The hearty cuisine of Upper Lapland is little
known outside the Arctic Circle. However, without delving into the details, I
was able to spend three enchanted weeks there, thanks to a failed compass, a
random wind, and a slab of driftwood hurled my way by the woman I came to know
as Noni.
Noni
was of Irish descent, though one would never know it by her leathery complexion,
taciturn demeanor, and unsociability. But her isolation had allowed her to
become an expert in the preparation and presentation of the region’s exotic
fare.
As we struggled toward
her makeshift shelter, her greeting provided a hint of how she felt about this
remote area. “Welcome to paradise,” she croaked.
For decades, Noni had lived
alone in what to me seemed like utter desolation: a rocky spit of land, dotted
with meager outcroppings of grass and nettles, surrounded by the endless and
frigid sea. To Noni, though, it was
paradise, because after marrying in her teens she had settled there with her
sea captain husband.
Lapland
was supposed to be just “a stopping point,” she said wistfully. “A way
station.” Instead, it had become her lovers Xanadu. “He told me we would settle
in Dublin,” she chuckled, gazing toward the slate gray sea. “This is as close to Dublin as I'll ever see!”
The statement amused me. This rugged,
unforgiving wasteland was thousands of miles from the vibrant Irish capital.
Where
was her intrepid husband, I asked?
“Just missed him,” she said, sneering with
disappointment. “He’s so busy with his important
maritime career, don’t you know.” Terror and dread played across her face
when she spoke of him. “Do you suppose it’s rough out there today?” she wondered
aloud. “Do you suppose the waves are crashing over the bow even now? Smashing
into the wheelhouse?”
In
Noni’s imagination, the sea was a frightful and perilous place; her thoughts
always turned to the worst when considering her husband’s noble toils. She
seemed to think if him constantly. During the brief summer, when the ice had
receded, she spent her days traipsing along the rugged coast, waving excitedly
to passing ships, hoping, perhaps, that one of them would be captained by her
dear husband, in for a surprise visit. “Hello! Hello!” she would call over the
icy water. “Do you see me? Please! Anyone?”
I
was there as winter approached, however, and was privileged to see how she came
alive in that season, as her homemaking skills came to the fore. I see her now,
sawing through the already thick sheets of ice with a dull handsaw, her sinewy
muscles rippling, sweat pouring from her brow. Hefting the unwieldy ice blocks
up the hill to the building site was a study in grace, strength, and balance.
Turning to me, she joked, “What? Are you crippled or something? Lying there
like a beached whale?”
No, I was not crippled,
but enjoying the last few rays of sunshine. Occasionally as she trudged up the hill
she would gaze bitterly out to the relentless sea, as though expecting her
husband’s ship to appear over the horizon. Grumbling with disappointment, she
would invariably turn back to the task at hand. There was work to be done, she
knew, and romance would have to wait just a while longer.
The
abode she created would probably be called an igloo, but unlike the quaint
structures popular in Western lore, round and even, like breasts, hers was a whimsical
affair; all angles and mismatched seams, with gaps in the walls that she would
fill with scraps of skin, fur, or dog droppings—which provided excellent
insulation, she told me when pressed.
To
look at the structure she had built, all misshapen in the permafrost, one would
think that it had been erected in great haste by someone who had absolutely no
interest or aptitude for construction, but was desperate to escape the
advancing hundred-degree-below zero winter, and had no help whatsoever.
How
wrong they would be! The design was of a theme: oblique angles, incongruence,
and asymmetry composing their own lyric harmony. Inside, the fanciful chaos
continued. Seal and walrus pelts were pegged “haphazardly” to the jagged walls.
Weather-beaten scraps of lumber supported “collapsing” walls. The wind howled
outside, but other than the occasional roaring blast of air and stinging
ice-shards that would gust through one fissure or another, we were safe and
cozy inside.
Noni
and I slept jammed into a corner, always keeping one eye open for her
rambunctious mutts, who I still remember snarling in the dark, their yellow
eyes glowing warmly as they leaped forward to tussle with the sharp stick that
Noni always kept at her side.
Their
playful shenanigans occupied many hours of the day, but eventually her canines companions fell
into exhausted slumber and Noni would turn to her most treasured pastime:
preparing the traditional regional dishes that she loved so well.
