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.

Bestselling author James focuses his attention on the culture preserving women of Norway in his 2024 book The Place of Tides.

His ongoing interest in conservation of land, animals and culture is evident in the celebration of the strong women who care for wild Eider ducks on remote Norwegian islands.

And with me today is Connie Peterson Miller, whose connection to Norway has deep roots.

Welcome, Connie, to talk.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for saying yes to this.

And in our community.

You've worked with international students and refugees for 40 years.

Yes.

Yes, yes.

And you have a particular connection to Norway, which is why I'm so glad that you said yes to this.

So tell us about that.

Well, my father was Norwegian, and so I can remember years sitting at table and not understanding a thing he and his siblings were saying, and I resolved to get in on that action.

And although they have, we were always busied with with cakes and other things.

But then I went to Norway.

I studied the international summer school there, University of Oslo, and went on to work as a tutor and later on a farm.

Oh, that is wonderful.

Which we'll talk about because part of your experiences at the location.

And can you just I feel like I have to ask you to talk about this gorgeous outfit.

What is it called and its significance.

So I'm wearing Rondastakk bunad and it's well, it represents jubilant style, which is near to where my grandmother was raised.

Certainly have family members there.

Hark the waffles!

The waffle iron is chirping at us, but I've decked it out, especially for today, in particular with the enamel pin.

And then I'm wearing pewter.

Heart we love hurts so much we make waffles in that shape.

And I'm guessing these are two Eider ducks.

I think they are.

We'll talk much more about that.

So let's talk about what we're making and then we'll dive into the book.

So what are you fixing?

Well, I'm making heart shaped sour cream waffles, which are consumed a little differently in Norway than here.

We'll let them cool a little bit.

And then they're usually served with goat's cheese or sour cream and cloudberry jam.

Come on.

So and then in the second part then I will lay out a smørgåsbor I'll lay out knäckebrod of a Norwegian cheese board.

Okay.

Beautiful.

And I'm making a soup that is called Brennsnut.

Brennsnut, which means burnt snout.

So a soup that I'll be putting together a picture holding a super hot bowl of soup right up to your nose in a Norwegian winter.

And that's the spirit of that.

But I'm starting with some seed crackers.

Really easy to make.

Of course you can purchase crackers, but I just want to show you this is actually gluten free and it is made with oatmeal.

And you can mix whatever seeds you want here.

But I've got some sesame seeds, some sunflower seeds, some flax seeds, and some pumpkin seeds.

And I'll just show you how you mix it up ahead of time.

And it gets kind of thick into a little slurry here.

And then I'll be showing you how to roll this out and put it in a, in a hot oven.

So.

And what are you getting started with.

I'm going to get started on the waffles I think in grandma's big mix okay.

Wonderful.

And a kind of standard waffle recipe or something.

Well the magic ingredient in my opinion.

Lots of butter, lots of sour cream and cardamom.

Oh of course.

Yes.

Okay.

Absolutely delicious here.

And you'll see for this one, one reason I love making these waffles is that you works or waffles.

The crackers works much better on Sil Pads so they don't stick.

And then I always look for opportunities to use this very fun.

Roller, which was my children's favorite for many years.

And you want to just sort of roll these out as thin as you can, and then you put them in the oven and bake until crisp.

They really couldn't be easier.

So so let's talk a little bit about the book.

This is a nonfiction book.

So which is his standard.

James Banks usually writes about his experiences as a Cumbrian shepherd.

He's his family has been using traditional shepherding practices for 600 years.

This is a departure.

And the premise is about ten years ago, he met two women on a trip to Norway, a conservation trip to Norway, and was very moved by this conservation work they were doing to preserve this connection to Eider ducks, which I just had no idea about.

This book is such a beautiful invitation into a location and a practice that I think most of us have really no experience with.

So I wonder, Connie, to you.

So you're putting in the cardamom and the dry ingredients here.

Yeah, I get that.

So good first.

And would you transported would you read just a little bit about the place?

I think the title is called Place of Tides.

Yeah.

Which is the very sort of archipelago islands close to the Arctic Circle.

