Dinner and a book is supported by the Rex and Alice A. Martin Foundation of Elkhart, celebrating the spirit of Alice Martin and her love of good food and good friends.

In 1916 Sven Armisen leaves a restless life in Stockholm to seek adventure in Svalbard, an archipelago where darkness reigns four months of the year in the company of only a loyal dog on an uninhabited island.

The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven by Nathaniel Ian Miller is a ceaselessly brilliant story.

Let's meet my guest, Doug Farmwald to find out why.

Welcome.

Thanks for having me.

Appreciate it.

Now, here we are in the polar dark.

Yeah.

So it's always going to be interesting.

It is.

I can't imagine going four months or five months with no sign at this this time of year.

And Indiana's bad enough.

It's a yes.

And we're kind of used to it, you know.

But what did you think of the book?

I enjoyed it.

That's one of the things I always enjoy about this.

I pick up books that I would not have wrote otherwise, and I thought it was a really well done book and very easy to read it.

Oh, I thought it was excellent.

The vocabulary.

This writer who lives in Vermont and has been in the Polar exploration, he knows what he's writing about and he gets I think he gets the voice of Sven, right?

Yes.

Scandinavians typically are not as gregarious.

And so the language is kind of spare and definitely does not have an American or an English cadence to it.

Right.

And what makes it plausible?

It has a singsong tone, though.

And I think I think once again, the Scandinavians get to know you.

They are much more outgoing.

I have experienced that.

And so we we travel all around this island that is just north of Sweden and Norway.

And it is an amazing place.

We meet polar bears and seals and fox walrus and.

Yes.

And some interesting characters.

Oh, absolutely.

You know, he goes to this place.

Well, let's talk about a little bit about he goes to to this island because he is bored in Stockholm, Right?

He's he feels out of place.

I guess today we'd call him emo.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

He hasn't done fit in with people that doesn't like the city.

Finds his bourgeois sister and her husband boring.

Particularly the husband.

Particularly the husband who's a successful businessman.

Yes.

And?

And he romanticizes political philosophers that he's read.

It quotes Montaigne repeatedly, and he romanticizes polar explorers.

And this is the time in history when that was the last undiscovered part of the globe.

And so the great explorers like Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon, Scott, Ernest Shackleton were in the news and famous and heroes.

Yes.

He read about them and romanticized them and thought, that's that's what I need to do to get away from boring Stockholm and and pointless city life.

I need to get out into the wild and test myself.

Kind of like.

Kind of like.

Like Thoreau.

But on steroids.

Yes.

Yes.

And cold and wet and dangerous land.

And, you know, he's there.

And he does meet some people.

And we.

Let's talk about MacIntyre, the Scotsman.

Right.

When he goes up ideally to be alone and test himself as a as a man, as a person and see if he can survive it.

And every time he gets into a bad state, someone just happens to come along and help him out of it.

It's Mackintosh or the Scot Tapio, the Finn.

He meets Ilya and Ludmilla is the house leader of the Russians.

They're always there just at the right time to help him through this next stage.

That's what you can do as the writer.

You can make all this happen just at the right time.

I didn't know about family, and I found this extremely interesting and very realistic.

And I think he is a very good writer.

I was impressed by his adjectives and his adverbs.

He just made everything come alive for me, and I thought it was really, really well done in that some writers are sort of ostentatious in their vocabulary and they draw attention to to look, you know, look at the big words I'm using, and you've got to go look them up.

Yes.

Umberto Eco.

Yes.

Yes.

I mean, he uses them correctly, but I have to go look them up.

Yes.

Well, that's something for you because, you know, you really.

No, not , not those.

But here he uses words that are you know, the story is transparent.

You don't notice the writer?

That's right.

That's right.

So it's it just flows.

I just stop now and then and I take what a sentence that was.

We really should start talking about our food.

Here we are in this barren wasteland, and there's blubber, and there's whale and there's polar bear.

And.

And that's what they eat.

Yes or no?

Plants and organs of the of the seal and the polar bears and brains, which are hard to source.

So we're not cooking, you know, we're not can't find those at the grocery.

Well, we're going to make a Swedish meal of comfort food.

It is So this is this is sort of what at least for me, I imagine Sven sitting alone, you know, in the dark in the winter.

Think of this is what momma would put on the table if he can get some potatoes.

You know, they have supplies.

They come in twice a year.

And if he could get some potatoes and I doubt they have too much calcium or even green vegetables, but I have precooked some potatoes.

I'm going to cook them.

I've chopped them up.

We're going to start them over here.

And then some onions, chopped onions and then just some some beef sort of tenderloin and then a little sauce made with cream and grainy mustard.

And we have we talked about the fact that they're often served in a half of an empty eggshell.

