{"id":730,"date":"2012-08-02T21:04:44","date_gmt":"2012-08-02T21:04:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nordicfoodlab.org\/blog_month_08-2012\/"},"modified":"2022-02-19T22:38:53","modified_gmt":"2022-02-19T22:38:53","slug":"creating-terroir-an-anthropological-perspective-on-new-nordic-cuisine-as-an-expression-of-nordic-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nordicfoodlab.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/creating-terroir-an-anthropological-perspective-on-new-nordic-cuisine-as-an-expression-of-nordic-identity\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating Terroir: An Anthropological Perspective on New Nordic Cuisine as an Expression of Nordic Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Mark Emil Hermansen<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCuisine is not food, it is food transcended, nature transformed into a social product.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 Clark 1975<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Mark Emil Hermansen, Anthropologist at Nordic Food Lab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By examining New Nordic Cuisine<\/em> – a contemporary food discourse based only on produce grown and ways of cooking \u201cnative\u201d to the Nordic region – this article explores localised cuisine as a focal point for analysing contemporary flows of identity sentiments in the Nordic region in the 21st century. By (re)creating a Nordic terroir, New Nordic Cuisine<\/em> enables its \u201cnatives\u201d to ingest the (cultural) landscape, and consume a material version of local and regional identity. Identity will be shown to be a concept that is in many ways inarticulate but can be ingested as \u201cnature\u201d through localised cuisine, becoming, in the words of Appadurai (1981), \u2018a highly condensed social fact\u2019, and established \u201cThe Nordic\u201d as a marker of group identity in the Scandinavian region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Introduction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In this dissertation I will explore the creation of Nordic terroir by looking at some of the ways in which discourses of cuisine, landscape and identity have shaped contemporary Scandinavian cuisine in order to answer the question: To what extent is New Nordic Cuisine an expression of local identity?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The New Nordic Cuisine movement has, to a large extent, been shaped by the Manifesto for a New Nordic Cuisine published by a group of Scandinavian chefs in 2004, creating a new food discourse based only on produce grown within the Nordic region. This presents the idea of \u201cthe Nordic\u201d as a marker of group identity in the Scandinavian region. Ideas and perceptions of identity are often paradoxical and contested, but can to some extent inform us of some of the ways in which groups perceive
themselves. By (re)creating a Nordic terroir, New Nordic Cuisine enables its \u201cnatives\u201d to ingest the (cultural) landscape, and consume a material version of local and regional identity. Identity will be shown to be a concept that is in many ways inarticulate but can be ingested as \u201cnature\u201d through localised cuisine, becoming, in the words of Appadurai (1981), \u2018a highly condensed social fact\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will look at the creation of Nordic terroir by studying local and regional perceptions of a shared Nordic history and landscape that enable the \u2018imagined community\u2019 (Anderson 1991) of the Nordic people \u2013 the Nordic folk. I will argue that the New Nordic Cuisine movement can be seen as a reaction to the modern world of globalization, migration and electronic mediation. The new forms of mediation destabilize the traditional boundaries of the nation-state and makes room for new transnational \u2018imagined communities\u2019, and I will argue that the creation of Nordic terroir is a method to \u2018produce locality\u2019 (Appadurai 1996) in the post-national world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terroir will be used as a cultural category in this dissertation, and a further elaboration on its meaning and history is here necessary. Its meaning is originally embedded in French culture, as part of people\u2019s everyday assumptions about food. Its literal meaning is somewhere in between soil, locality, and \u2018part of the country\u2019 (Trubek 2008: 9).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Purity and Danger Mary Douglas (1985: 35) defines dirt as \u2018matter out of place\u2019. Terroir, it could be said, is the opposite of dirt – it is matter in a certain place. Douglas continues: \u2018Dirt, then, is never and isolated event. Where there is dirt there is a system. Dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, insofar as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements\u2019 (Ibid.). Terroir embodies the connections made between \u2018dirt as matter in place\u2019, cuisine, taste, history, memory and landscape. Its meaning is ascribed by culture, transforming it into a significant category, as soil, landscape and surroundings and motivates shifting interpretations of it depending on the culture, the person and the moment in history (Trubek 2008).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her book Taste of Place Amy Trubek (2008) tracks how terroir has been an important cultural category for the French in categorizing taste, produce and local cuisines, and traces it back to a celebration of the peasant and agrarian life that are central to French identity. She highlights the role of the \u201cnatural\u201d world when discerning the taste of food; rock, grass, hillside, valley and plateau are all part of the vernacular when the French grow, buy, cook and eat food. This is particularly evident in the traditional titling of produce with the name of its region of origin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The titles associated with particular products are protected by the Institut National des Appellations d\u2019Origine, a governmental agency with the power to certify geographical indications for agricultural produce seen as \u201cunique\u201d to the place of production. For example, Roquefort cheese has been protected by parliamentary decree since the 15th century. The modern version of the law to protect the place of origin emerged in 1919, granting Roquefort the first Appellation d\u2019Origine Contr\u00f4l\u00e9e in 1925 (Trubek 2008). To a Frenchman, and any other gourmet, this becomes a significant distinctive factor in the taste and meaning of products of the same kind. He or she will thus supposedly know the differences in production, taste and landscape between, for example, a Roquefort cheese and a Comte cheese; the Roquefort being a semi-soft bluecheese made from sheep\u2019s milk and aged for a few weeks in the caves surrounding the commune of Roquefortsur-Soulzon in the South of France, while the Comte is significantly harder, made from cow\u2019s milk, and aged for anywhere between 9 and 12 months in the more northern region of the same name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terroir is therefore not only a descriptive device for a certain geographical relationship between produce and the land, but it is equally a device to grasp an intrinsic relationship between taste and place; in other words, food and drink are thought to possess unique tastes dependent on their place of origin. Terroir and go\u00fbt de terroir – the \u201ctaste of the earth\u201d – are both categories that frame the perception and practice of food as a material version of local identity. They can thus be used to inform us of the dynamic between \u201cpeople\u201d and \u201cplace\u201d, whether sensual, practical, or habitual. The French terroir thus appears as the embodiment of an intrinsic connection between the French people and the French landscape, a connection considered \u201cessential\u201d and \u201cas timeless as the earth itself\u201d and reflects the strong presence of the vision of rural France in French identity (Trubek 2008). Trubek traces this vision of France back to a group of \u201ctastemakers\u201d in the 19th century, who focused intensely on describing and linking produce with provinces and areas, creating, sometimes aristocratic, genealogies and telling the histories of these products with myths of patrimony, linking the produce, the place and the taste to a storied past. In practice, what they did was to convincingly put the vision of agrarian rural France into people\u2019s mouths, and thus facilitate the \u201cimagining\u201d of the modern French nation-state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The geographers Bell and Valentine (1997) also point out the association between French cuisine with the distinct geographical locations, where different physical conditions \u2018combine with localised culinary histories to produce a rich map of food custom, habit and practice\u2026\u2019 (Bell and Valentine 1997: 156). They highlight the fact that terroir is equally present, though perhaps unarticulated, in many regions outside France; in Italy, Belgium and \u201ceven\u201d in England: Yorkshire pudding, Lancashire hotpot, Greenwich Whitebait etc. The perception of certain qualities embedded in terroir and local cuisine becomes a manifestation of the everyday practices that relate to the perceptions of identity boundaries. Terroir might, in other words, often be unarticulated, but