Yeah.

They're about midway up the West Coast.

Okay.

So just one paragraph to give you a taste of these lush descriptions of what it was like to be there for one Eider duck season, which is the very end of winter and very beginning of spring.

And to further set the stage, perhaps he's traveled up along the coast, which is breathtaking.

He's seen forest, he's seen mountain, and he's not quite sure what to expect because he's a landsman and now he's gone out to the islands.

But he says when we reached the top, meaning they'd gone out to the top of one of the islands, I couldn't help but gasp.

To the west, the rocks ripped white gashes in the Atlantic, swells, giant breakers, his spray up into the sky, and it danced down the wind for 100ft or more.

A vast panorama swept around us for miles.

Skeins of gulls beat hard.

An Indian file from north to south.

Anna smiled at me, at my silent.

All of the landscape beautiful.

So.

And that is also an introduction to the two women who are really the protagonists of this story, so on.

And Ingrid pronounced properly.

Or she's in her, she's in her early 70s.

Okay, so there it is.

Younger.

Yeah.

So some of these women who've been doing this work, which we'll talk about in a little more detail, are possibly for at least Anna, maybe the last time that she is going to be doing a season of this very, very rigorous work and he's just going to make a little kind of pre-marks in here to make these flatbreads a little easier to, to cut a little bit later.

Well, in the spirit of the bake I've also brought my fish.

Oh that's wonderful.

Okay so this goes into a 375 degree oven.

In about ten minutes you can kind of redo the redo the marks.

So when I was reading this, it was I was totally transported to a place that I didn't know.

But you have been there before.

Well, yes.

Now, I did not venture up to Vega.

And in fact, if you try to put where I was at into Google Maps and ask for a route to Vega, they can't get you there.

Oh, because we don't have a boat icon.

But yes.

So after I finished my schooling, as it were, at the international Summer School and Oslo, I went and stayed with my family.

I have hundreds of relatives near Lake Mersa, but that's in the southeast.

And so a friend had told me while I was at school that there is a youth friending, I guess, an association, and they will place you on farms during the summer.

And so I was very fortunate to be placed on a farm on the West coast on it, which is in the again about halfway up.

And Vega is just to, I guess, the northwest.

Okay, you had to get there on a boat, right?

Well, there's a lot of you can snake your way, you know, by land to where I was at.

Although there are a lot of islands where now you can row across if you want to take what they call the who, the fast, the the fastest, then you take a boat.

So, for example, on those days we got to go to town, which was about twice in three months.

We would take a boat down to Namsos.

Okay?

Because as he said, it's a skein of land and lakes and islands and pretty remote.

So yeah.

And I'm just going to show you this vegetable soup that I'm making that burns your snout.

And later I'll make some dill dumplings for it.

You can use whatever kind of broth you like, but I like this idea of using a little bit of dried mushrooms, making a dried mushroom broth.

So you bring dried mushrooms to a boil and get those kind of reconstituted, and then you can chop those up and add those for a little bit of extra depth, which is especially nice if you are a vegetarian.

I am making this as a vegetarian soup, but of course you you don't need to hear so.

So James gets to know these two women.

It's definitely a women's world and women's as he points out, as he observes many times.

Yes.

And this tradition of taking care of wild Eider ducks again, something I'd never really thought about where Eider down comes from.

But it's a it's a centuries old tradition of mostly women who live on these outer islands, training wild sea ducks to nest close to where the fighter down harvesters are.

No ducks are harmed in the process.

They nest close by, and the Eider ducks pluck Eider down from their chests, line their nests, raise their baby chicks, and when they go out to sea, the Eider women collect the down.

So while this cooks down here, and as you get ready to make your waffles, we're going to take just a little break and show you some images of the from James Rebanks’ Instagram of the location of this beautiful, beautiful book.

So we will take a break and be right back.

Let's add some water to make this work.

All right.

I've just taken these seated crackers out of the oven here, and you can see I'm going to let them cool down a little bit.

But you can see that if you've scored them a little bit there, actually, they break into nice large slices.