And you've provided two empty, three empty egg shells in case I break them when I'm trying this.

And then we have some Norwegian for our Viking Viking blood wine here.

It's it's really amazing.

Very good mead.

Yeah, it's a mead.

Yes.

And so here I'm going to be cooking those and then we'll put that together.

And you are making.

Tell us what you're doing.

I'm making something called Raksmorgas Sometimes referred to as rock mocha, which is either an appetizer or a very quick lunch.

That's fairly common in Stockholm.

It's basically an open faced shrimp sandwich.

And they like these open faced sadwiches the Swedes, the Danes, too, with their Smørrebrød.

And it's really amazing.

Good food.

So I'm starting with these potatoes, hoping I'm not throwing them all over the place.

Oh, I got a little bit of the onion in there.

I'm separating them and we don't mix them together.

We haven't.

You could.

I mean, what's the difference here?

And so I'm putting a little unusual rye bread, which is traditional, washed some lettuce and so put a leaf of lettuce on each.

And I got a couple of boiled eggs and a cucumber I'm going to slice.

And those are also going to go on.

It sounds good to me.

I love that concept and the Danes are good at that.

It is interesting of the characters we meet, you know, it's like going on an international trip, going to this island, this desolate, cool island.

They have four different seasons and then one might be one where it's slightly warm, but when it's cold from what is it, December through February for probably about October, yeah, it is.

It's just it's so cold.

The ships, the fruit because the sea freezes.

It's that cold.

Well, and here we have our Sven.

He's left Stockholm.

He has worked for a while in a mine and while he was living in that area.

Morton I believe it was what happens to him that changes his life forever.

He is trapped in the mine when an explosion causes a cave in and basically barely survives.

And what happens still and so he is horribly scarred, loses it.

I just figured on the face and feels even more out of place in society.

Well, and he does And people do comment when some of the Norwegian ships come by in the in the sailors get off and run on the beach.

They comment because he is kind of scary looking.

Yeah.

And later on he finds out after World War One and he doesn't look so different from some of the young men who come back from war who have had horrible, horrible war injuries.

So we have we have a friend.

And actually, I guess he is scary.

I guess he really is scary looking.

But the adults take it, you know, they take it and they like him.

And I think part of it is a lot of well, you know, social norms don't have much currency in the far north because the important thing is survival.

Yes.

And they do.

We don't don't have it either.

So no big deal.

No big deal.

But I'll mention it to you.

What happened?

What happened?

You know, very often we don't ask that.

You know, if you came in with your eye gone, I some Americans wouldn't ask you what happened.

They would just sort of kind of look past you and wonder what would what happened, but not saying anything.

And many people say things to him and he learns to handle it, doesn't he?

Yeah.

And over time, he gets a little more accustomed to the reactions that he's giving, but he never fully gets comfortable with people.

And I think that's just as personal.

But I think it is it and this kind of becomes a reason for him to hide a little bit and to stay away from people.

He doesn't look at that beautiful sandwich.

And so he moves out of that gorge, goes to he wants to stay over the winter as the steward of Long longer, which is a British company town for a mining and he'll take care of it over the winter when the nobody there, with the exception of about four trappers that come in for the winter, and that's where he meets Tapio, who's probably the single most important to him, and MacIntyre both.

But those are the two that really keep him alive.

Tapio is a Finn, and Tapio is disgusted with his country and its government and he likes socialism.

And so we hear about this and because they want the people protected.

But we're just going to take a little break and continue with our it's almost a distaff meal, but it's based on actual food served in Svalbard.

So take a look now at a map of this country and you'll see where we are.

And we'll be right back.

So we said that he is never really alone and he meets someone we want to talk about TAPIO But first of all, tell us what you're going to be doing in this segment.

This is a dish called the Vasterbottenpaj.

Oh, sure.

Which I don't know if that's my Swedish is any good or not.

I'm sure if not, sounds good, that's as close as I can come to an accurate pronunciation, which is basically a Swedish cheese pie.

All right.

Swedish cheese pie.

And what kind of cheese are you using?

Well, usually traditionally, you would use Västerbotten cheese, which is almost impossible to find outside of Sweden.

So I am using dry air and an aged white cheddar, which you found.

And I got those at Trader Joe's.

Right.

Really good point there.

Yes, good.

We're we're talking truth here.

Yeah.

My potatoes are cooking now.

My onions.

I'm making this dish that will it's very typical.

It's like you said, comfort food you find now in the restaurants on the island of Salzburg.

But let's get back to what's going on on Svalbard.

Tapio, talk about this man who appears out of nowhere from Finland, Tapio.

Kempe More along here when he's the storm for the winter.

Tapio is a hunter.

