Lussekatter

[mrissa]

So here's the thing about being Scandahuvian: we are both a fussy and a violent people. We really try to downplay the latter trait, still being embarrassed about those raids on your coastlines and all. (Sorry. Really.) But it's there. And it has to come out somewhere, and where it comes out is in the winter baking. We have sandbakkel tins for the fussy side. The violence is lussekatter.

I'm serious. Lussekatter are a glorious personal symbol of light against darkness. They make my house smell of saffron and yeast and expectation of better things to come. But they are an absolute beast to knead. Lussekatter are like winter here in the northlands: you get started, and you think, hey, this isn't so bad. And maybe you hum a little bit, and you get into a rhythm, and you think, no problem! I can do this! I always have before! And then nothing changes, and so you keep going, but a little doubt creeps in. And then still nothing changes, and the doubt becomes certainty: this will never end. I will always be up to my elbows in sticky golden goodness, it will never become smooth and pliable, and incidentally the light will never return, we won't be able to light the candles, and the jotuns will come howling down upon us. (It's amazing how often it comes down to frost giants in my life. No, really. You'd be amazed.)

But even though nothing changes, you still keep going, because that's what you do; you don't stop being kind when the world is filled with assholes, you don't stop trying to figure things out when the world is filled with idiots, and you don't stop kicking the darkness just because it still won't bleed daylight. ("Lovers in a Dangerous Time" is one of my lussekatter baking songs for the last few years. The new one this year is by the Mountain Goats, with the refrain, "I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me." Very apt for Santa Lucia.) That's not how we are. That's not what we do. And if you know of a phrase of more censure in Minnesotan than, "That's not what we do," I'd love to hear it.

And then finally, as you have started to wonder if maybe you made the whole thing up about the sun returning, the dough pulls away from your hand a bit. It adheres to itself rather than to you or the bowl. Encouraged, you pull it up, and it comes in a whole lump, and you can slam the lump down in a whole loud chunk, which is very satisfying, and this is where you switch from singing or sullen silence, depending on your particular approach to battling darkness, into cries such as, "Yarrrrg!" You are about to triumph over the lussekatter dough. This is the best part. Better than waking in the morning when it's still dark and creeping downstairs to find them ready to eat. Better than the calm satisfied sleep that always intervenes between the baking and the eating of the lussekatter. The moment when you know the tide has turned and you will triumph over this lump of gluten and sugar and very expensive spice.

Because Santa Lucia Day is not a Solstice holiday. It is a pre-Solstice holiday, and its location on the 13th means that it is distinctly, definitely, and permanently a pre-Solstice holiday, not just a fluke this year. And what does that mean? It means that winter is still coming. It means that you aren't baking these swirls of saffron sweetness knowing that things will get lighter every day from here. No. You know that you haven't hit bottom yet, that it will get darker still before there is light, and that the cold will rush in when the dark has gone. And you sing the songs and light the candles and bake the bread before things have reached their darkest, and then as things get darker still, you have that light with you to see by.

Edited to add: by request, my lussekatter recipe.

Comments

[loup_noir]

still being embarrassed about those raids on your coastlines and all.

*laughs* Not my family. My mother is very, very proud of her viking heritage. According to her, the entire world should belong to the Swedish vikings. Maybe it's the American Scandahuvian sorts?

[thesaucernews.livejournal.com]

Don't apologize... there were too many Skraelings running around anyway.

[thesaucernews.livejournal.com]

sorry... hopping.

[tamago.livejournal.com]

I cheat. My stand mixer does the heavy lifting when kneading lussekatter dough. But then I'm a mongrel Californian, and my husband is Swedish in the way salt is sweet if you put it in a sugar bowl.

As I understand it, when St. Lucia was first celebrated under the Julian calendar it *did* fall on the solstice. When they switched to the Gregorian calendar and "lost" about two weeks, people kept celebrating the calendar date, even though the solstice was happening two weeks later. So, not only does St. Lucia day insist "you haven't hit bottom yet" it does so because of clerical error. Yes, to truly mess things up you need a bureaucracy.

[aranel.livejournal.com]

Yes, hence the Donne poem. Which also means that Christmas used to be a more post-Solstice holiday than it is now.

[aszanoni.livejournal.com]

Ah, I'm proud of having Scandanavian blood. It enchants me how far they got around the world. Viking longboats were what, only knee-high?

My trace is Norwegian, I believe; I know it's not Danish, because a friend was quite appalled that I wasn't a Dane. -grin-

I wonder if Iceland still has the highest literacy rate in the world...

-nods- Winter and cold and darkness will yet come, and eventually go. The Great Worm eats his tail, continually, for the cycle will continue.

- Chica

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Appalled that you weren't a Dane for why? Because you seemed Danish or because they thought that everybody ought to be? (I am thinking of my father-in-law saying, "If y'ain't Dutch, y'ain't much." I ain't Dutch.)

Iceland does still have the highest literacy rate in the world, and I have a hard time seeing anything that'll change that. It's very, very embedded in that culture. Bless 'em. It was one of the reasons I started to get interested in Iceland in the first place.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

[morr.livejournal.com]

So you're saying you have extra cookies?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Aheh. Um, yah. You could say that. Extra cookies are practically a congenital condition for me. You've met my mom. If she never gave you a cookie, I'm surprised.