it is never the less an important cultural category for discerning the connection between identity and landscape that is expressed in localised cuisines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following Billig\u2019s argument that \u2018one needs to look at the reasons why people in the contemporary world do not forget their nationality\u2019 (Billig 1995: 7), localised cuisine can be viewed as a method of expressing local identity in everyday discourse. To Billig, the concept of nationalism is problematic because it becomes misleading when describing what happens in the practice of the everyday in established nation-states. By looking at mundane, everyday practices one can examine the symbols and elements that discreetly remind people of \u201cwho they are\u201d. These practices and discourses combine to construct and maintain a sense of national identity. They also play a part in how acting individuals with a shared sense of identity form an \u2018imagined community\u2019 (Anderson 1991). Anderson argues that \u2018nationalism has to be understood by aligning it, not with self-consciously held political ideologies, but with the large cultural systems that preceded it, out of which – as well as against which – it came into being\u2019 (1991: 12). As will be shown in this dissertation, the creation of terroir can be seen as one of the everyday discourses that facilitates the imagined community. Localised cuisine can thus be seen as a manifestation of group sentiment, a way in which feelings for and ideas about \u201cthe land\u201d and \u201cthe people\u201d can be expressed in the context of the everyday, and becomes a platform for the production of locality (Appadurai 1996).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I use New Nordic Cuisine as a broad term for the emphasis on terroir in contemporary Scandinavian cuisine that has risen in popularity in the first decade of the 21st century, and is embodied in the practices and menu of the NOMA restaurant in Copenhagen and the Manifesto for a New Nordic Cuisine. In the spirit of Appadurai (1988), I will be using cookbooks as \u2018revealing artefacts of culture in the making\u2019 (1988: 22).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first chapter will explore Nordic terroir as an expression of the \u2018imagined community\u2019 of \u2018the Nordic\u2019 by looking at the formation of the modern Scandinavian nation-states, and particularly on the notions of a Nordic folk (people) and the Nordic landscape. The second chapter will look at how terroir is created in contemporary Scandinavian food practices. The third chapter will draw together Nordic terroir and New Nordic Cuisine with theories by Billig (1995), Anderson (1991) and Appadurai (1996) in order to argue that New Nordic Cuisine is an expression of local identity through the production of locality (Appadurai 1996).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nordic Terroir: The Landscape and the People<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Radishes in a Pot (Serves 4)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ingredients<\/strong>
\u00b7 16 long radishes
\u00b7 8 g parsley
\u00b7 8 g chives
\u00b7 5 g tarragon
\u00b7 5 g chervil
\u00b7 5 g shallots
\u00b7 125 g sheep\u2019s milk yogurt
\u00b7 15 g capers
\u00b7 50 g mayonnaise
\u00b7 5 g instant food thickener<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Malt Soil<\/strong>
Day 1
\u00b7 175 g flour
\u00b7 85 g malt flour
\u00b7 50 g hazelnut flour
\u00b7 25 g sugar
\u00b7 75 g lager
Day 2
\u00b7 40 g flour
\u00b7 20 g malt flour
\u00b7 50 g hazelnut flour
\u00b7 4 g salt
\u00b7 60 g butter, melted<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instructions:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Radishes:<\/strong>
Wash the radishes and cut off the bottoms. Remove the leaves and stems, leaving only a few pretty ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Herb cream:<\/strong>
Roughly chop the herbs and shallots.
Add the yogurt and capers and process in a Thermomix. Blend in the mayonnaise and pass through a fine sieve (strainer). Blend the mixture with the instant food thickener.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Malt Soil:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Day 1:
Preheat the oven to 90\u00b0C (195\u00b0F). Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl and pour into a food processor. Process 3 times in short bursts while adding the beer.
Spread on a tray and dry in the oven for 3-6 hours. Push through a coarse sieve to remove the thickest lumps.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Day 2:
Repeat the mixing procedure from Day 1 with the remaining malt soil ingredients, then mix the 2 batches together by hand, ensuring that no moist lumps are left in the mixture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Serving:<\/strong>
Use a piping (pastry) bag to half-fill a small pot with the herb cream. Season the radishes with sea salt and insert them in the cream. Sprinkle enough malt soil on top of the radishes to cover the cream completely and the radishes partially.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– Redzepi 2010: 315<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New Nordic Cuisine\u2019s emphasis on its connection to the Nordic landscape is meant quite literally: The dish Radishes in a Pot (recipe above, picture on front page) consists of fresh16 radishes \u201cplanted in\u201d or \u201cgrown from\u201d \u201dsoil\u201d made from a mix of malt, hazelnuts, salt, butter and beer; covering a cream made of parsley, chives, shallots and sheep\u2019s milk yoghurt. It represents, in edible form, the whole idea of the tasty and healthy local produce picked straight from the rich, dark soil of the Nordic landscape. It is served in a clay pot, itself derived from the clay of the underground. The dish can be seen almost as a symbol for New Nordic Cuisine: \u201cNature\u201d transformed into \u201cculture\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order to survey the creation of the Nordic terroir, one must look at what the idea of \u201cthe Nordic\u201d means as a marker of identification, and especially the role of the Nordic landscape as the foundation ofsoil of the localised cuisine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Nordic landscape has long been categorized as part of a particularly Nordic view. As will be shown later, terms like \u201cpureness\u201d, \u201cfreshness\u201d, \u201csimplicity\u201d, \u201cethics\u201d and \u201clight\u201d all surface in description of the qualities that are intrinsic to the idea of \u201cthe Nordic\u201d. As we shall see, the New Nordic Cuisine movement perceives produce from the Nordic landscape as comprising certain special characteristics by virtue of its \u201cplace in history\u201d, and \u201cdegree\u201d of indigenity. In her two edited volumes on the \u201cNordic World\u201d (Den Nordiske Verden), the Danish anthropologist Kirsten Hastrup explores \u201cthe Nordic\u201d as a part of everyday discourse in the Scandinavian region. She finds that whether concerned with the \u201cNordic countries\u201d, \u201cNordic cooperation\u201d or \u201cNordic culture\u201d, \u201cthe Nordic\u201d is largely taken for granted. Despite differences in language and manners between the countries \u201cthe Nordic\u201d is experienced as a single \u201cunit\u201d, distinct from \u201cthe South\u201d and the rest of the world. From the \u201cSouthern\u201d perspective \u201cthe North\u201d has often been an exotic wilderness, a place in which life is closely in touch with nature, and the people with a certain naturalness that is largely absent from the rest of Europe (Hastrup 1992: 12). Despite political changes and numerous displacements of peoples, languages and national boundaries, the idea of the Nordic has persisted as a concept that connects the peoples of Scandinavia in a shared culture, from which the \u201cNortherners\u201d can think of themselves and others. Thus, Hastrup emphasizes, by studying the idea of \u201cthe Nordic\u201d in its local manifestations rather than the idea itself, grants us a perspective that can allow us to generalize on the Nordic region as a whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his ethnography of the Danes, Being Danish, Roger Jenkins (2011) tries to map out the ways in which ideas of Danish and Nordic identity are constructed and perceived. His main ethnographic argument is concerned with the paradoxical nature of identification, manifested in the assumptions of a Nordic cultural and political homogeneity as a fundamental aspect of Nordic identity, embodied in the idea of the Nordic folk \u2013 the Nordic people. The paradox is the fact that the idea of cultural and ideological homogeneity, in Denmark itself, and in the rest of the Nordic region, does not reflect the political and cultural reality. This aspect of Nordic identity is important in informing us how the Nordic people, on a rhetorical and political level, express how they believe the world to be, or how they believe it ought to be. The idea of the coherent Nordic folk is intimately bound up with the relationship to the landscape, which is seen as a manifestation of a set of Nordic characteristics. Despite the profound geological differences between the Nordic landscapes they are perceived as part of the same Nordic \u201csphere\u201d. This perception of a coherent, decidedly Nordic landscape indicates how powerful the Nordic landscape is in the image of a coherent Nordic identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenkins puts an emphasis on the Nordic history of social development which results in an image of country people and rural life as \u2018more \u201creal\u201d, more dependable, and more in touch with the important things in life \u2013 generally more authentic, in fact \u2013 than town dwellers and the sophisticated urban milieu\u2019 (Ibid.: 58). He concludes that this image of the Nordic rural landscape and the people who inhabit it is deeply important in what is understood as characteristically Nordic. This feeds into the geopolitical idea of Norden (the North) as a powerful motif in everyday discourse and popular sentiment (Ibid.: 92) to the extent that the notions held about the political and cultural similarity of the Nordic folk become ideological: \u2018\u201dWe are all the same, we are all equal\u201d\u2019 (Ibid.: 100).