FOREWORD
Food is more than just nutrition – it is culture, identity and history. The new Nordic cuisine movement has challenged our ideas about Nordic food culture and forged a new understanding of what it means to eat in harmony with nature. With its ideals of sustainability, seasonal ingredients and modern culinary innovation, the movement has had a deep impact on both the restaurant sector and the world of everyday food.
This book has been compiled on the occasion of the exhibition “New Nordic. Cuisine, Aesthetics and Place” at The National Museum, which explores the interaction between the evolution of new Nordic cuisine and trends in other forms of contemporary culture. Architecture, contemporary art, design and crafts are woven together to provide a broader understanding of the movement’s aesthetic characteristics. How did materials, people and landscape interact to produce a distinctly Nordic culinary identity?
The publication you now have in your hands is both a companion to the exhibition and a stand-alone compendium of key concepts, ingredients, chefs and restaurants that have shaped new Nordic cuisine. Here you will find stories about local and wild ingredients such as woodruff, dulse, angelica, sea kale, arrowgrass and fermented products, ingredients that have enjoyed a renaissance in both top restaurants and home kitchens. In addition, the book includes some surprise perspectives: a visit to El Bulli that never took place, Edvard Munch’s eating and painting habits, Arctic food traditions, ceramics and much more.
With its combination of insightful articles and intriguing images, the book provides a thorough introduction to the ways new Nordic cuisine has influenced gastronomy and food culture, not just in the Nordic countries, but
also internationally. Whether you are a food fan, a chef or a researcher, the following pages will prove a rich source of inspiration, fascination and information about one of the most influential culinary movements of our time.
At one point in the book, it is claimed that ants are the lemon of the North, while ramsons are its garlic. In a similar spirit, we could perhaps say that this compendium is the Nordic region’s own culinary treasure trove – full of unexpected flavours and venerable traditions, with a sprinkling of the unexpected.
Before we say bon appétit, the museum wishes to express its deepest gratitude to all the restaurants, designers, architects, photographers, artisans, artists, food producers, private owners and institutions who have contributed with advice and knowledge, and loaned artworks to the exhibition. Their help has been invaluable!
Thanks also to the Scheibler Foundation for supporting the development of the exhibition, and to everyone at The National Museum who has laboured to make both the exhibition and the book a reality.
Ingrid Røynesdal Director, The National Museum
ABBREVIATIONS
al Alisa Larsen
ald Andreas Liebe Delsett
bas Bente Aass Solbakken
eh Erlend Hammer
ihs Inger Helene N. Stemshaug
la Luisa Aubert
MA Mikael Andersson
mb Martin Braathen
Amass 15
Ancient grains 15
Ants 16
ArktiskMat (ArcticFood) 17
Atelier Food 18
Auteur 19
Avant-garde 23
Axelstorp 27
b.culture 28
Baggan 29
Barr 31
Bech, Bo 31
Biodynamic agriculture 32
Blut und Boden 34
Bread served as a separate course 35
Brimi, Arne 36
Bro dining 38
Brutalisten 39
Bæst 40
Ceramics 41
Chef's Table 47
Childhood 47
Cider 49
Climate 50
Cook It Raw 50
Credo 52
Critical regionalism 53
Cultural hybridisation/ appropriation 54
Dahlgren, Mathias 55
Daniel Berlin Krog 55
Ekstedt 56
El Bulli 57
Elder 66
Eliasson, Olafur 67
Essentialism 68
Exceptionell Råvara 68
Excursions to producers 69
Expeditions 72
Farm-to-table 74
Fermentation 75
Fire 76
Flora Danica 78
Food Critics 80
Food Studio 82
Fool Magazine 83