And you can have these with jam or cheese or whatever you want.

They're just delicious.

I would have them with your beautiful.

Oh, yes.

Jarlsberg cheese Brown goat's cheese.

Okay.

Which has a sweetness to it.

So?

So let's talk about what you're making.

It looks fantastic.

Well, you're you're you're baking your base, but I'm assembling from pre-made base.

This is how they would normally be made or how they were made in, in the past and basically is look like wagon wheels of hardtack.

And that's fairly apt.

Yours are going to be absolutely delicious.

And these are actually then.

Oh my goodness.

Sure.

Like a pole or something okay.

Yeah.

But I have chosen to make a presentation with small slices of of.

Okay.

So this is a spread that would be served.

At what time of day.

Well so in in Norway.

And we get a sense of that in the book as well that they eat every few hours.

So you get up, have a hearty breakfast, come in and take a break.

And then for me, the the warm meal was like a 3 or 4.

It was called a midday meal.

And then as the sun begins to set in the wintertime, of course, keeping in mind it never says yes, it never sets.

And that's what James Rebanks’ experience was, the midnight sun.

Yes.

Yeah, but you need some energy at maybe about 7 or 8.

And so you lay out a board of either sweets and savory, sometimes just sweets.

You remember a lot of pancakes I went waffles.

Okay.

And you've got some coming out.

They're just so beautiful.

They're almost they're almost there.

And the idea is just to make these colorful, beautiful, beautiful assembling plates there.

And this is a really hearty root soup here.

I'm about to make some dill dumplings to go with it, but you could, you know, your favorite roots.

So I've got some wintry roots in here.

Root bagels and parsnips.

I'm going to put just a little bit of potato in so that it doesn't doesn't get too soft here.

It should have a little tooth scymnus to it.

And then these little dill dumplings that you make on top are flour salt a little bit of baking powder, fresh dill and milk.

And it cooks right on top of the soup which adds a little, little bit of delight.

So let's as you're assembling that, talk about the women of this book.

James is the only man on this little island.

There's Anna, this woman who's been who's an expert on Eider duck care, and her kind of protege, Ingrid, who herself in her 60s, and James Rebates, who's maybe in his 40s at this point, the honorary man working with women of standing.

You said when you describe this book to me, I just love because these two women are such women of substance.

So can you maybe describe a little bit why women have standing?

I think it captures them beautifully.

You know, she makes it very clear to him who James, who was in some ways seeking the restoration of isolation, that she needs people, she loves people, and it's important to be with them, but especially when it comes to men.

She wants them to know I care for you, I love you, I want your company, but I don't need you.

Yes, I these are very independent women.

Yes, I can, I can, I can stand alone.

Now, I remember reading a book by Hal called Independent People, and of course, he was trying to say, you can take that too far.

You can be so, you know, nobly independent that you in fact injure relationships.

So I think that's extraordinary about the book is he's reminded of that toward the end that he, he, he came away.

But he understands that it's still important to form community and that you you draw upon your community for for strength and the three of them together.

It is very I mean, I when I, when I read this book the first time I finished it and I immediately started reading it again, I just wanted to be re-immersed in this.

Oh, those are gorgeous, Connie.

Re-immersed in this world that is so slow.

So they're there for the Eider duck season, which starts in the very late winter.

They've got to clean out all of these houses that the ducks stay in.

It's very stark and still very, very brutal.

And because of where they are incredibly rainy.

So there are days when they can't do any work at all.

And for a little while it kind of drives James crazy.

He talks a little bit about like, gosh, you know, the having having no one's action.

He wants action.

And there's no connection to social media.

There's no connection to really any other people.

And these two women are still kind of trying to figure him out.

You know, he's there to collect their stories, to preserve their stories.

All right, here comes the all right.

So I, I always say a little prayer that it will actually come out fantastic.

And just beautiful.

Yes.

Marvelous.

Recently loved.

Oh, I moved it.

Here they are.

So we'll just let it cool on top of the pile, okay.

And I'm putting some fresh dill in these really simple dumplings.

But boy, these ads such a such an air of luxury to this, to this soup.