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u2018imagining\u2019 of a coherent Nordic folk can be seen as a result of various historical events of the mid to late 19th century. In Denmark, the constitution of 1849 established a constitutional monarchy with a democratically elected government. This was followed by the defeat to Prussia in 1864 resulting in the annexation of a large area of Southern Jutland. The defeat to Prussia and as Danish territory was significantly reduced, provoked a mobilisation of nationalist sentiment. Similarly, the \u201closs\u201d of Finland and the Norwegian independence spurred nationalistic sentiments in Sweden; and in the new Norwegian and Finnish nation-states nationalist sentiment in art and literature was also used to express and celebrate the new nations. In Denmark, under the famous axiom of the poet H. P. Holst: Hvad udad tabes, skal indad vindes (\u201cWhat is outwards lost, shall be inwards won\u201d) a surge in artistic expressions of Danish identity took place. Under the same adage, Det Danske Hedeselskab,(\u201cThe Danish Heath Company\u201d) established in 1866, campaigned to \u201ccolonise\u201d the \u201cwild\u201d heaths of Jutland and acquired large amounts of land to use for agricultural farming, forestry and preservation. The campaign to \u201cwin back\u201d what was lost by \u201clooking inwards\u201d also had a Swedish counterpart, focused on annexing the \u201cwilderness\u201d of Northern Sweden to account for the loss of land due to the independence of Finland. The nationalist sentiments were expressed in range of different ways, but was epitomised in the national romanticist celebration of language, landscape and history within art and literature, resulting in what the Swedish ethnologist L\u00f6fgren (1992) calls the \u2018nationalization of the landscape\u2019. In Denmark, for instance, it was the \u2018fervent, intimate agricultural landscape, that was in focus, when both poets and painters pictured the authentic and typical Danish: We meet the flowing cornfields, smiling beech forests and blooming meadows\u2019 (L\u00f6fgren 1992: 152).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this period, in Denmark known as Guldalderen (The Golden Age), a large number of hymns celebrating the country and the Nordic folk were written, many of which are still sung today at public and private gatherings, weddings and holiday celebrations. This includes the Danish national anthem: Der er et Yndigt Land (\u201cThere is a Lovely Land\u201d) from 1819. The Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish national anthems were written in the same period, under similar political circumstances, and all refer specifically to \u201cthe land\u201d of the nation, as a primordial setting for the people of the Nordic region. Even in this period of nationalist sentiment, the Nordic landscape as an image of primordial beauty and as the \u201cnatural habitat\u201d for the Nordic folk transcended the narratives of the individual nation-states. This echoes Jenkins\u2019 remark that the Nordic people perceive themselves as intrinsically one and the same folk: \u2018\u201c\u201cWe are all the same, we are all equal\u201d\u2019\u201d (Jenkins 2011: 100). The intimate relationship between the folk and the land is saimilarly expressed in the concluding lines of the Swedish national anthem Du gamla, Du fria (\u201cThou Ancient, Thou Free\u201d) written in 1844, and originally named S\u00e5ng till Norden (\u201cSong for the North\u201d): Jag byter Dig ej, mot allt i en v\u00e4rld\/ Nej, jag vill leva jag vill d\u00f6 i Norden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(\u201dI trade thee not, for anything in the world\/
No, I want to live; I want to die in the North\u201d.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– L\u00f6fgren 1992<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Denmark, following Grundtvig\u2019s social movement and the modernisation of the rural production facilities, the idea of the folk and its adverbial version, folkelig, became synonymous with the Nordic tradition of popular, participatory social democracy (in the non-party sense), and it is in this period that the geo-political idea of \u201cthe North\u201d emerges (Jenkins 2011: 92). The Nordic countries still have a clear-cut and homogenous sense of Nordic identity, as can be seen in the reluctance to give away influence to the EU, revolving around the fear of a potential loss of the Nordic welfare model of participatory social democracy and preserving the perceived cultural and ethnic homogeneity (Jenkins 2011: 85-86).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The meaning of the Nordic landscape has been and is continually reproduced through a range of different media that have become instrumental in the construction of the Nordic landscape as a cultural artefact. This includes the consumption of images, texts, anthems and music, but also through geography lessons in schools, the landscape paintings on display in the national museums, and the images used to decorate the home, be they paintings, posters or postcards. Furthermore the advent of mass tourism and the \u201cpilgrimages\u201d to special national landscapes have become popular, because they are defined as \u201cancient Swedish\u201d, \u201cpurely Finnish\u201d, \u201cauthentic Danish\u201d or \u2018\u201dvery Norwegian\u201d. There has come to exist a sort of national gallery of the landscape, exhibited everywhere from museums, to homes and tourist brochures, to present a series of places where \u201cemotions\u201d and \u201cnature\u201d are combined in a very specific way (L\u00f6fgren 1992: 157).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L\u00f6fgren (1992) highlights a specific Nordic emphasis on vildmarken (\u201cwilderness\u201d) as an organising theme in the history of the Nordic landscape. The Nordic wilderness has since the national romanticism of the 19th century been portrayed as a \u2018fascinating utopia\u2019 with an abundance of unknown, unexplored and unexploited resources (Ibid.: 115). As shown, this has been partly a result of the emergence of the democratic nation-states, in which the importance of the landscape in the creation of national identity was highlighted. As a cultural concept, the wilderness is often an embodiment of what was \u201cbefore\u201d, and it takes on not only a spatial, but also a temporal dimension: \u2018\u201cBefore, this was just wilderness\u201d\u2018 (Ibid.: 115).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The widespread ownership, across classes, of second homes in the countryside grants us a look at the role of the landscape in everyday life. Especially in Denmark, this often takes the form of allotments. Allotments, in Denmark called kolonihaver, and their attached houses, kolonihavehuse, emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century, as spaces for the growing urban working class to enjoy fresh air and good company. Allotments were also utilized to grow vegetables, to support the diet and budget of the average working class family. As a sign of, and perhaps in honour of, the idealistic origins of the kolonihave, hedges are still today only allowed to be 125 cm tall to allow neighbours to stay in contact, and enable people to follow the life of the inhabitants of the other allotments (Ibid.: 140). The allotments and the small houses were meant as \u201cnatural\u201d spaces that could function without the supervision of the establishment found in the urban public parks, facilitating the image of the Nordic pastoral idyll \u2018with fresh air and sunshine available to all, and its defence symbolizes the defence of something much wider\u2019 (Jenkins 2011: 99)[1]. The allotment gardens and houses reflect a sort of imaginative individualism, with no two houses or gardens looking the same, and often with national flags waving from the multiple flagpoles, meticulously and carefully raised and taken down in accordance with the rules of the national \u201cflag calendar\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the 1880s, the number of allotments increased as a reaction to the growing demand for open air public spaces. This is also the time many large public parks, like F\u00e6lledparken in Copenhagen and Djurg\u00e5rden in Stockholm, were established. Apart from providing the occasional air and sunshine for the masses, these spaces also became important political spaces; the scene of working class demonstrations and riots, acting as alternative urban landscapes in a time of industrialism and largescale urbanization. Especially at the time of their establishment, L\u00f6fgren (1992) argues, it can be said that the urban parks and suburban allotments became an alternative social arena for a few generations of the working classes, which became the foundation of a form of society life that was difficult to establish in cramped spaces of the metropolitan homes. Allotments were decisively \u201cfree\u201d spaces that could accommodate the creativity and need for an expanded societal life that was not a part of the urban life of the working class – the societal faction that was the foundation of the social democratic movement, which, as Jenkins (2011) has shown above, holds a significant position in Nordic identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is interesting to see how Nordic identity, and the idea of a coherent Nordic folk is perceived to be a synthesis of other regional identities, with whom the Nordic peoples identify by virtue of their mutually intelligible languages (especially Sweden, Norway and Denmark) and closely intertwined histories, despite a history of hostility and migration. The anthropologist Marianne Gullestad (1989) even goes as far as identifying a few aspects that are perceived as universal to Nordic identity, namely \u2018equality defined as sameness; homecenteredness; desire for peace and quiet; love of nature; stability; independence; self-sufficiency; and self-control\u2019 (Ibid.: 85).