I'm one of those rare people who likes baking far, far better than eating.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

You say these things and I wonder sometimes if I was adopted out from Minnesota. And then I get hungry. *g*

And I love "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" for precisely that line.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Canada's like Minnesota. We're both stubborn and polite and have good vowels and like to smack people the puck around with sticks. It's no small set of commonalities.

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

Wow. Can I marry you? You nailed it.

(Entirely Norwegian.)

[brooksmoses]

Oh, bother. There's a line already.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Somehow you managed to write a post that speaks both to my somewhat-buried quarter of Scandinavian heritage -- the part of me that likes bloody-minded Norse fatalism and things with jotuns in -- and to my Dallas-based eighteen years of upbringing -- which would be the part of me that hates darkness and winter and cold and really really wants the light to stick around all year.

Now I want to ask my half-Scand mother why she doesn't make lussekatter. Though you made me giggle the other day by being the first non-family member I've seen mention spritz as a Christmas cookie. Do you make krum kake?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Of course spritz are Christmas cookies. Couldn't have Christmas without spritz!

We make krumkake some years. Some years not. This year is a not, so far, although if my mom needs to jolly my Onie, she may do so by suggesting that we make krumkake. On the other hand, Onie didn't help with the lefse this year, preferring to sit and supervise, so that might backfire. Hmm.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Lovely.

Could you share your lussekatter recipe?

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

And where do you get your saffron, by the way? I was looking for it in several stores this week and coming up scratch.

[hilleviw.livejournal.com]

for me Lucia Dag will ever be marked by the smells of pepparkakor and kanelbullar, and by the children serving the parents breakfast....

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have already made the pepparkakor, and I decided to bring my parents' pepparkakor and lussekatter down to their house last night rather than trying to beat my dad's alarm clock this morning.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

Annotations via Youtube:

Lovers in a Dangerous Time (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dGNDUdtNh8) by Bruce Cockburn (original)
Lovers in a Dangerous Time (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ercqDP18ms) (Barenaked Ladies cover)
This Year (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYCzDhaRV60&eurl=) by The Mountain Goats.

[tanngrisnir.livejournal.com]

being embarrassed about those raids on your coastlines and all

Not at all! If the gods did not want those raids on our coastline, they would not have given us all those monasteries for you to burn.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I love a statistic I learned at one point while studying the Vikings. The exact numbers escape me, but it went something like this: in a given decade, we have evidence of the Vikings sacking and burning seven Irish monasteries. In that same decade, the Irish sacked and burned forty Irish monasteries.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Recipe. Please. Urgent...

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Will post an annotation this morning.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Wonderful post. Thank you. (matociquala sent me: but you probably knew that...)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

But even though nothing changes, you still keep going, because that's what you do; you don't stop being kind when the world is filled with assholes, you don't stop trying to figure things out when the world is filled with idiots, and you don't stop kicking the darkness just because it still won't bleed daylight.

I'm writing that one down, and I'm sending a friend who's had a tough year over to read this.

[bellanorth.livejournal.com]

Thank you for such a wonderful piece.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[otherwise-nyc.livejournal.com]

Our mutual friend Columbine sends me here from time to time, and I always find brilliance.

So glad you wrote this; I'm having a bit of darkness before the light this week, and it heartened me.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad to hear it. Thanks very much.

[atheilen.livejournal.com]

Hi, Mrissa. I really like your journal, and this post. I've been lurking here for quite some time, and Bear said I should introduce myself. So I am! I'm Sarah. I'm a snarky, stubborn, less-tough-than-she looks monkey with wheels, and reading is my natural state. Um, I think that's all you need to know about me, really. :)

BTW, I tried your recipe for apple bread awhile back, and it was very good.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Very cool; glad you spoke up.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Lussekatter sounds an awful lot like risotto.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

One of the main differences for me is that the risotto I make only takes arm strength in the sense of having the stamina to stand there and keep stirring. You don't have to punch a large and recalcitrant lump of dough over and over andoverandover for risotto. Patience, definitely. Risotto is still a good midwinter food, or rice pudding. But it's not as violent.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

(And thank you, this is lovely.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[elisem.livejournal.com]

OK, pegkerr linked to this again this year, and I have to link to it too. Because yes. Just... yes.

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow. what a fabulous post. (Here via sanj, who got the link from ellen_fremedon.)

I'm a transplant to the north country (though I've been up here 15 years, so I'm getting used to winter at last) and oh, boy, does this post resonate for me.

Also now I really want to bake lussekatter today. If only we had a teaspoon of saffron on hand.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Perhaps gingerbread would do? The spices smell all warm and friendly.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

It's elisem's fault I'm here, but I'm glad I clicked (I always am when she says "Hey, lookie over here!").

I'm glad for these reasons:

1. Fabulous post. Thank you!
2. My husband is a descendant of Erik Bloodaxe, insofar as these things are determinable.
3. Lussekatter!
4. I am an electrician by trade. St. Lucia is our patron saint. I foresee a new tradition in my future.

Thank you, for all of that.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I hadn't known that St. Lucia was the patron of electricians, but of course it all makes sense now that you say so! I'm glad you liked it.

[jenk]

tereshkova2001 pointed me here. Indeed, fabulous post. I'm a bit east of Seattle (latitude 47.mumble) and really feeling the lack of light this time of year m'self...

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Glad you enjoyed it! I'll be making the lussekatter again on the 12th.