Category: articles

A Taste of Malmö

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Eating, drinking, and decidedly not tasting our way across the city

Under the Disgusting Food Museum's logo, a circle with the word "yuck!" in it, are many yellow and red cans of surströmming.
A wall display at the Disgusting Food Museum shows a wealth of canned surströmming (fermented herring), which is one of the worst-smelling foods in the world.

My goal was simple: to eat kanelbullar for breakfast in Sweden. So what if we woke up that morning in Denmark? In Europe, countries can be shockingly close together. Like, say, separated by the narrow Øresund between the island of Zealand and the mainland of Sweden.

In my opinion, a day trip from Copenhagen to Malmö was a must. Part of it was the lure of pastries, but it’s not like Denmark is slacking in the pastry category. The real draw was the opportunity to utter sentences like “we took a day trip to Sweden,” and to add another entry to the list of countries I’ve visited.

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Cryptid Corner, Episode Two

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Nordic Seducers

Welcome back to Cryptid Corner! Today, world-renowned cryptozoologist Dr. Veronica L. Raptor of the infamous Innsmouth Institute is here to talk about about creatures you might encounter in the Scandinavian woods.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

EMILY C. SKAFTUN: If you think Nordic cryptozoology is synonymous with trolls, you’re in for a treat today. Dr. Raptor is here to tell us about not one but two monsters—can I call them that?—inhabiting the wild north.

VERONICA L. RAPTOR: In this case, I’d say monstrosity is in the eye of the beholder. Or the attitude of the beholder, at least. If you are polite to huldrefolk, they can bestow on you great fortune. But if you are unkind…

Theodor Kittelsen, “Huldra.”
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Cryptid Corner, Episode One

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The Rougarou

Welcome to Cryptid Corner, an interview series with world-renowned cryptozoologist Dr. Veronica L. Raptor of the infamous Innsmouth Institute—who will offer you an up-close look at monsters from around the world. Among other accomplishments, Dr. Raptor has tracked the migration of jackalopes across the Sonoran Desert, made first contact with yetis displaced by climate change, and co-authored Silent & Deadly, a ground-breaking dictionary of Siren Sign Language.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Mangy-looking rougarou standing among the skulls of people it eats.
A rougarou in the New Orleans zoo.
photo: XxxJohnDoExxxx / Wikimedia Commons

EMILY C. SKAFTUN: Today Dr. Raptor is here to talk about an American monster, the Rougarou. Take it away, won’t you?

VERONICA L. RAPTOR: First of all, Emily, you know how I feel about the word monster. That term is grossly overused, and carries serious negative connotations that not all cryptids deserve. Though in the case of the creature lurking in the marshes of Louisiana, I’ll allow it.

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Profile: Spilt Milk Nannies

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What do you want to be when you grow up?

Peter (6) wants to be a paleontologist. Rudy (8) dreams of being a soccer player or architect. Charlotte (11) is thinking about being a chef/baker, or a singer. The answer can change as kids grow into adults and face pressure to get a “real” job. Their mom, Meghan Squires (42) wanted to be a hairdresser, but became an auditor. Lynn Noordam (46) “wanted to be a ballet dancer, and then a teacher, and then a writer.” She is now a nurse practitioner, and loves it. Her son Malcolm (9) wants to be an inventor, while Anneka (13) lists veterinarian, Broadway star, or activist. Margarita Rodriguez (23) always knew she wanted to work with children, and that’s exactly what she’s doing now.

Read more here.

Experience is the new luxury

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Tired of cruises? Try an expedition aboard the MS Roald Amundsen

Photo courtesy of Hurtigruten
Hurtigruten’s newest vessel, MS Roald Amundsen, is an “expedition ship” built for the extreme environments of the Arctic and Antarctic seas.

