Category: Grief

Lefse friend for life David Sumnicht said as we played a recent round of golf that he had picked up a lefse book that wasn’t mine. Of course I knew that authors other than me had been moved to write non-fiction books about lefse, but I was intrigued when David said this book was a novel. Well, well!

When I describe my novel, Final Rounds: On Love, Loss, Life, and Lefse, I call it my lefse novel if I am in a rush. But it is actually about grief. A 12-year-old girl’s grandfather dies. While she mourns his loss, she delights in the lefse-making memories they shared, especially one night of 26 inches of snow when they had little choice but to make 630 rounds of lefse and examine Papa’s eight rather goofy rules of life.

I have read and recommend The Invention of Lefse: A Christmas Story, by Larry Woiwode, Poet Laureate of North Dakota and writer in residence at Jamestown College. His work has been featured in the New Yorker, the Washington Post, and the Atlantic. He’s an honored and awarded writer, so I was thrilled that, like me, he also has found inspiration in this humble flatbread lefse.

The novel is only 63 pages, and I was driven to find out why lefse was invented. There is the suggestion of lefse half way through the book, but it is not until page 51 that the word lefse appears. It has been invented out of desperation and transforms the Christmas meal of a Norwegian family in the first decade of the twentieth century, two years after Norway gained independence.

With humor, tender moments, quirky characters, and lefse, The Invention of Lefse: A Christmas Story is a winner.

In these troubled times, I find comfort and inspiration by starting my day with meditation and then saying two prayers, two Psalms and two Bible verses, Jeremiah 17 verses 7 and 8.

These Jeremiah verses, by the way, are the same verses Mrs. Taylor (above) recited loud and proud when she needed strength and courage as a young woman in a new town far, far from home. Mrs. Taylor is a pivotal character for 12-year-old Amaya, the main character in my novel, Final Rounds: On Love, Loss, Life, and Lefse.

Here are the beautiful verses:

“Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.

They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit.”

Jeremiah 17: 7-8

I offer this passage in the hopes you do the same. Do you have a favorite verse in the Bible or a favorite prayer or poem that carries you through the day? If so, I hope you will share it in the comments below or by emailing me at glegwold@lutefisk.com. Thanks.

I went shopping for flour the other day, to make lefse. In one grocery store, shelves were empty of King Arthur Flour, my favorite, and all flours. So I went to another store. Empty. The coronavirus pandemic had sheltered us all, and folks were stocking up (for how long?) on flour, toilet paper, cereal, pasta and pasta sauce, disinfectant wipes, etc.

So here we are, in our homes swinging from fear to gratitude to grief to disbelief to prayer. What-if questions nudge us in the night, and virus and economic news is dire throughout the day.

When we need it most, we can’t hug. We have to shun each other and swerve away from approaching walkers — who, like us, are trying to find relief in movement and nature. When we need it most, we can’t meet to sing or worship or to simply share a piece of pie and sip our tea.

But we still have lefse. For those of us in Lefse Land, that’s no small thing. Making lefse calms our internal troubled waters and puts us in touch with other lefse makers who have lived through tough times.

Bitten Norvoll

I finally found two 5-pound bags of flour, and while making lefse last weekend, I thought of Bitten Norvoll. She was Norwegian, and in 1950 she and her husband Torbjorn moved to Minneapolis. I interviewed them for my first book, The Last Word on Lefse: Heartwarming Stories — and Recipes Too!

Both Bitten and Torborn were from towns north of the Arctic Circle; she was from Narvik and Torbjorn from Andenes. They lived through the three-year German occupation in World War II.

Three years. As I made lefse and remembered Bitten’s fresh smile, I wondered how the today’s questions of “How long?” and “How bad?” were the same then for Bitten and Torbjorn. We’ve been pressing for answers about COVID-19 for weeks now, but how did these questions about the Nazis and the war change over the course of years under life-death conditions that were similar to ours today?

Occupation. Today, we are directed to stay in for our own safety and the safety of others. Back then, many Norwegians were told to get out. “Two days before Christmas my family was told we had twenty-four hours to get out of the house, or we’d be thrown out bodily,” said Torbjorn. His family moved to an apartment above a store; three rooms for traveling officers were also on the floor. His family’s house, which his family didn’t re-occupy until three months after the war ended, was converted to a hospital. Bitten said Norwegians were forced to turn out lights at night and read only German newspapers.