Trapper makes his living out on the island, hunting for skins and and basically oil.

So seals, polar bears, he hunts polar bears, which that takes some guts.

Arctic foxes, walrus, you know, whatever they can find keeps the hides and skin sells those.

And that's his living.

And he's very good too.

He's very good at it.

In the end.

How does he meet McIntyre The Scots McIntyre is also out long here.

All right.

So this is a little group that it's a group that all are kind of misfits.

People who fit into society don't go 3000 miles into the Arctic, right.

And to be cold and wet.

And so they're all people that feel out of place for one reason or another politically or based on gender or sexuality.

They don't feel they fit into their society.

And so they've left.

They've gone to the far north, and that's where Sven meets them.

And Tapio particular takes event under his wing is transient, Says you can't you can't go out and be a hunter.

He'll die in the first month.

Come with me.

I'll keep you alive and we'll teach you how to do this.

It's not just putting on really warm clothes made by some fancy company, right?

You've got to learn when to go out and see if there are polar bear or if you know something.

You know if a polar bears track again.

Yes.

And so this guy comes just at the right time.

And so he teaches him these these things.

And what does how to Sven?

Well, how does he manage?

Well, he's grateful and he realizes just how much he's getting from Tapio.

And he does learn he never becomes as good, but he becomes proficient and capable of of making a living and keeping himself alive.

And the first thing they do is build a hut out of driftwood.

Yeah.

And they burn it down twice over the course of the book.

And rebuild it creosote or something builds builds up in the chimney of the little cook stove.

Remember that?

Clean your chimney.

And so and this is very good because it's a basis for what happens to Sven next, right?

Because once Tapio has trained him enough to survive out of nowhere, his niece shows off Helga.

Helga was kind of a wild child and who doesn't fit in?

She doesn't fit in either.

And she kind of romanticized her uncle Sven because Sven sister Olga, would read her letters that Sven wrote home and idolized, you know, his her uncle, the big polar explorer.

Yes.

And out of nowhere shows up not just her, but her and an infant named Skuld I would think Skuld or Skuld, depending on.

Yeah, what you want to say about it, how good our IKEA is.

Yeah, but scold is and named after Norn, which are sort of the fates in Norse mythology.

So we have a little of everything here.

Oh my goodness.

I always kind of get the wrong burner and I still, after all these years.

So here is this young lady.

She has a baby who's about two months old and there's the dog.

There is Tapio.

They're all in this hut that they have built.

Right.

And it kind of gets warm and it gets kind of overwhelmed with human whatever comings and goings and But they're happy, aren't they?

They are, because they're they were they need to be in life.

And what they need to do from day to day, moment to moment is very clear.

You know, there's just no ambiguity.

We do this or we die.

Yeah, we have to go out and collect driftwood so we have no food to cook with.

We have to go out and check the trap line and we have nothing to eat.

Yes.

And they both get very everyone gets very attached to Skuld as the baby.

And, you know, even the ones who aren't related, Skuld grows up calling Sven Poppa, even though he's not and calls Tapio Uncle.

Yes.

So you see how close.

And these trapper men, they're very interested in this little baby.

And she's a delight.

She just seems to be.

I was thinking that even washer in this cold ocean and I thought, whoa, you know, and she she grows up tough.

She is a pretty tough.

Yes.

And, you know, there's scenes in the in the book where she's teething on walrus hide.

Yeah.

And run around, see how the sailors love her that bring resupply.

Everyone just loves this little girl who is perfectly at home in the far north.

She is.

And when the Norwegian ship comes in with supplies, they kind of many of them come down to the beach and they want to see how everybody is doing.

They check on them and they check on them for the next few years.

Yeah.

And and that's important and that's good.

They keep in touch by correspondence with MacIntyre, who arranges to sell their skins and things and some supplies and and some books and things like that.

And then once or twice a year they'll take a week or so and go into long year and visit.

Yes.

And you know, this is this is so interesting because with the appearance of this young Helga and her baby, things do change.

And Helga has brought some kind of a depression, too.

She has she has moods and she probably might be manic depressive.

We don't know.

But she goes into a funk and sometimes she's in bed for two months and she's at her best when everything else is going wrong.

When things go well, she has some issues.

Yeah.

And, you know, that's and it becomes clear later in the book when she talks about Skuld was born out of a rape.

Yes.

And so Helga wanted to get away from society and and should we today we would say she's suffering from PTSD.

Yes.

Early 1900.

And remember, it's not a good time to have a baby out of wedlock in a big city and everybody knows what's going on.

And I'm checking on my meat.

My onions are pretty well cooked.

So I whisk three eggs together with some cream and milk, and I put in some sliced mushrooms and caramelized onions.