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This way, the Nordic landscape takes on two separate, but historically intertwined perceptions: One is as a utopian image of pastoral idyll, the other as the setting for the social movements of the 20th century. By looking to the North, to a perceived historical relationship between the people and landscapes of the Nordic region, a sort of perceived Nordic \u201crace\u201d appears as the embodiment of a vision of the North, which is continuously reproduced in daily practice, not only as reflected in the national anthems, but in the everyday practice and discourse of engaging with the landscape. The kolonihave and public parks are incorporated in a particularly Nordic landscape; a place where romanticist discourses of \u2018\u201dthe land\u201d and its \u201cgenealogy\u201d as the primordial home of the Nordic folk, is closely intertwined with its role in the reproduction of the social ideology, that Gullestad and others have revealed as central to Nordic identity. As will be shown in the next chapter, it is this dual perception of the Nordic landscape that is embodied in Nordic terroir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Water, Light and Soil: Discerning the Taste of the Nordic<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As Nordic chefs we find that the time has now come for us to create a New Nordic Kitchen, which in virtue of its good taste and special character compares favourably with the standard of the greatest kitchens of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The aims of New Nordic Cuisine are:<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To express the purity, freshness, simplicity and ethics we wish to associate with our region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To reflect the changing of the seasons in the meals we make.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To base our cooking on ingredients and produce whose characteristics are particularly excellent in our climates, landscapes and waters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To combine the demand for good taste with modern knowledge of health and well-being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To promote Nordic products and the variety of Nordic producers \u2013 and to spread the word about their underlying cultures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To promote animal welfare and a sound production process in our seas, on our farmland and in the wild.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To develop potentially new applications of traditional Nordic food products. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To combine the best in Nordic cookery and culinary traditions with impulses from abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To combine local self-sufficiency with regional sharing of high-quality products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To join forces with consumer representatives, other cooking craftsmen, agriculture, the fishing, food , retail and wholesale industries, researchers, teachers, politicians and authorities on this project for the benefit and advantage of everyone in the Nordic countries.
– Manifesto for a New Nordic Cuisine, 2004 (Meyer n.d. a)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the Manifesto for a New Nordic Cuisine created by a group of Scandinavian chefs in 2004. New Nordic Cuisine is presented as a powerful medium through which certain characteristics of the Nordic can be expressed. It is described in abstract and ambiguous terms like \u2019ethics\u2019 and \u2019simplicity\u2019. The \u2019demand for good taste\u2019 results in a plan for the creation of the New Nordic Cuisine that will benefit the \u2019health and well-being\u2019 of \u2019everyone in the Nordic countries\u2019. It has a \u2019special character\u2019, a Nordic character, which can be \u2019favourably\u2019 compared to other global cuisines. These characteristics are produced by the \u2019particularly excellent\u2019 conditions of the Nordic landscape, climate and waters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following Bourdieu (1989), the experience of \u201dtaste\u201d (and in this context particularly the experience of something \u201dtasting good\u201d) is largely determined by the social structures in which it is a part of everyday experience, often discerned by a relatively small elite group. Just as Trubek (2008) traces the vision of French terroir back to a group of \u201dtastemakers\u201d in the 19th century, the Manifesto for a New Nordic<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cuisine signifies a similar mobilisation of landscape, \u201dnation\u201d and cuisine. The \u201ctastemakers\u201d of the New Nordic Cuisine movement are a group of chefs, cooks and food critics who discern the taste of the Nordic for the general public who make use of their buying power to implement their ideas, and put the vision of \u201cthe Nordic\u201d in their mouths. Since cooking and eating in the postmodern era involve both the domestic and public sphere, this is a movement that can be traced in practices across the spheres of society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The flagship of the movement seems to be the NOMA restaurant in Copenhagen (NOMA is an acronym for Nordisk Mad \u2013 lit. \u201dNordic Food\u201d). NOMA offers a \u201dpersonal rendition of Nordic gourmet cuisine with an innovative gastronomic take on traditional cooking methods, fine Nordic produce and the legacy of our shared food heritage. Moreover, we regard it as a personal challenge to hel bring about a revival of Nordic cuisine and let its distinctive flavours and particular regional character brighten up the world\u201d – NOMA n.d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since being founded in 2004, by the Danish cook and entrepreneur Claus Meyer and Danish-MacedonianBosnian chef Ren\u00e9 Redzepi,, with the Manifesto for a New Nordic Cuisine as its backbone, NOMA has received worldwide attention since its establishment, culminating in the San Pellegrino World\u2019s Best Restaurant Award in both 2010 and 2011. While NOMA is a relatively expensive, gourmet-oriented restaurant, its effect as a foundational institution within New Nordic Cuisine has been profound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the manifesto was written, Scandinavian cuisine, as it is also known, has experienced a surge in attention, becoming one of the preferred destinations of choice for foodies, gourmets and gourmands from all over the world. The emphasis on Nordic terroir and its \u201dspecial character\u201d persists to be highlighted as one of its key characteristics (Christensen 2008).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The movement includeshas become the platform for the establishment of a consortium of bakeries, farms and fisheries around Scandinavia as well asand the establishment of numbers of new restaurants, food markets and cookbooks about Scandinavian cuisine and \u201ctraditional\u201d ingredients, serving the booming market for quality local produce. The \u201dNOMA-effect\u201d has meant that the everyday food choices of many Scandinavians have shifted towards consuming more local products, along with organic, bio-dynamic and environmentally sustainable produce, which are which are perceived to reside in the same \u2019sphere\u2019 of products as local produce, and all collectively perceived as \u201cgood for you\u201d (Lassen and Korzen 20098, Terragni, Torjusen and Vitters\u00f8 2009, Halkier 20095, Bostr\u00f6m and Klintman 2009). Similarly, in her cookbook entitled The Scandinavian Kitchen (2010), Danish cook Camilla Plum describes it as a growing environmental awareness, and the awareness of \u2019growing and eating organic food, and eating locally and seasonally [is] growing fast\u2019 (Plum 2010: 6).