Thinking of the temporary shortage of flour and other foods today, I recalled what Bitten said in the chapter I wrote about the Norvolls. “During the occupation we could buy potatoes, and we knew so many ways of using potatoes. We couldn’t buy much milk or butter or margarine — or a decent flour. The flour we could buy was so heavy. You’d bake bread, and the outside was hard and crusty and the inside just a lump of dough.”

Bitten and so many others of that Greatest Generation made it through. They must have wondered how they would do it. But they did it, together, a day at a time. As we look ahead with hope and fear, we can gain strength in looking back at the Bittens in our lives.

Bitten was one of the lefse makers in my mind when I wrote the lyrics to “Keep On Rollin’: A Lefse Song for Voice and Piano” (copy of front page below). Erik Sherburne wrote the music with the idea of honoring the resilience of the old ones, those lefse makers in their 80s and 90s who keep on rolling through whatever life throws their way. I especially like the bridge of the song:

A lefse maker I once knew she said here’s what you do

When in a storm just let your faith take form

Keep on a rolling, the sun will shine anew

So stand tall, be true, stay strong, be you!”

from Keep On Rolling! Life on the Lefse Trail and Learning to Get a Round

I am making lots of lefse right now. Tis the season, right? And one of my most favorite times in the process is when the potatoes are boiling and I get to sit. Sit and think. Sit and remember.

I remember Grandma Legwold, her quiet smile that she passed on to my dad, Conrad Legwold. I suppose I have it. I never saw her make lefse but tasted plenty of it.

I remember all the old lefse makers who were the stars of my 1992 book, The Last Word on Lefse. The Queen, Ida Sacquitne, who told me about powdered sugar in her lefse recipe. Eunice Stoen, who was the first to tell me she did not cool her dough but rolled it at room temperature, thus saving time. I have come around to doing just that— and love it. John Glesne, who paved the way for me as a man to be a lefse maker in a woman’s lefse world. Merlin Hoiness, the original Mr. Lefse, and Bitten Norvoll, who hated doing dishes and made extra mashed potatoes for dinner so her boys would exchange doing dishes for the fresh lefse Bitten would whip up. And of course, there’s the Boys of Starbuck, a group of old guys who came up with a goofy-then-great idea to create The World’s Largest Lefse that was 9 feet 8 inches in diameter.

Those are the lefse makers who come to mind just from one lefse book. The lefse maker list could go on and on. I interviewed 52 lefse makers for Keep On Rolling!, my second lefse book published in 2017. I cherish these memories when I listen to classical music and sit and think about them, especially Linda Bengtson, who I dedicated the book to and who passed on this year.

Many of these lefse makers have passed on, and I cry about that. Sure I miss them, but I think of those memories that brought joy, especially those lefse memories. Everybody has a lefse story, and with the writing of my books and All Things Lefse that have spun off from the books, I have heard so many of those stories. And I give thanks for them.

To sit and think and remember gives grief a good name. I feel better as I do this … have a good Christmas cry thinking back over the year and the years.

As I look at the mist that builds on the window from the boiling potatoes, I think of 12-year-old Timothy, a character in my new novel Final Rounds: On Love, Loss, Life, and Lefse. Timothy tells his girlfriend Amaya, the main character in the novel, that he sees ghosts. She’s shocked but believes Timothy, and she asks where he sees them. He says, “wherever water is … like … light…. You know … when water is floating, like fog or mist or—”

I don’t see ghosts, but I believe Timothy, that ghosts or something like them are where water is light, in fog or in mist or in falling snow. When I look at the falling snow behind the mist on my kitchen window as I boil potatoes, I think of the old lefse makers and part of a poem Amaya says at the funeral of her Papa, who taught her to make lefse:

See how far you’ve come to get where you are

See who was there with you, to lift up your star

And know they’re still with you, just right over here.

Turn around and tune in; they don’t disappear.

My potatoes are done, so it is time to make the lefse dough. But I look at the mist on the window and think of the old lefse makers who are “just right over here” … and I smile.