In
the center of the igloo sat the whale blubber stove, fashioned of heavy-gage
steel pocked with rust. When I told her it resembled a boat rudder, Noni
smiled. “Took from me husband’s ship meself,” she recalled wistfully. “Four
hours with a cold chisel the night before he left!”
Perhaps
more by coincidence than design, the treasured keepsake proved to be an ideal cooking
surface, distributing heat evenly and holding it long into the night—providing
heat in the frigid dwelling.
But its most important
use was for cooking, of course, and in Noni’s eclectic repertoire no dish was more
memorable than the one she referred to as Inhottaminen.
I still remember savoring
its pungent—some would say cadaverous—redolence, and marveling at the planning
required in its preparation. For weeks prior to my arrival, Noni had gathered the ingredients and set them aside, as some needed time to ripen.
Now,
as she stoked the fire, the powerful aroma of rancid whale blubber—the fuel
source--wafted through the hut. Crouching over the smoky flames, her gaunt face
glowed under her crude sealskin hood, and her single gold tooth sparkled in the
flickering light. “Winter’s coming,” she rasped, “and hunger is cruel.”
“You mean hunger is the best sauce,” I corrected
her.
“Suit yourself,” she
said.
She
explained that Inhottaminen took hours, and sometimes days to prepare. Even at
that, results were unpredictable.
“Like a soufflé!” I said.
“Like a shipwreck,” she
responded cryptically. As she began to cook, she advised me not to watch.
“Because a watched pot
never boils,” I said.
“Funny you’d mention boils,” she said, rubbing
her skin for warmth. She gestured to the corner. “Just sit over there,” she
said, handing the sharp stick to me and advising me to tend the pups. Then, she
began to cook in earnest.
You will need:
- 1-galvanized bucket walrus
blubber
- 2-kilos polar aged bear meat
- 1-length seal intestine, dried
and shredded.
- 2-handfuls Malamute fur-to taste
(preferably from the shoulder area).
- 1-harp seal, quartered.
- 1-pine bough.
- 1-quart kerosene or Type A Jet
fuel (depending on what's washed ashore previous summer)
- 1-cup reindeer urine
- 3 dried lemmings, minced.
Mix kerosene and reindeer urine together, and
soak shredded seal intestines while simmering.
Pound polar bear meat with stone until thicker
fibers are broken down.
Remove bone fragments, spear tips, or shrapnel.
In large chafing dish or split fuel tank, evenly
spread pounded polar bear meat over quartered harp seal carcass.
Melt the walrus blubber, then froth with pine
bough until it reaches the consistency of frothed walrus blubber.
Add minced lemmings. Let sit until plump.
Pour frothed walrus blubber-lemming mixture over
harp seal-polar bear meat mélange.
Wrap chafing dish in old unlined wool overcoat or
canvas sail.
Cover with heavy rocks or section of fuselage
from crashed airplane, and bury in snow for 48 hours, or until polar bears
catch the scent.
Remove from snow, uncover. Garnish with shredded
seal intestines.
Sprinkle with malamute fur, careful to remove
fleas or other parasites.
Serve on driftwood slab or airplane tray,
whichever has washed up on shore previous summer.
To
the western palate, Inhottaminen, with a lumpy, gelatinous consistency, and laced
with the stringy sinews of both polar bear and seal, is at once bland and
repugnant. For me, its rich play of flavors overwhelms the senses. It's a filling dish, too. I was unable to eat more than a few bites.
I
would have been delighted to learn more about the cuisine of Upper Lapland, and Noni
would have eagerly been my instructor, I know. But when I awoke the following morning—our
sumptuous feast of the evening before like a fever dream--she had apparently
gone off in search of ingredients for what I’m sure would have been a memorable
breakfast.
A storm was rising, and I
thought I must be hallucinating when I saw the men, attired in bright orange
survival gear, alight from a launch that had pulled up on the rocky shore. “Let’s
get you out of here!” one of them shouted against the rising gale.
Without time to say
farewell, I was bundled aboard the boat and we were off. As we crashed across
the waves, I was wrapped in a blanket, a steaming cup of coffee in my hand when
Noni appeared over a barren hillock, waving gleefully.
“Come ba-a-a-ck!” she
cried, her voice barely audible over the surf. “Come b-a-ack!”
Ah, with pleasure, of
course I would. If only I knew the way.