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A leading figure in the New Nordic Cuisine movement is the Danish cook, entrepreneur and co-owner of NOMA, Claus Meyer. His cookbook, Almanak (2010), has so far sold over 50,000 copies (Andersen 2011), not insignificant in a country of approximately 5 million inhabitants. Also since 2004, Meyer has cohosted the public television show New Scandinavian Cooking with the Swedish chef Tina Nordstr\u00f6m, Norwegian chef Andreas Viestad and the Finnish chef Sara La Fountain. The show is based on the Manifesto for a New Nordic Cuisine and the anchors travel all over the Nordic region, exploring local produce and cuisine. The show has been running for 5 seasons, has been distributed to over 100 countries and over 200 million viewers yearly (New Scandinavian Cooking n.d.), and has, according to the website of the distributor, been \u2019well received by both American audiences and international audiences across the board\u2019 (Ibid.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another popular Danish cook, Trina Hahnemann, in her book The Nordic Diet (2010), focuses on the healthy aspects of the Nordic diet, adding that the Nordic diet is \u2019all about good, homecooked food that is full of flavour\u2026. It affords us an opportunity to change our diet according to local produce, seasons, tradition and contemporary taste\u2019 (Hahnemann 2010: 9).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Camilla Plum, who, like Meyer, also hosts a range of public TV-shows, describes the attention to Nordic cuisine as a result of the efforts of \u2019young chefs and young families [who] embrace traditions, in order to evolve them, creating fresher, lighter, even more seasonal and local food\u2019 (Plum 2010: 6).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evidently, the terroir concept is used instrumentally to express an almost pseudo-scientific reasoning behind the \u201cspecial character\u201d of Nordic cuisine. Somehow, this \u201ccharacter\u201d affects the tongue, a sensory organ with hundreds of small papillae enabling us to distinguish between salty, sweet, bitter, sour and umami, in a manner that makes it taste especially and specifically \u201dNordic\u201d. As the acclaimed Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson writes on New Nordic Cuisine:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201dIf we find out where the food comes from and where it goes to, maybe this knowledge can be made into a kind of flavour-enhancer. It matters whether the potatoes come from New Zealand or from the Lammefjord area of Denmark, and I can see great potential in not dividing knowledge and flavour (just as in art, we should not separate form and content). They can be part of one and the same food experience. In the same way, cooking and eating and taste are associated with many other things. Food can be political. Food can be about responsibility, sustainability, geography and culture. It is in the implementation of Ren\u00e9 [Redzepi]\u2019s ideas that we find the integration of the experience of dining and the social dimension, of memories, cultural spaces, the raw ingredients of the Nordic countries, individual and collective experiences.\u201d
– Eliasson 2010: 9<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clearly, the influence of Meyer, Redzepi, Plum, Hahnemann and chefs like them, as discerners of taste, have an influence on the transformation, on of everyday food practices, that cannot be ignored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ren\u00e9 Redzepi, the co-founder and headchef of NOMA, has published a cookbook entitled NOMA \u2013 Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine (2010), containing his diary from 2003 about his \u201cculinary expedition\u201d across the Nordic region. Here Redzepi describes his encounters with traditional produce and cooking methods. The purpose of this trip was to find inspiration for the future menu of NOMA, a menu that should reflect the region and its \u201cspecial character\u201d and would eventually result in the creation of the Manifesto for a New Nordic Cuisine. This is how Redzepi describes one of his first encounters with Icelandic cuisine:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201dWe meet with Einar Matthiasson at the MS dairy. He has organised a tasting of their skyr. Skyr is a cottage-type cheese with deep roots in Icelandic history that can be traced back a thousand years, and the recipe hasn\u2019t really changed since! Wild! The milk is heated, then cooled to 40\u00b0C. You add rennet and old skyr. It matures for a full day in a muslin (cheesecloth). Then it can be mixed as you like it \u2013 with milk or cream \u2013 and you can use it in pastries, desserts, etc. Skyr just tastes damn good: creamy, lowfat and with a very deep flavour, much better than fromage blanc. Perhaps the special milk from the indigenous cows really makes a difference?\u201d
– Redzepi 2010: 29<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Redzepi indicates in his description of skyr, there is a perception that produce embodies and expresses, by way of taste, certain special characteristics by virtue of its place in history, and perceived \u201ddegree\u201d of indigenity. This way, the emphasis on local produce as ingredients in Nordic cuisine, becomes just as much a focus on the land that has produced it. This \u201cprimordial\u201d approach suggests that the \u201ctaste of place\u201d is produced by an encounter with \u201cnature\u201d through preparing and ingesting food, and the soil and its cultural and historical genealogy is of primary importance in its creation \u2013 it is, in other words, deeply intertwined with the Nordic terroir. The use of authenticity seems to rest on an assumption of a superiority of traditional practices; that historical persistence somehow guarantees higher quality food and drink. This emphasis on the superiority of Nordic terroir is present across the spectre of contemporary Scandinavian cuisine. Claus Meyer explains his view on the importance of terroir in New Nordic Cuisine:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201dThe French word terroir is very important in our Nordic primary produce culture, a fact that is often overlooked. Usually terroir is defined as the impact of the cultivation location on primary produce. In other words, the impact of all sorts of natural forces \u2013 soil condition, sun, wind and rain \u2013 that enables us to bring the primary produce to the table with its own distinctive characteristics. By consuming the produce we become part of the surroundings that go into the food, and the cultivation location becomes part of us. It works both ways. For that reason the origin of primary produce, its identity, is vital if we want to avoid becoming alienated from ourselves. No matter who we are.\u201d
– Meyer n.d. b<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meyer here links the landscape with \u2018ourselves\u2019, practically presenting the landscape and its inhabitants as one and the same. Meyer continues:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

T\u201derroir is the \u201csoul\u201d of a location and is largely unaffected by time. If you return to Perigord [a French region] in two hundred years\u2019 time you will still be able to grow superb walnuts there. In comparison to this permanence, human beings are a transient secondary factor.\u201d
– Ibid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Camilla Plum also presents the intimate connection between taste and Nordic landscape and climate, and of the importance of the \u201ctraditional\u201d preparation methods involved in the production of Nordic cuisine:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201dGrowing conditions are the roots of any kitchen; the flavours of our food here in the north stem from cool summers and icy winters, plenty of rain, cold waters and long summer days with endless rain\u2026. Scandinavian cooking achieves a delicate balance between extravagance and the humble\u2026. We are proud of our traditions, and they are mostly very much alive, some of them very local or regional.\u201d
– Plum 2010: 6<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meyer, Redzepi and Plum all highlight the importance of the \u201ctimeless\u201d and \u201cessential\u201d qualities of Nordic aspectnotions in the taste of Nordic cuisine cuisine. The Nordic landscapesoil and climate are essential elements of the taste of the Nordic, expressing the \u2018special and favourable climatic conditions \u2026, undisturbed areas of countryside, and very small population\u2019 and the \u2018unusual\u2019 light conditions. The long hours of lightsun in the summer is presented as particularly important to the taste of the North, since plants acquire \u2018all their energy and consequently their entire taste foundation from light\u2019, and it is hence possible to \u2018equate the sum of light with richness of taste\u2019, because the glucose produced in photosynthesis \u2018fuels the plant\u2019s inner creativity \u2026 ensuring high concentration and diversity (complexity) of appealing flavours\u2019 (Meyer n.d. b). The \u201dessentialist\u201d view on Nordic produce is reflected across many of the recent Scandinavian cookbooks. Hahnemann\u2019s (2010) describes the many health benefits of Nordic cuisine, while chefs like Camilla Plum (2010) also highlight the intrinsic values of a cuisine that is \u2019all about simple, healthy, seasonal food made from delicious, local produce: luscious berries, juicy fruits, fresh fish and game, and ancient grains combined with deliciously pungent herbs to create sensational flavours\u2019. These \u201cnatural\u201d conditions for Nordic terroir and its supposed \u201cpatrimony\u201d should