A Troika in Norway is a special chocolate bar – a layer of marzipan, a layer of chocolate truffle and a layer of raspberry jelly dipped in chocolate to hold it together.  It is very thin and compact similar in texture to a Cherry Ripe or a Wonka Bar.

As it’s my birthday we thought we’d invent our own Troika cake.  So far I’ve only seen home-made Troika slices or cheesecakes but never a cake with a real cake base – so this is a first.  I must say it turned out amazingly well – a yummy jelly and cream filled chocolate marzipan cake.

And since I don’t want you to miss out, here’s the recipe:

Troika Cake

1 chocolate cake
1 packet of raspberry jelly, or alternatively raspberry jam
200mls cream
2 tablespoons of caster sugar
vanilla essence for taste
1 tube of marzipan
melting chocolate chips or chocolate ice cream syrup for decoration
icing sugar for rolling marzipan

Method
First make a plain chocolate cake and cool.  Cut into two cake layers.

Second, make the jelly to directions but with reduced water for extra firmness.  We lined a square ice cream container as big as the cake with plastic wrap and poured the lukewarm jelly in.  This way, when it set, it was easy to lift out and place down on the cake base.  Then we just peeled off the plastic.  (If the jelly thing is too much of a pain then just spread a thick layer of raspberry jam on the cake base.)

Thirdly, make the cream.  [Read more...]

In this Podcast we practise the first basic conversation:
How are you? My name is… I come from… etc.

These podcasts are designed around the My Little Norway Norwegian Lesson Series. For us to provide a wide variety of listening and vocal exercises, it is essential for listeners to view the text in focus. This text can be found in each podcast post, or in the associated Norwegian Lesson post.

This podcast is taken from Norwegian Lesson 101.  The length of this podcast is 6mins.

Exercise 1

Spørsmål – Si
a. Answer the questions below with a sentence in Norwegian.

1. Hvordan går det?
2. Hva heter du?
3. Hvor kommer du fra?

b. Ask questions for the below answers.

1. Jeg heter Peter.
2. Jeg er fra Bergen.
3. Jeg har det fint.
4. Nina har det bra.
5. Hans kommer fra Alta.

Exercise 2

Dialogue: Lise og Dag

Lise:  Hei!  Hvordan går det?
Dag:  Jeg har det fint, og du?
Lise:  Bra.  Jeg heter Lise.  Hva heter du?
Dag:  Jeg er Dag.  Jeg kommer fra Moss. Hvor kommer du fra?
Lise:  Jeg er fra Danmark.

My Little Norway – Flower Show Series:
Arctic Botanical Garden Selection – Tromsø

You know when people talk about the country they are from and everything is always bigger and better?  When Moose told me that the ‘mygg’ (mosquito) was so big in Finnmark, Norway, it is called the national bird, I said ‘ ‘Yeah, right.  You haven’t been to Kakadu, Australia, yet!’  But boy, did I have to eat my words.

Not only are the Finnmark mozzies big little-suckers, they are awfully hungry too!  The males (which don’t actually bite) fly around in huge swarms and seem to follow you like a personal dust cloud.  The feisty females have no shame and even chase you down the road.  It can be impossible to do anything if you are caught out at the wrong time of night.  Unfortunately the prime time for mozzies is in June during the beautiful Midnight Sun when it is a little more humid – the exact time when you want to have a bonfire on the beach to see the day continue into the next.

We thought that maybe if we had a game of beach volleyball that we’d give the mozzies a run for their money.  No matter how fast we moved or how much we zig-zagged each of us had our own little swarm to contend with.  After ten minutes we were so puffed having to keep moving from the mozzies that we ended up in the car waiting for the food to cook.

It wasn’t all bad – sitting in the car was like eating dinner at the drive-in.  And the movie… the Midnight Sun, of course!

