Roald Growl Mid Flood

Summers in England were fleeting and hazy, but were left behind by a move to Australia when I was ten. Here, Christmas was in summer, and was hot hot hot! Signalled by differences like the exchange of a traditional Turkey roast for poolside seafood, mulled wine forgotten as a second glass of sparkling red (with a couple of ice cubes) was poured, but Christmas Pudding remained a staple. Summer was the period away from school, where hiking beckoned, and the ocean glimmered just a little more brightly.

At twenty-two, my feet found a new home, and traded Australia for a small town in northern Denmark, where from the lighthouse you could watch the sharp line in the ocean where the two seas met but didn’t mix.

Ironically, it was the English North and the Viking Kattegat that stood opposing like chess pieces.

The town was so small, that I found myself the only foreigner, and was often subject of curiosity. For a while I stumbled through currency, extra letters in the alphabet, and the repeated advice that my Danish would improve if I “spoke as though there was a potato in your mouth”.

Kartoffel i munden.

Our yellow house was the most northern point on the planet I’d ever visited, and in winter the sun lazily greeted us at two in the afternoon, and dipped back below the horizon at four. Hygge was spoon-fed by grinning grandmothers, who took an empty glass as a social signal that more akvavit was welcome. The rye bread of spirits, the dense liquid of winter.

Then came the sun.

Leaving us for only a couple of hours a day, the sun was sentinel through the day and night, an ever present smile and a stifling addition to homes not built to expel warmth.

My wardrobe now mostly consisted of black clothes, and I rode by bike everywhere, the group around us remarking that I was becoming a “true Dane.”

Luckily, Princess Mary had already done most of the hard work for me. While theirs was a town of one thousand, they found it mind-boggling that I hadn’t run into the Australian/Danish princess at least once.

“But have you had rødgrød med fløde?” A question posed in mid July. “It’s a summer must-have.”

The words were difficult, by far the hardest sounds I tried to contort my mouth to make. The d’s as l’s, the new o’s extended, the e’s sharper and pointier than I’d previously tried.

“What’s that?” I’d asked, biting into my third tebirke, an almond Danish with a marzipan filling that I was sure lined the clouds of heaven.

“You haven’t had it?” The Dane retorted, “how have you got this far without having one?”

“The bigger question-” a wicked grin escaping from another, “is can you say it? That’s the true test.”

It was a jest, a tease. These boys had learnt English since they were infants, and flowed casually from one language into another, often knowing three or four before they were teenagers. They knew that theirs was a tongue of the norse, of war and conquest, but also equality and feminism. It spoke to men taking paternity leave, and opting for oat milk, buying wooden toys in the Yuletide, and sitting with hot chocolates surrounded lit candles. Unfortunately I had neither had it, nor could say it.

“Roald growl mid flood” I tried, staggering and grinning through each word, a test I was later told, that was a rite of passage for foreigners. As were fairy bread and lamingtons, as Buckingham palace and scones, rødgrød med fløde was the iconic creamy pudding of Scandinavia, that they were gobsmacked I hadn’t tried. Food has power, and the most potent memory of all comes from taste. As I sit back in Australia basking in sunlight, I can feel the warm spoon in my hands, and the prize upon my tongue, even now.

“Good enough!” They had said triumphantly, clasping my hands and patting me firmly on the back, presenting me my trophy- a pudding of summer berries and vanilla cream, oats and rice and others I couldn’t name, which coated my palate with deep content, and warmed my body and soul.

Being presented with this home-made delicacy wasn’t simply the mark of belonging, but of sharing a culture, a place, a life with people who you’d never expect to meet.

And years later, rødgrød med fløde stands as the tongue challenge I haven’t yet mastered, and the summer food I can’t forget.