be explored further:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kirsten Hastrup\u2019s work on the \u201cNordic World\u201d discussed in the previous chapter, is attributed as a continuation of the work of the Danish cultural historian Troels-Lund (1883), who in the end of the 19th century published 12 volumes on Dagligliv I Norden (\u201cEveryday Life in the North\u201d). In his comments about the \u2018development of foods\u2019 (TroelsLund 1883: 1), he mentions the harsh weather conditions as a condition that encourages a strong appetite, and makes preservation easier. Troels-Lund highlights gr\u00f8d (porridge) as one of the \u2018oldest\u2019 Nordic meals. No other meal is described as frequently as this \u2018from the moment the written sources begun\u2019. The word gr\u00f8d has hence \u2018for millennia worked its magic in the North\u2019, as both a daily and festive dish. Troels-Lund highlights the fact that the word gr\u00f8d is closely related to the word gryde (a pot) and how its difference from the French pot \u2013 derived from potage, a soup, which is once again derived from the words potager or potagere meaning \u201cvegetable garden\u201d \u2013 underlines the differences between the way of life in\u201d the North\u201d and \u201cthe South\u201d (Ibid.: 9), as examples of two \u201cprimordial\u201d dishes, the one based on grain and milk, the other on vegetables, both reflecting the climatic and geographical circumstances under which they were produced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grain, Wheat and milk are presented as fundamental ingredients of the \u201ctraditional\u201d Nordic diet, along with produce hunted or collected from the nature since the Stone Age: oysters, mussels, snails and other gameanimals (Ibid.: 4). The Nordic peoples used to eat their meat raw \u2013 either smoked, salted or dried – never boiled. According to TroelsLund, the disgust with \u201cbloody meats\u201d came with the introduction of the Old Testament, in which blood is described as containing the soul, highlighting the influence of religion on food taboos. Apart from mentioning the pre-Christian importance of drinking water and blood, milk and beer are mentioned as particular to pre-modern Nordic cuisine, often making out a key ingredient in most daily diets (Ibid.). While Troels-Lund mentions the \u201ctraditional\u201d Nordic diet as being largely static through time, he does not mention any specific relationship between the produce, the landscape and the taste. However, weather conditions are once again mentioned as being of intrinsic importance to how the landscape presents its produce to its inhabitants and the conditions under which they collect and preserve it is highlighted as definitive in the diet of the Nordic peoples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This example shows us that the idea of a \u201ctraditional\u201d Nordic cuisine, grounded in a historical continuum to produce and methods of preparation, is to some extent present in historical accounts. However, it is difficult to establish the intrinsic relationship between the Nordic people of \u201cthe past\u201d and the landscape they inhabited. Their dependency on terroir was in a world that was, to a large extent, fundamentally localised. So there is a connection between contemporary cuisine and its supposed historical and traditional roots, but it could perhaps be said that Nordic terroir as we see it today has to be created as much as discovered. Traditionally, geographical names have been used to name and describe food: In Denmark, it is Sams\u00f8e potatoes as opposed to Lammefjord potatoes, beer from Thy as opposed to beer from Faxe, or herring from Glyng\u00f8re as opposed to herring from Christians\u00f8; but also many other regional specialities, like mushrooms from Andersl\u00f6v in Southern Sweden, sea urchins from Bod\u00f6 and eggs from the Swedish Blue ducks in Gotland bear the name of the geographical location of its production (Redzepi 2010). Unlike France, however, the produce\u2019s connection to geographical locations are not protected by a controlling organization like the Appellation d\u2019Origine Contr\u00f4l\u00e9e, and produce can thus, in theory, be from anywhere and still bear the name of a geographical location without necessarily being derived from it. Still, the geographical title is a symbol of \u201cauthenticity\u201d, as it links the produce with the landscape, making a claim to the Nordic terroir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The (re)creation of Nordic terroir enables the Nordic folk to discover \u201dwho they are\u201d through an encounter with the landscape, tradition, and the \u201dnatural\u201d world, and puts them \u201cin touch\u201d with the natural seasons and climates of the land they inhabit. As Hahnemann (2010) notes, \u2018\u201cThe countries of the Nordic Hemisphere have their very own healthy food culture, ingredients and traditions which have, for too long, been eclipsed by the perceived benefits of the cuisines of other nations deemed to be intrinsically beatter for us. Rediscovering our Northern heritage also helps us address several issues around food other than health\u2019\u201d (Ibid.: 8). Additionally, Hahnemann (2010) emphasizes the importance of the \u2018cooking and eating habits\u2019 (Ibid.:6) centred around the kitchen, and using cooking as a way of \u2018living life together\u2019 (Ibid.). Hence Additionally, New Nordic Cuisine reflects some of the aspects Gullestad (1989) has mentioned as central to Nordic identity (namely \u2018equality defined as sameness; homecenteredness; desire for peace and quiet; love of nature; stability; independence; self-sufficiency; and self-control\u2019 (Gullestad 1989: 85)).; for instance, Hahnemann (2010) emphasizes the importance of the \u2018cooking and eating habits\u2019 (Ibid.:6) centred around the kitchen, and using cooking as a way of \u2018living life together\u2019 (Ibid.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To adopt Hahnemann\u2019s expression, discovering the Nordic terroir can help address several issues around cuisine other than health. In the next chapter I will discuss how the creation of terroir can be seen as an expression of local identity through the production of locality, to reflect a cuisine where, as Olafur Eliasson writes, \u2019the potato cannot be separated from the soil\u2026 They come from a field, a tree, a bush, an animal, the sea\u2026 In other words, they, like us, are inseparable from the environment. And NOMA\u2019s environment is largely Scandinavian\u2019 (Eliasson 2010: 9).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018There is a Lovely Land\u2019:New Nordic Cuisine as Production of Locality<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201dAt different times he [Redzepi] discovered how an ingredient should taste, its links to time and place: a Swedish truffle, birch-tree sap, a Danish mushroom, succulent seaweed, the potential of hazelnut and elderflower and nasturtium\u2026 \u201cWe cook the way we cook because this is what we found,\u201d Redzepi said. He\u2019s a chef for a shrinking planet, the man who found a terroir beneath the permafrost.\u201d – Roger Cohen, New York Times columnist (Cohen 2011)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anthropology has traditionally established food as a topic that is about commensality, a way to define one\u2019s own group and distinguish the \u201cother\u201d. For those working on ethnicity, particularly for Mary Douglas in her seminal book Purity and Danger (1985), cuisine and culinary tradition is a good \u201cboundary maker\u201d, providing a symbol for transforming \u201cnature\u201d, or the \u201coutside\u201d, into \u201cculture\u201d, \u201cthe inside\u201d, providing meaning through structure. Cuisine becomes about identity creation and maintenance, whether it be national, ethnic, class or gender-based (Douglas 1985, Sutton 2001, Jansen 2001, Fischler 1988, Scholliers 2001, Eriksen 2002 et al.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Fischler (1988) has pointed out, food is central to our sense of identity. While eating is a \u201cbiological\u201d act in the sense that it is vital for survival, it requires a crossing of \u201cnatural\u201d and \u201ccultural\u201d boundaries; of the threshold between what is \u201coutside\u201d and what is \u201cinside\u201d. This principle of incorporation touches not only upon the very nature of a person but also forms a basis for collective identity. One example of the importance of eating and drinking habits as a boundary maker is when some migrant groups maintain their culinary traditions, even when language and other cultural expressions fade. In other words, food choices are a way for people to demarcate their own and the other group. The principle of incorporation is empowered by the understanding of cuisine as a system of classification and representation, operating in the register of the imagination, giving food and its eaters a place in the world. To Fischler, the contemporary innovation and alteration of global cuisines – technologically and culturally – has caused a crisis in the former identification with food as a marker of social group boundaries, and, consequently, an identity-crisis of the \u201ceater\u201d (Fischler 1988 and Scholliers 2001).