By Sally Voth -- Daily Staff Writer
FRONT ROYAL -- As she packages up her homemade Nordic goodies, Evine Eriksson quips she has "the need to knead."
Evine Eriksson wraps up loaves of bread in preparation for sale. Dennis Grundman/Daily
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Her Rivermont home, a converted church, overflows with Scandinavian cookies, bread and sweets.
All the baked goods will be taken to Union Station in Washington, where the Sons of Norway will sell them as part of the Norwegian Christmas at Union Station. All the other Norwegian baked goods she makes throughout the year are given away.
Eriksson lays braided loaves on a table in the center of her kitchen. It's pulla, a sort of Swedish coffee bread.
"It's kind of the Lucia bread, [for] the Santa Lucia [feast day], which is the 13th [of December]," Eriksson says as she brushes the pulla with egg whites.
She then dusts granulated sugar on the bread before sprinkling it with large sugar balls from Sweden.
Although she was born in Brooklyn, Eriksson's life is heavily influenced by Norway. She has lived in Warren County for 22 years, but had visited often since her mother, who was of Scots-Irish descent, was born in Bentonville.
Eriksson grew up in a Scandinavian neighborhood in Brooklyn, and was even born in the Norwegian hospital there. Her father immigrated to the U.S. from Norway. Her family was very proud of their Norse roots.
While Eriksson was able to recently travel to her ancestral homeland, her late father never got to return before his death.
"When he left, it was the poorest country, and right now, it's one of the richest," she says.
Her son, Karl, took Eriksson to Norway, and they saw where her father was born and visited relatives.
"I never dreamed I would go," she says.
Eriksson's late husband, Ronald, was also a first-generation American. He was of Swedish descent.
"My mother learned [Norwegian baking] from her mother-in-law," Eriksson says.
Her mother and her father's sisters, in turn, passed the skills on to her.
Eriksson has been donating baked goods to the Sons of Norway for about a decade. She's not a member since the lodge is so far away.
For her next sweet treat, Eriksson gets out the dough she's made for fattigmann cookies. She flours her table before rolling out the dough.
"Down in D.C., this is what they want the most," she says. "Everyone wants them and no one wants to make them.
"They take time."
The fattigmann dough, spiced with cardamom, is rolled very thin, and then Eriksson takes a fattigmann roller, which makes diamond-shaped cutouts with a hole in the middle.
She rolls each piece up, pushing one end through the hole. They will be fried in lard later.
"I would be afraid if I used something else that it would not [turn out right], they would stay moist or something," Eriksson says. "This is a great cookie if you like brandy. There's brandy in it, but I like to drink brandy with it.
"If you don't have these, you don't have Christmas."
Her brother, Bob Johnsen, came over to help with the fattigmanns the previous night.
"He will stand there and fry them and I cut them," Eriksson says. "But, he especially likes to eat them."
Eriksson, who works in the radiology department at Warren Memorial Hospital, used to have a shop in her home where she sold Scandinavian imports and her own baked goods. That closed about 12 years ago.
"My mother made white bread," she says. "I made different breads and the different cookies people wanted."
Typical Norwegian cooking is heavy on the cream, Eriksson says, and "bland for sure."
"You have a lot of almonds, cardamom," she adds.
Creamed fish and creamed vegetables are common.
Cookies and pulla take up most available surfaces in Eriksson's dining room and spill into the living room.
The rolled krumkaker, resembling a wafer-thin homemade waffle cone, can be filled with berries and whipped cream. The paper-thin pepperkakers are heart-shaped and have a gingerbread taste to them.
A round almond-flavored shortbread cookie, called the sandkaker, can be filled with whipped cream and berries, or even ice cream.
Eriksson says she does make one American cookie, which she calls farm chips. They're also called cow chips, but since she had cows, she didn't think selling a cookie called cow chips made good business sense.
While she started selling cookies in 1987, Eriksson baked for her three children when they were young.
Preparing, baking and packaging the goodies -- the pulla in clingfilm, the cookies on paper doilies in plastic containers -- has been nearly a weeklong task for Eriksson. But, it seems to be a labor of love for her.
"I enjoy it," Eriksson says. "I just love it. It's relaxing. I guess I have the need to knead."
* Contact Sally Voth at svoth@nvdaily.com
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