My Little Norway – Flower Show Series:
Arctic Botanical Garden Selection – Tromsø

1 July

name	origin	meaning	rune
Ask	Old Norse: askr	as/ås/ós (ansu) meaning ‘a god’ askr meaning ‘ash’ or from and ‘ask tree’
Mythology Creation of man. Askr – the first man.  (Embla – the first woman.)  They were made from the Ask and Embla trees.    The three God brothers Odin, Hœnir (Vilije) and Lóðurr (Ve), were walking along a beach and found the two trees.  They took wood from each and created the first two humanbeings: Ask and Embla – man and woman.  Odin gave them life and breath.  Vile gave them sense and motion, and Ve gave them voice, hearing and vision. Literature Poetic Edda: Völuspá, Prose Edda: Gylfaginning

name	origin	meaning	rune
Embla	Old Norse: embla	almr meaning ‘elm, elm tree’ or emblu-askr meaning ‘ash tree’
Mythology See ‘Ask‘ above. Literature Poetic Edda: Völuspá, Prose Edda: Gylfaginning

[Read more...]

Salmon is certainly one of the dishes you have to eat when you visit Norway – but it has to be wild salmon!  Wild salmon is caught in rivers by local fishermen.  Every year a number of fishing licences are ‘lotto-ed’ out to the local fishermen in each area around Norway – the fishing restrictions ensure a good season for next year.  (Norwegians love salmon so much that if there were no restrictions wild salmon would be extinct by now!)

In Alta, licence-free fishing ends Midsummer’s Eve so it is a tradition for all the locals (who haven’t won the licence lotto) to try their luck one more time before the clock strikes 12 midnight.  (After that, they turn into pumpkins!)

As Farfar’s farm is by a salmon river we see a lot of people standing on the rocks for hours, even days, fishing.  Some actually camp out on the bank.  Because the farm is so close we get a lot of locals dropping round to sell the catches of the day.  Farfar can never resist and always buys the biggest one for a family dinner that night.

It can be mighty tough for the salmon to jump up the river with lots of fishermen flapping their lines about.  So to make fishing a fair game for the Salmon the Fishing federation has created a detour in the river for the fish. [Read more...]

Some things just get better with old age.  But no matter how much hope, it just won’t float.

My Little Norway – Flower Show Series:
Arctic Botanical Garden Selection – Tromsø

As an Outlander, you might not have the ‘inside’ knowledge of what to buy and what not to buy for your baby’s nursery.  This information in Norway is usually past down from mothers, discussed in mothers groups or even posted on mother and parenting blogs – however, some of us don’t have the luxury of having a Norwegian mother or being socially active due to the language barrier.  So to find out why you need certain equipment and how to us it can be difficult for the regular non-Norwegian.

I’ve found that this valuable information is taken for granted in Norway – because, I guess, it’s just common knowledge.  It was hard for me to get ‘pre-knowledge’ of what equipment I needed or what clothes to dress the baby in.  Norwegians aren’t in the habit of giving ‘pre-advice’ – but they are pros at ‘after-advice’!  Before I had Lilu, I was trying to get info from everywhere – Farmor, Tante, friends, midwifes, and doctors – but it was only after the fact (when they saw our baby equipment or clothing) that the information flowed freely.  So to help you NOT learn the hard way, like me, this post will share with you some of the most common Norwegian specific equipment that is good to know about before going shopping for your nursery, complete with ‘whys’ and ‘how tos’!  (The post ‘Having A Baby In Norway – Baby Clothes’ will be posted in the near future.)

Baby Equipment

Usual baby equipment like cots, car seats and strollers are basically the same in Western countries.  However, each country has slight differences according to climate and trends.  For six months of the year Norway is covered in snow, so it’s obvious that Norway would have different styles of baby equipment than say a country with a hot climate like Australia.  Also Norway has different trends that I find extend back to the olden days.

Prams – Vogner

The pram above is a very popular style in Norway.  I would class it as the 4WD of prams.  However, it’s design is very important in the Norwegian climate. [Read more...]