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The power of food as boundary-marker is also described by Jansen (2001) in his study of different kinds of bread as a manifestation of conflicting identities in a post-colonial Algerian village. According to Jansen, the different kinds of breads originating from two distinctly different culinary traditions, becomes an indicator for social and hierarchical differences, and shows that particular foods can become anchors of identity. While not all foods holds the symbolic power to demarcate identity, the incorporation of certain food types into the traditional local cuisine, exemplified in the local interest in the French baguette, as a substitute for the traditional flatbread, can be used as a way to express an aspiration to belong to a higher status group (Jansen 2001).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sutton (2001) builds on this by discussing the power of food as an incubator of memory, and especially its power to stimulate nostalgia. Sutton focuses on the ability of everyday practices of cooking and eating to generate \u2018subjective commentary\u2019 and \u2018encode\u2019 powerful meanings, linking food with memory as both have strong connections to issues of identity, summed up in the phrase: \u2018if \u201cwe are what we eat\u201d, then \u201cwe are what we ate\u201d as well\u2019 (Sutton 2001: 6), and reflected in Hannerz\u2019 anecdote that the first thing a Swedish couple did after a trip to Borneo was to drink a glass of cold milk: \u2018Home is where that glass of cold milk is\u2019 (Hannerz 1996: 27).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Palmer (1998) further explores how culturally defined patterns of eating enable people to express and re-affirm their identity, because the \u2018material world serve to identify who and what we are, both to ourselves and to others: natural surroundings, the food we eat, literary fiction, museums and galleries etc.\u2019 (Ibid.: 176). While cuisines are often associated with certain regions and nations, the mixing of cultures, patterns of trade and migration have resulted in cuisines that cannot be said to derive from one single nationally defined source. However, the importance is not whether the cuisine can be \u201cproven\u201d to derive from a certain nation, but rather why certain foods, styles of cooking, products, and culinary particularities persist to be associated with certain nationalities or groups. This is supported by Bell and Valentine (1997) who argue that food is a language that \u2019articulates notions of inclusion and exclusion, of national pride and xenophobia\u2019 (Ibid.: 168). According to Palmer, it is exactly the ability of cuisine to express identity that enables it to act as a boundary-marker between identities (Also Eriksen 2002).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hiroko (2008), in her study of Japanese cuisine, argues that cuisine practices are influential in reproducing the bodies of the nation and by that process the \u2018national body is reproduced, whilst incorporating dissident voices\u2019 (Ibid.: 25). At the same time, globalization has resulted in an increased emphasis on the \u201cJapanese\u201d element of a cuisine that is of an intrinsically hybrid nature, in order to \u2018reinforce national coherence and integrity\u2019 (Ibid.). Hiroko suggests that cuisine thus becomes a tool for \u2018biopolitical governing\u2019 (Ibid.) to negotiate identity boundaries while \u2018developing the nation-state through taking care of the national population\u2019 (Ibid.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Direct expressions and acts of nationalism, are frowned upon in the Nordic region, and words like nationalism and patriotism are often avoided when discussing what is and what is not Nordic, although nationalism is \u2018everywhere one looks and outspoken pride in the nation is taken for granted and unremarkable\u201d (Jenkins 2011: 219). Evidently, New Nordic Cuisine, with its explicit focus on the Nordic terroir, can be seen as an example of the \u2018banal\u2019 expression of the imagined Nordic community. From this view, cuisine is as much a symbol of identity and nationality as the more obvious symbols of anthems, coins and ceremonies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As discussed earlier, an idea of a coherent Nordic landscape as the \u201cnatural\u201d habitat for the Nordic folk is pivotal in Nordic identity and in the creation of terroir. In his inquiry into Danish identity, Jenkins concludes a list of features that, to the Danes, participate in the creation of an identity that is specifically Danish. Topping this list is the perception of a menu of supposedly Danish dishes such as pastries (wienerbr\u00f8d), roast pork (fl\u00e6skesteg), beef with soft onion, gravy, frankfurters, meat patties (frikadeller), old-fashioned ice-cream wafers, or stewed berries with cream (r\u00f8dgr\u00f8d med fl\u00f8de), beer and schnapps (Jenkins 2011: 213). Also, eating and the social setting of eating together with family, friends or acquaintances, and the hygge \u2013 the important Scandinavian concept that could be described as a sense of togetherness, fellowship, personal warmth and mutuality – that is produced by this setting, are all intimately connected with notions of culture, tradition, solidarity and fellowship. Other features listed as central to the \u201cshared place\u201d that appears as fundamentally important to Danish identity are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201dPhysical geography (i.e. Denmark seen as a natural feature on the planet\u2019s surface); the weather; wildlife and plants; a beautiful landscape on gentle hills, sand dunes, beaches; low islands and beech woods; a strong ideological rural orientation; farms, farmers and farm animals; visible relics of history such as stone tombs, barrows, rune stones and ancient churches; architecture, whether classical or modern; and tourist attractions. This is a heady mixture of longitude and latitude, climate, nature, landscape, romanticism, agriculture, history, the built environment, and tourism.\u201d – Jenkins 2011: 219<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This echoes L\u00f6fgren\u2019s (1992) description of a powerful romantic image of the rural landscape that has been an important part of the collective selfperception of Nordic identity since at least the 19th century, presenting an image of the Nordic landscape that is \u2018relatively coherent, striking and powerful, and utterly romantic\u2019 (Jenkins 2011: 215). The perceived \u201chistorical continuity\u201d of the connection between the Nordic folk and the Nordic landscape is again closely connected to a sense of community (or imagined community), claiming legitimacy that \u2018derives from lineage and the sheer passage of time\u2019 telling a story of a people \u2018that has been continuously settled since at least the Viking age, homogeneous in culture and \u2019race\u2019\u2019 (Anderson 1991 and Jenkins 2011: 219).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following Billig\u2019s (1995: 7) argument that \u2018one needs to look at the reasons why people in the contemporary world do not forget their nationality\u2019 by looking at everyday practices and discourses, one can consider New Nordic Cuisine a discourse that discreetly remind the Nordic people of who they are; and enables them to imagine the Nordic folk. -P perhaps it is even because of the Nordic aversion to act directly \u201c\u2018nationalistic\u201d\u2019 (Jenkins 2011) that thisa \u2018banal\u2019 form of nationalism becomes potent as an identity-marker in the Nordic region. New Nordic Cuisine in this context is a symbolic setting that allows the idea of the Nordic folk to be reproduced, and echoes Palmer\u2019s observation that \u2018culturally defined patterns of eating enable people to both re-affirm and express their sense of identity\u2019 (Palmer 1998: 190).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea of a coherent Nordic identity, or imagined community, is based on shared claims of landsoil or language, that draw their power from the sentiments of boundary maintenance that bind small groups (as described by Barth (1969) and Eriksen (2002))[2]. In this view, small intimate, everyday practices, and practices and discourses involving the group, are, basically, based on kinship or its extensions. However, as Appadurai (1996) has showed, this \u2018Primordialist Thesis\u2019 is deeply flawed, and should be re-evaluated to fit in to a post-modern world of globalization, migration, and electronic mediation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will briefly outline Appadurai\u2019s argument: The modern world of migration, technology and electronic mediation makes the world with room for new \u2018imagined communities\u2019 (Anderson 1991) that are able to transcend the boundaries of large-scale group identities that might have previously been taken for granted. The nation-state is particularly challenged and destabilized by the new transnational communities. The new group identities thus take over the role of the nation-state as the arbiter of important social changes. Rituals especially (like eating and cooking produced from local knowledge) take on an important role to \u2018embody locality as well as to locate bodies in socially and spatially defined communities\u2019 (Appadurai 1996.: 179). This way, globalization does not (necessarily) mean Westernization, but rather production of localityrather localization, as transnational groups seek to reproduce their identity, to produce \u201cnatives\u201d and reliable local neighbourhoods, within which people can be recognized and organized. This