Hello from Norway #2

An intro to pålegg, the Norwegian supply chain and traditional cheese.

A typical Norwegian grocery store is organized the same as any you’d see in the U.S. with one notable exception: the pålegg section. På meaning “on,” and legg meaning “place.” Things to put on top of bread! It’s a refrigerated case full of cheese, deli meat, pate, and oh, so much mayonnaise. Right next to it you will often find eggs and an extensive butter selection. The only quintessential bread topping you will not find there is makrell e tomat, cans of mackerel in tomato sauce which E likes to call flykrasj, or “plane crash” due to its gruesome appearance.

While pålegg seems charming, it’s also my biggest complaint about Norway. Cold toppings on cold bread is the standard fare for breakfast, lunch and snacks. You go out into absolutely freezing snowy weather and come back inside to eat cold! food! Worse yet, the variety is lacking. It’s half serious and half a joke when Norwegians say that the three wholesalers behind the majority of grocery stores— Norgesgruppen, Rema 100 and Coop— are a cartel. A triopoly, if you’d like to sound less dramatic. They control nearly the entire supply chain. So when you go into pretty much any pålegg section pretty much anywhere in the country, you’ll see pretty much the same products. Common favorites in E’s home include: brunost (brown cheese), gulost (yellow cheese), snøfrisk (goat cheese), Kaviar (cod roe and mayonnaise in a tube), skinkeost (ham and cheese paste in a tube) and chilikreps (crawfish and mayonnaise salad).

Interestingly, there are still a couple vestiges of really traditional, pre-oil (pre-wealth) Norwegian culture nestled into commercial pålegg sections alongside extremely mild, crowd-pleasing options. The one I tried today is called gamalost, literally “old cheese.” And “old” is an understatement. I’ve never tasted anything quite so astringent, like if the odor of a sweaty rancid sock could burn your tongue and keep radiating stink inside your skull for longer than you’d ever believe possible. It’s made by souring skim cow milk with a lactic starter, then aging it for a few days before separating the curds and whey. The shaped curds are not only cured for five weeks, but inoculated with mold. The result is a block of cheese that looks like and has the texture of very stale, dense cake. When sliced, the mold is visible throughout in the form of hairy little strands. I can only assume this is an old-fashioned protein bar that never goes bad because it’s already…bad. A controlled bad for food safety. Ingenious, really.

I hate gamalost and would probably never willingly eat it again, but I’m thrilled to have tried it. First of all, hello, novelty is like, the best flavor after convenience— apparently even when it tastes like ass. Second and more importantly, in an era defined by the flattening of local culture, gamalost feels like a beacon of revolt against globalization. It’s only made by one company in one town with a great deal of labor and you won’t find any outside of Norway. How many stinky, hairy, stale cheeses are there left in the world? Seven? Sorry, that was a SATC joke. But you can’t convince me it didn’t work.

Like my beloved Nashville, Norway seems to be losing its unique foodways at a faster pace than new ones are being established. But new ones are out there beyond the confines of Norgesgruppen, Rema 100 and Coop establishments, and I intend to go looking for them later this week. We’re within driving distance of a small butcher shop and an independent general store. Come back soon to learn what I find there!