Andy Romstad
Cambridge Lutheran
Air out your baggy sweater. The Lutefisk supper is coming.
You may be too sophisticated. You may insist you’d rather not damage your taste buds. Maybe you don’t like picking bones out of your jello.
If so, you’re missing it, It is not about the great food. It’s the experience. The Lutefisk supper is the closest you’ll ever get to the movie set of Fargo.
You remember Fargo? You betcha. Lundegaard and Gunderson, Grimsrud and Gustafson. It could have been cast in Cambridge. What was the plot? Who cares. Like the lutefisk supper, Fargo was about the characters.
You go to the Lutefisk supper for the people watching. Look at those sweaters. These folks are as close as we’ll ever get to being face to face with our ancestors from the old country.
These are Ole & Lena’s grandkids. When they say “uff da” and “you betcha,” they actually mean it. Accents like this — we have an accent? — will only be around so long.
As for Fargo, people either hated it or loved it because it was like looking in the mirror. Every Fargo viewer asks, “Do we really sound like that?”
Yes. But to understand us, you have to get past the “accent” to reading between the lines. Midwesterners practice the fine art of saying something without saying it. Our lingo has multiple levels of meaning. We speak in code.
“The Midwestern dialect is so subtle that people not immersed in it for decades can’t hear it,” said Paul Kix, writing about how we talk. “Capturing all the conflicting truths of any moment, and then the infinite iterations beyond that … we live on a heightened plane of consciousness few can comprehend. To be from here is, quite simply, to read a room better than anyone.”
Extrapolating from Kix’ point: Lutefisk eaters are so far advanced beyond non-lutefisk eaters, there is no way non-lutefisk eaters will ever understand.
Lutefisk eaters are not nuts. Lutefisk eaters live on a heightened plane of consciousness. Lutefisk critics are simply incapable of comprehending the infinite iterations of richness the lutefisk experience provides.
We pity you, non-lutefisk eaters. You’re not reading the room well enough.
So, the Cambridge Lutheran Church parking lot soon will become a sea of Ford 500’s and Lincoln Continentals with a few Cadillacs and a Prius here and there (lutefisk progressives).
These are spawning salmon returning home. (That analogy breaks down at a number of levels.) They’re paying homage. This is a pilgrimage. They gather around the central artifact symbolizing the old country — lutefisk. It is a story of sacrifice and humility, the two great themes of humanity.
Lutefisk is what their forebears dreamed their children would one day experience — unlimited fish and potatoes. So, they fly the flag in every shade of sweater. They’ve returned to the kitchen tables of their childhoods.
Swedish Lutherans and Swedish Baptists will hug, putting baptismal theology aside. If we could ever get these Lutherans to put the effort into sharing the gospel that they put into lutefisk, oh, what a world this could be.
On Nov. 5, you’re invited to spawn. Pay homage to your story. Return to your roots. Practice ancestral rites. Honor the saints. People watch. Walk among Ole and Lena’s descendants.
It will only cost you $16. There’s a heck of a deal. Plus, they give all the profits away, don’t you know. Leading it all is a Carlson and an Erickson. There will be Johnsons and Larsons and Andersons. Don’t forget the Germans who cook (and eat) the sausage.
So, I should let you go, then, but we hope to be seeing you really soon in just a bit over at the Lutheran church, there. Skoal (to the fish) and good luck.