If your image of a cruise ship is a floating monstrosity the size of a city block, full of casinos, colorful iced drinks with bendy straws, and overblown attractions like waterslides or ziplines, housing thousands of drunk travelers on their way someplace tropical—in other words, if you’re the kind of savvy traveler who scoffs at the idea of cruises—it’s time to take another look at Hurtigruten.

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Catching the Arctic Illness in Svalbard

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Are people nuts to love the high north? I go to (almost) the end of the earth to find out

Arctic Illness Svalbard
Photo: Elizabeth Bourne
A mural in Barentsburg with a portion of the poem “Arctic Illness” by Russian poet Robert Rozhdestvensky.

Emily C. Skaftun
The Norwegian American

“Why are you going to Svalbard?” was the most frequent question I got when talking about my summer travel plans. In the way of many adventurers, I had no very compelling answer to the question. Because it’s there!

I have a friend in Longyearbyen now (Elizabeth Bourne, whose name you may recognize from this paper), who was willing to let me crash in her spare room and eager to show me around the place that she loves to a suspicious degree. Mutual friends tasked me with determining whether Elizabeth was entirely insane.

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Why is Seattle Parks and Rec hip-checking roller derby?

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Emily C. Skaftun

Amid all the bad news for women and other uterus-having people, the smaller-scale tragedy of Seattle’s roller derby apocalypse might understandably have slipped your radar. Why complain about something as mundane as losing a warehouse lease or some lines on a community center floor when from Alabama to, well, Washington state, legislation is being proposed to send women, barefoot and pregnant, back to the kitchen?

But while fighting the big fights, the little fights remain important, too.

Roller derby empowers the (mostly) women and girls who play it; just ask any of the thousand-some participants in the Seattle area. Yeah, it’s big. You know someone involved in derby, and it might not be who you think: We are students, tradespeople, professionals and parents; we are school-age children and old enough to be grandparents; we are queerer than average, with a quarter of players identifying as something other than heterosexual; we are all genders, one of few sports welcoming trans and nonbinary players.

To keep reading, head over to Crosscut, where this piece was originally published.

It’s not jul without karamellpudding

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Emily C. Skaftun
The Norwegian American

A caramel custard with three portions served into glass bowls
Photo: Daytona Strong
For me (Emily), karamellpudding is one element of Christmas that never disappoints.

Growing up, I didn’t always love Christmas. Shopping for a family of Norwegians was an annual challenge, Dad was a little bit Grinchy about the whole holiday, and sometimes our family gathering on Julaften felt so unchanging that it may as well have been scripted. Plus, I never liked lutefisk (I know, I’m sorry!), so I’d usually end up eating some ravioli or something for the main course. Bah humbug!

But there was always at least one thing I could count on: dessert. At the end of the evening, after opening all our presents from the family and julenissen, Tante Lise would brew some coffee, and we’d sit down around the most important part of the meal—karamellpudding (caramel custard).

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Think globally; gift locally

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Editor’s Notes: A message from Editor-in-chief Emily C. Skaftun

Cross-stitch in a Nordic pattern that reads "hygge as fuck" (though part of the word "fuck" has been blurred
Photo: Emily C. Skaftun
One of my craft projects that may or may not end up a Christmas gift and a pretty good expression of how I feel heading into the holidays—cozy but also grumpy and sometimes foul-mouthed.

Sitting here in my office, a week into into November, it’s hard for me to believe that the holiday season is upon us again. It is, though. In my local Safeway, Halloween candy was shunted aside on Nov. 1, with candy canes taking its place. Starbucks holiday cups are out.

And so, the holiday onslaught begins, at least corporately.

I mean, here I am producing a large issue full of things you can buy, things you can wrap them with, ways to decorate the tree you’ll buy (or cut?) to put them under. They’re available online! They ship right to you!

And yet, there’s a part of me that wonders whether buying and shipping objects to give to everyone on our list is the ideal way to celebrate the holiday that is the very essence of hygge. It’s not a radical thought. Many have bemoaned the commercialization of the holiday. But what can we do?

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