facilitates \u2018the construction of local terrain of habitation, production, and moral security\u2019 (Ibid.: 181), in other words, a reliable \u201clocality\u201d which would have not otherwise had any moral security attached to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New Nordic Cuisine to some extent becomes an exercise in nostalgia, an attempt to recapture a bygone era, which allows for the Nordic peoples, now primarily living in cities and towns, to flirt with a lifestyle more representative of the past than of the present. Although the North is still a big exporter of specialized products, especially milk, sugar, bacon, butter and beer, the region has been subject to a shrinking agricultural sector. Particularly over the past century farming has shifted away from being a localised activity that spurs economic and culinary activity across national home communities towards becoming a sector of a large industrialised portfolio based on distant trade, and on importing a large portion of produce. This is reflected in both Plum (2010) and Eliasson, who describe New Nordic Cuisine as a \u2018recreation of local specialities, keeping and evolving traditions almost lost to large-scale farming and factory food\u2019 (Plum 2010: 6) that is based on a \u2018trivialized sensory world\u2019 that is \u2018the product of banal commercialization\u2019 (Eliason 2010: 8).The contemporary global marketplace and its consolidated distribution systems contributes to a situation that, as David Harvey (1989) says, brings worlds together \u2019in such a way as to conceal almost perfectly any trace of origin, of the labour processes that produced them, or of the social relations implicated in their production\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The alienation from place that follows from the postmodern condition, in some ways inverts the expression of identity through cuisine, as it ceases to express local sentiments and instead expresses an \u201calien\u201d identity. The Nordic terroir and its role in New Nordic Cuisine can be seen as an instrument to (re)create the national expression of the landscape that has been \u201clost\u201d to industrialisation and modernisation. The Nordic terroir in this way becomes an expression of the sentiments that bind together the imagined community that is the Nordic folk.th.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

New Nordic Cuisine is a way for Nordic identity to be expressed in everyday life by operating as a platform for the production of locality. Since taste cannot be physiologically shared, it must be evaluated through language and interaction, mediated by the dominant cultural beliefs and practices. The Nordic terroir expresses the \u201ctaste\u201d of the Nordic landscape and creates a foundation for the \u2018imagined community\u2019 of the Nordic folk, produced by the historically reproduced image of the landscape as the \u201cnatural\u201d habitat for the Nordic folk and its role in the formation and reproduction of the social ideology so central to Nordic identity. Terroir here acts as a pseudo-geographical concept that allows for a transnational interpretation of a coherent Nordic identity: the Nordic folk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By incorporating the Nordic terroir, New Nordic Cuisine enables the Nordic folk to discover \u201cwho they are\u201d, and puts them \u201cback in touch\u201d with the Nordic landscape and its produce. The Nordic terroir might have been previously unarticulated, but the mobilisation of identity and cultural differences (Appadurai 1996) that has happened as a response to a \u201cglobalised\u201d or \u201cpost-modern\u201d condition, has produced a Nordic locality that confirms ideological notion of the political and cultural similarity of the Nordic folk: \u2018\u201cWe are all the same, we are all equal\u201d\u2019 (Jenkins 2011: 100).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea of a Nordic folk when exposed to the modern world of globalization, migration and electronic mediation exists to allow for a production of locality in everyday discourse; but rather than basing its idea of itself on the perceived historical ties that make out claims to blood or land, \u201cnative\u201d bodies are reproduced via a continued production of locality \u2013 \u201cthis is who we are\u201d. This allows for a way to view the New Nordic Cuisine as a sort of post-national movement, especially because it reproduces a Nordic imagined community based on the (re)creation of a Nordic cuisine that takes its meaning from the production of locality, in the form of the Nordic terroir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation, London and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Plum, C. (2010) The Scandinavian Kitchen, London: Kylie Cathie Limited<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Redzepi, R. (2010)NOMA: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine, London: Phaidon<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Terragni, L., Torjusen, H. and Vitters\u00f8, G (2009) \u201cThe dynamics of alternative food consumtion: contexts, opportunities and transformations\u201d in Anthropology of food S5, September 2009, [Online], Available: http:\/\/aof.revues.org\/ index6400.html [Accessed 21 JUN 2011]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Troels-Lund, T. F. (1883) Danmarks og Norges Historie i Slutningen af det 16de Aarhundrede. I: Indre Historie; Femte Bog, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trubek, Amy (2008) The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir, London: University of California Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[1] One \u201cdefence\u201d of the landscape on a political level is the fact that it is not legally possible for a non-national resident outside Denmark to buy property (Jenkins 2011: 99).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2] The factors for one to be considered as part of particular social group vary greatly, but it can be said that they should at least be socially relevant as opposed to \u201cobjective\u201d differences, generated from other factors; it is by paying allegiance to something (\u201cA\u201d), that is in contrast to something else (\u201cB\u201d) that they subscribe to the interpretation of themselves as \u201cA\u2019s\u201d and not \u201cB\u2019s\u201d \u2013 no matter how dissimilar members of group A are in their overt behaviour (Barth 1969: 15). In other words, social boundaries define the group, not the \u201ccultural stuff\u201d (Ibid.) it encloses; it does not necessarily have a territorial counterpart, and works as a means to canalize social life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Mark Emil Hermansen \u201cCuisine is not food, it is food transcended, nature transformed into a social product.\u201d \u2014 Clark 1975 By Mark Emil Hermansen, Anthropologist at Nordic Food Lab. Abstract By examining New Nordic Cuisine – a contemporary food discourse based only on produce grown and ways of cooking \u201cnative\u201d to the Nordic region – this article explores localised cuisine as a focal point for analysing contemporary flows of identity sentiments in the Nordic region in the 21st century. By (re)creating a Nordic terroir, New Nordic Cuisine enables its \u201cnatives\u201d to ingest the (cultural) landscape, and consume a material version of local and regional identity. Identity will be shown to be a concept that is in many ways inarticulate but can be ingested as \u201cnature\u201d through localised cuisine, becoming, in the words of Appadurai (1981), \u2018a highly condensed social fact\u2019, and established \u201cThe Nordic\u201d as a marker of group … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":"","thumbnail":"","medium":"","medium_large":"","large":"","1536x1536":"","2048x2048":""},"post_excerpt_stackable":"

by Mark Emil Hermansen \u201cCuisine is not food, it is food transcended, nature transformed into a social product.\u201d \u2014 Clark 1975 By Mark Emil Hermansen, Anthropologist at Nordic Food Lab. Abstract By examining New Nordic Cuisine – a contemporary food discourse based only on produce grown and ways of cooking \u201cnative\u201d to the Nordic region – this article explores localised cuisine as a focal point for analysing contemporary flows of identity sentiments in the Nordic region in the 21st century. By (re)creating a Nordic terroir, New Nordic Cuisine enables its \u201cnatives\u201d to ingest the (cultural) landscape, and consume a material…<\/p>\n","category_list":"Uncategorized<\/a>","author_info":{"name":"Nordic Food Lab","url":"https:\/\/nordicfoodlab.org\/blog\/author\/nordic-food-lab\/"},"comments_num":"0 comments","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nordicfoodlab.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nordicfoodlab.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nordicfoodlab.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nordicfoodlab.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nordicfoodlab.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nordicfoodlab.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2422,"href":"https:\/\/nordicfoodlab.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730\/revisions\/2422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nordicfoodlab.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nordicfoodlab.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nordicfoodlab.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}