote native bounty, lest they come across as a Disneyfication of the
culture—something consumed and enjoyed but no longer genuine. Cultural pol-
icy regarding food, then, is a matter of both local and national concern. Now,
when the Barents Sea is about to be exploited for oil, it’s important to consider
whether the region’s traditional food cultures can be used in any meaningful way.
It’s easy enough to manipulate food to construct an appealing image of the past.
What’s more difficult is to decide how food can be used in the future to help
build a strong identity for the entire Barents Region, one that reaches across polit-
ical and linguistic boundaries and enables local cultures to survive.g