Foraging 84
Foreword by René Redzepi 86
Frantzén/Lindeberg 86
Frö 87
Fäviken 87
Gastrologik 88
Gastronationalism 88
Gastrotourism 89
Geist 89
Gelinaz ! 89
Genius loci 90
Geranium 93
Grön 94
Hanne på Høyden 95
Harvest Magazine 95
Haute Cuisine 95
Henne Kirkeby Kro 96
Inari 97
Intangible cultural heritage 97
Interior architecture 102
January Herbarium 104
Japan 105
Kaiseki 108
Kaskis 108
Koks 109
Kontrast 110
Kraft 111
Kvann 112
Kvitnes gård 112
Laukkonen, Sasu 113
Locally sourced 114
Locavore 1115
Luxury 115
Lysverket 117
Maaemo 117
Mad 117
Mahogany clam 118
Malling & Schmidt 119
Manfreds 120
Manifesto 121
Material honesty 123
Meyer, Claus 123
Michelin Guide 124
Microregionalism 127
Mistral 128
Moss 128
Måltid 129
Natural wine 130
Naturalism / New Nordic
Naturalism 131
Nature eroticism 131
Neobistro 131
New Basque Cuisine 133
(New) British Cuisine 134
New Materialism 135
New Nordic as an aestethic trend 136
New Nordic Cuisine 137
New Nordic Food 138
New Nordic Food Manifesto 138
New Scandinavian Cooking 140
Nordic Council 140
Nordic Kitchen Symposium 2004 141
Noma 143
Nordic Food Lab 145
Nose-to-tail 146
Nouvelle Cuisine 147
Oaxen 149
Old norse 150
Oprør fra Maven 153
Pairing 154
Pepperweed 157
Petri 157
Petri Pumpa 158
Pjoltergeist 159
Popular culture 160
Ramsons 161
Red coalfish 163
Relæ 163
RE-NAA 164
Restaurants that have received Michelin stars and then been closed by Bjørn Svensson 165
Saltimporten Canteen 165
Sámi restaurant 165
Scandinavism 176
Sea arrowgrass 176
Season 177
Slow food 177
Sour sausage 179
Sourdough 179
Sous vide 180
Sustainability 181
Svenska arméns
överlevnadshandbok 181
Tacit knowledge 182
Taste 183
Terroir 183
The Growth of the Soil 184
The Nordic House in the Faroe Islands 192
Trio 193
Trägårn 193
Tweezers 193
Under 195
Vitalism 195
Volt 198
Weeds and Aliens 198
White Guide 199
Wine packages 199
Wolfgat 201
Working conditions 202
Ylajali 207
YLP ! 208
forgotten cooking techniques, fermentation methods, produce, and special cuts of meat that have been rediscovered and readapted by the chefs/explorers, fusing then and now, tradition and modernism. At least, that’s how the story goes; in part, this is the result of brilliant PR work. If one repeats a story enough times, in different contexts, it becomes the truth. All was not forgotten, of course. The renaissance of heritage grains is linked to the new Nordic movement. According to the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, heritage grains or “heritage cereals” include “older cereal crops, such as the more primitive forms of wheat, like emmer and einkorn, which are different species than the modern wheat” and “native varieties and varieties developed before the 1960s, when industrial farming took over.” This has turned into a business in itself, with a network of small-scale and often organic producers struggling against the monoculture of the conventional agricultural landscape. (ma)
Ants
People around the world eat insects every day, which is how it has been since the dawn of time. But when Noma put ants on the menu in 2012, it caused a sensation. Reaction to their first use of the ingredient was shock, but just a few years later a dish of raw shrimp with ants that was served at a pop-up edition of the restaurant in Japan garnered praise. Greeted with both consternation and joy, this was an ingredient that made sense in terms not only of taste – an elusive acidity – but also of nutritional content. It is also inexpensive, provided you ignore the effort of collecting the ants in the first place. The Nordic countries are unsuited to the cultivation of citrus fruits, which means that for restaurants like Maaemo ants are a legitimate alternative to lemons. It
is no exaggeration to say that Noma made insects acceptable in Scandinavia.