Now, traditionally, you can eat it just just as the cheese pie.

But onions and and mushrooms are not uncommon.

And I'm going to season it with a little pepper and a little smoked paprika and lets pop that in the oven.

We're going to pop it in the oven.

We're going to cook it.

We're going to finish this other food.

We have our beautiful shrimp sandwiches and you are all set.

This is beautiful.

Look at that smoked paprika.

I'm going to open this for you and we'll even put this light on.

Where is it?

Up here.

Oh, light.

light.

Light, okay, so we can see.

Good.

I am just checking here.

I think my food is done.

I need to get a I need to get a man with strong fingers to open this Viking's blood.

And.

And they do a lot of they're mostly in the books.

Sven drink scotch and so does MacIntyre Where do they get it?

Well.

MacIntyre has it shipped in from Scotland.

All right, there you go.

Here's tobacco shipped in as well.

So he's something of a connoisseur.

And those are he doesn't have much else to spend money on.

That's true.

And they live very simply.

Everything here is cooked.

So, yeah, McIntyre mostly spends his money on tobacco and scotch and books.

And, you know, they even have to sew their own clothes.

And if they have a wound, they have to stich themselves you know?

And so, yeah, Helga stitches quite a serious wound on Sven in his hand.

Yeah.

And at one point they were concerned they would have to amputate his hand.

Oh, dear.

That would have been horrible.

It still tastes good.

It's this nice.

This is.

This is a mead, honey wine with spices.

And yes, this is a delicious one.

I like this one quite a lot.

I know.

You know, this is actually Danish, but Scandinavian enough.

Oh, it is?

Yeah.

Scandinavian.

Oh, yeah.

Dance Mead.

Yes, Mead.

Here we go.

So we have everything we need here.

And our children right now are being taken care of by themselves and each other.

We're going to take another break.

We invite you to our Swedish meal, a comfort food meal.

And so we want to talk in a moment.

Yes.

Here's the menu.

And we're glad you joined us today for the Memoirs of Stockholm.

Sven by Nathaniel Ian Miller and my guest Doug Farmwald in his beautiful Icelandic sweater.

I actually got this in Reykjavik.

Yes, he's ready.

He's ready for this show.

Reykjavik is where they spent World War two.

Yes.

Well, outside, they found Reykjavik too.

Too busy.

Too busy.

And Reykjavik is not a big town.

Oh, it's not much bigger than South Bend, but it is a wonderful town.

I didn't go there.

We go there.

Let's talk about our food.

Tell us these wonderful sandwiches.

What are they, Raksmorgas Which is an open faced shrimp sandwich.

Sort of a quick on the go lunch you find maybe in Stockholm.

This is Vasterbottenpaj.

I'm thinking Im prounouncing that about as close as I can, which is a cheese pie common snack in Sweden.

And then you made Beef Ryberg I did make Beef Ryberg.

Another dish somewhat similar to what we do with a chuck roast and but there are no carrots.

And Doug brought me a half of an eggshell to put the sauce in.

Traditionally, that's how it serves.

Yeah.

So that clever.

You don't go out and buy a little dainty dishes.

You use an egg shell half as what you have, and then we have some bread.

And so I think it's a wonderful meal.

And I do thank you for suggesting the food because it's it's tasty to cook it's it's comfort food or a lot of times I refer to it as peasant food.

This is what ordinary folks eat.

It's quick, it's easy, it's hearty.

Right?

You know, it's fun to cook and it's onions and potatoes and beef and loved it.

And I wanted to ask you, what was your favorite part of the book?

I like a lot of it.

I emotional.

I kind of liked the end because it seemed as most of the book is Sven is in a really grim place.

Yes, he is.

And at the end, he's starting to feel hopeful.

And he's he's left Svalbard, Spitsbergen, to go find his sister or his niece, Helga, who vanished.

And he feels like, well, I might be getting close.

He's actually in France.

Yes.

And this is an exotic place he finds after being in the cold.

What's interesting, what I found funny was that Sven describes Normandy, which is like a colder part of France, the way most of us would describe the Caribbean.

Colorful, colorful, warm, friendly people.

But he had.

Yeah, well, anyway, this Sven is someone to spend time with.

I enjoyed his company and I enjoyed yours.

Well, thank you.

Thank you for having me.

Oh, it's always a pleasure, Doug.

And I'm so glad you joined us to remind you of the fact that good food, good friends, good books make for a terrific life.

And don't forget that.

And have your children grow up learning that, too.

So we'll see you next time.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you.

Thanks.

This WNIT local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Dinner and a book is supported by the Rex and Alice A. Martin Foundation of Elkhart, celebrating the spirit of Alice Martin and her love of good food and good friends.