Froid’s Lutefisk Dinner Brings Generations To The Table

The line for lutefisk at Froid Lutheran Church led to the sanctuary. After paying for their meals, guests received numbered tickets and waited upstairs until their numbers were called. Then it was their turn to head downstairs for lutefisk, Swedish meatballs and a meal some had been coming back to for decades.

The church has used numbered tickets for years to make room for everyone who comes to eat. There are only so many seats in the small church basement, so guests go down in groups as space opens up. Members of JUMP, the church’s youth group, helped serve dinner and cleared plates as diners finished.

There was plenty of lutefisk to go around, and the rest of the menu could fill a plate on its own. The church served Swedish meatballs, mashed potatoes and gravy, coleslaw, corn and buns, along with lefse, krumkake and pickled herring. Coffee and lemonade were available to drink.

At each place setting, a placemat gave guests a little of the history behind the meal. Lutefisk means “lye fish,” a name that comes from soaking dried cod in a lye solution. The placemats explained that birch ashes were once used to make the solution and that Norway’s cold weather from January into early spring provides good conditions for drying fish.

The dried cod, known as stockfish, was traded abroad for centuries. According to the placemats, it was carried on long voyages in the Viking era, when it could be eaten along the way or traded when the travelers reached their destination.

At the tables, diners had their own stories about lutefisk. One guest remembered the church serving the meal as far back as 1982. Others talked about how their mothers made it when they were growing up. In some homes, the fish went into the oven. In others, it went into a pot. Those were the details people still remembered years later, sitting down to another plate of lutefisk in the church basement.