In 2017, Nordic Food Lab, a non-profit open-source organisation founded by Claus Meyer and René Redzepi in 2008, which has since been assimilated into the University of Copenhagen, published the book On Eating Insects. (al)
ArktiskMat (ArcticFood)
A cooking symposium held every year since 2012 in Mosjøen, just south of the Arctic Circle (the southernmost of the three ways of defining the Arctic region). The organisers have succeeded in combining elements from the genre of the international chef symposium (see mad) with Northern Norwegian hospitality and regional development strategy. Other aspects of that strategy include the founding of the Nordnorsk kompetansesenter for mat (Northern Norway Centre of Food Expertise), the establishment of a professional degree in sustainable food experiences, and a successful political drive to co-locate vocational training in nature management with restaurant and food studies in Mosjøen. In this respect, ArktiskMat can be viewed as a concrete and
aatelier food
highly successful example of new Nordic cuisine being anchored on the institutional level. This despite the fact that very few people in the region would describe themselves as residents of the Arctic, a term that only became popular as an alternative to Northern Norway after the Norwegian government launched its Strategy for the High North in 2006. (ald)
Atelier Food
A collaborative project (2013–2014) at the intersection of food and art by the Swedish chef Stefan Eriksson and the Swedish curator, writer, and activist Jan Åman. It was a lunch restaurant at Konstakademien (the Royal Academy of Fine Arts) in Stockholm, but also an arena – a workshop – for chefs, artists, architects, designers, and scholars investigating and discussing the future of food. What should we eat? How? Where? How should the food be produced, distributed, stored, and prepared, in order to both develop and reflect its material and mental surroundings? Something as simple as broth was often the starting point for these enquiries. Later, Stefan Eriksson’s explorative and – one could argue
– philosophical approach to cooking and ingredients, visible through his collaborations with artists, scientists, and producers, was developed in numerous contexts, like for example The Restaurant Lab and, most notably, his own restaurant Brutalisten. (See also Exceptionell Råvara.) (ma)
Auteur
Art has always been inclined to cultivate luminaries. It is easier to relate to great architects, artists, writers and composers when we regard them as individuals. One reason for this is the expectation that audiences have, whether reasonably or otherwise, of being able to surrender to an artistic statement that is thoroughly composed and perfected, something sublime if not even divine, which they themselves could never have created. Such a work is imagined as the embodiment of a singular artistic intention. And the agency that imbues artistic material with such singular intention is invariably an individual artist, possibly a genius, and at the very least an auteur.
The auteur is the eccentric, hard-working little brother of the genius. Hardworking, because the auteur works within, yet to some extent in opposition to, a larger collective. In contrast to the autonomous painter or writer, who can allow his genius to unfold more or less in solitude, the auteur emerged as a figure in the film industry. For how could a film viewer, or film theorist, ever surrender to a director’s singular intention given the collective and commercial framework in which films are produced? Wouldn’t any spark of divine creativity simply wither on contact with the money-guzzling film industry, with all its commercial interests and its machinery of technical and creative contributors, from scriptwriters and cameramen to producers and investors?
Snøhetta, Under (English: below / wonder), Lindesnes, 2019
Victor von Gegerfelt, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnsons hus (Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s house), 1874
Victor von Gegerfelt, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnsons hus (Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s house), 1874
Jensen & Skodvin, Juvet landskapshotell (Landscape hotel on the west coast of Norway), 2007–2008
(Landscape hotel on the west coast of Norway), 2007–2008
Jensen & Skodvin, Juvet landskapshotell
Hans Gude, Høyfjell i uvær (Storm in the Highlands), 1847
Johannes Flintoe, Hjølmodalen i Eidfjord (View of Hjelmodalen in Eidfjord, Hardanger), 1833
Koks, matretter laget ved Leynavatn (Dishes made at Leynavatn), 2021
Restaurant Kontrast, fra en mat-event (from a food event)
Odd Standard, dekketøy for Restaurant Rest, restleire, kyllingføtter og resirkulert glass (tableware)
Bielke&Yang, Food studio nr. 6, «Inn i granskaugen», ølkveld (Into the Woods, beer night)