Sildegrynsgrøt (Herring grain porridge)

(Eftersom grötundersökningen inför detta blogginlägg skedde med hjälp av icke-svensktalande personer har vi valt att publicera det på engelska)

Last week Porridgehunters went to the small community of Sørfinnset in Northern Norway, to participate in a workshop. The two of us were supposed to do something there about porridge. I tried to ask around among my Norwegian friends about special porridges from Northern Norway. No one knew anything about that. The day of our departure I had to leave work early to catch the train. One of my colleagues asked where I was going.
“I’m going to Sørfinnset, close to Bodø. I’m doing this porridge project…”
“Porridge project! Than you must know about the Norwegian porridges like rømmegrøt and sildegrynsgrøt.” (Rømmegrøt = Well known Norwegian porridge cooked with sour cream. Sildegrynsgrøt = literally ’herring grain porridge’)
“Sildegrynsgrøt??” I confused asked.
“Yes sildegrynsgrøt. It comes from the north, around where you’re going. But of course, no one knows how to cook it anymore.”
I was intrigued but had to run for the train.

“If a porridge is just the sum of its ingredients and cooking procedure, can sildegrynsgrøt still exist if no one knows how to cook it?” Vanda asked me when I told her what I had heard. ”And if someone would try to cook sildegrynsgrøt, but did it wrong, no one would notice this if no one knows the right way. Is it not sildegrynsgrøt if everyone is fooled to believe it is?”
We realised that this porridge was the quest for our journey.

We decided to make use of the possibilities at the workshop finishing party, to find out more. The party would be visited by the mixture of creative people from the workshop, as well as locals from Sørfinnset; people we hoped would possess useful information on the subject. So while handing out party porridge spiked with whiskey to the guests, we also gave them questionnaires about Sildegrynsgrøt.

The first people receiving questionnaires quickly proclaimed they had never heard of anything like sildegrynsgrøt. We asked them to give answering a try anyway, as there are different kinds of knowledge. When looking at the answers there was some far flung guesses about what it could be, including porridge made with herring eggs and porridge made from grains shaped like herrings. Most common however was that sildegrynsgrøt was thought to be a porridge made on herring flour, here follows one example of an invented recipe:

Soak barley grains in water over the night and then cook until soft, around two hours. Make a thickener of herring flour and pour into the grains while stirring. Add water until you have a satisfying consistency. Salt to taste.

After a while local people from the village started to drop in to the party, and almost everyone exclaimed the same sentence when seeing our questions:

“Sildegrynssuppe, that’s good! But I never heard of anything like sildegrynsgrøt.” (Sildegrynssuppe = herring grain soup)
We explained that we were interested in information about any kind of dish whose name was starting with sildegryn (herring grain) although our main interest was sildegrynsgrøt. Sildegrynssuppe, we found out, is a soup made of wholegrain barley, salted herring, onions, carrots, potatoes and stock. It was primarily cooked during war times. This was one of the cheapest foods possible since grains and herring was widely available in this part of Norway. In the wealthier families sometimes a meat bone was added to give taste. The dish is rarely eaten today and apparently young people normally dislike it, if they even know what it is. One person told us the following story:

My mother used to eat sildegrynssuppe during war times. Once during the seventies she cooked it for our family but neither our father nor any of us kids would eat it. That was the only time that happened. Not even our otherwise gluttonous dog wanted it.

Someone came up with the idea that sildegrynsgrøt might be a thicker sildegrynssuppe, and someone suggested it could be the leftovers from a sildegrynssuppe that had been swelling overnight. Here follows another example of an invented recipe for sildegrynsgrøt, made by someone who knew about sildegrynssuppe and thought that the porridge must be a little different:

5 dl wholegrain barley
1 salted herring
1 onion
1 l of milk
Cook the grains together with onion and milk into a porridge. Cut the herring into small pieces and mix with the porridge. Serve hot with butter on top.

Just as we thought this was all the information the questionnaires would give us we looked through the last of the papers and found the following answer:

Call Rigmor Skjervagen in Bodø. If anyone knows anything about sildegrynsgrøt it’s her. Best wishes /Guri

Who was Rigmor Skjervagen? And what does it mean to know anything about sildegrynsgrøt? An update will follow here on the blog…

In the meantime we’re thankful if any of you try out any of the invented recipes above, and give us a feedback on what, exactly, you think you just cooked.

/jana