So, so really the whole premise of the book is to preserve these stories of this, this way of life that is disappearing.

And yes, and I think that's interesting.

Early in the book, he he comes to understand that, yes, he can be of help.

He wants to be of use, but they've made it clear they don't really need him.

Don't they don't judge that.

They know he tells stories.

And it's very important for them that the world comes to understand what they're what they're doing, the role that they have in, you know, preserving this place of tides.

Yes.

And so there's we move back and forth in time a little bit.

We learn the incredible stories about resilience.

During World War Two, the Nazis were circling some of those locations out there, and they ate some of the Eider ducks.

They did.

And many of those, many of the people who were out there on the islands protected, you know, kept them just going to add some act of active resistance.

Act active resistance.

Yeah, absolutely.

So both Ingrid and Anna are very, very proud of their history and and want us to know about it.

Absolutely.

But they also, as you say, are a little suspicious of men.

Part of the story is how James, as a writer, starts to kind of build trust with these women.

And at one point on a, on a probably, you know, I don't know, six or 7 or 8 weeks in, they are all sitting around and the women are kind of telling body stories and letting him in on the world of women, and he realizes he's kind of made it.

He's a, he's a, he's a sister with them and he's just cook right on the, on the top here.

We'll put in a few more so that everybody can have a few.

So these women also successfully petitioned to have the island made a Unesco site.

Heritage site.

Yes.

2004.

Right.

They were able to accomplish that.

Right.

So now if you if you read this book, you now have an appreciation of the labor that goes into making Eider down, which a lot of it is similar to kind of cleaning wool once they've collected the down.

Yeah, it's not quite as hardy as, as wool.

And I think the important thing to to remember about this is the way that they interact with the ducks allows the ducks their freedom to return to their home habitat.

So it's not the same sort of domestication relationship that we have with cattle.

Yes.

Oh.

Nicely put.

Yeah.

It's more like raising silk moths in the wild, you know that.

Were they?

So at the end of the season, the ducklings go off.

And that's the hope.

That is the hope, right?

That's what they're working, right?

Right.

So the book is also about James and what he reflects on at this stage in his life, the stage in his marriage.

I'm just going to put a few more of these out here.

And here they are cooking on top.

I'm going to turn these over just a little bit.

And by the time the vegetables are done, these will also be tender and delicious.

So there's kind of a inside story here as well about what work matters.

How do we make decisions about how to live our lives?

It's not a simple nostalgia for a life that might be lost, but it is recognition of work that we should know more about.

So we're going to take a little break here, and you'll see some images of James Banks other books, his work, and him at work as an author.

So we'll be right back.

Well, these.

Connie and I have had so much fun making this beautiful spread of Norwegian foods.

Tell us again what you've prepared here.

It's gorgeous.

So sour cream waffles.

As I mentioned, we love them so much.

They're shaped like hearts.

And then really a smörgåsbord.

And so we are featuring though smoked salmon.

We have some pickled herring Jarlsberg.

We have brown goat's cheese a variety of toppings.

Sometimes it's laid this way out for an evening nosh.

Other times it's a stack of crisp bread on which you choose your build your own.

It's just beautiful.

And I've made much more simple stuff, some seeded crackers, which are really fun to make.

If you've never made seeded crackers or crackers on your own, and Brennsnut, a little burnt snout of the hot root soup with some dill dumplings.

We've got black coffee which you cannot have waffles without, according to Connie.

And you are pouring us.

What?

Here?

This is Aquavit But it's Linie Aquavit.

It's the kind that has been barreled, put down in the hold of a ship across the equator and back and is now ready for the toast.

Here we are.

So what will stay with you from this book?

Well, I think the title alone, that one.

To have peace in one's life must live at the place of tides.

That to live well, just like when she lets go each season at the end of such hard work, she she says goodbye to the ducks.

She also says goodbye to grievances.

She says goodbye to anger and she lives in peace according to the rhythm of the place.

So there's a real philosophy at the center of this book, which James Rebanks pulls out.

You'll learn so much.

It's absolutely beautiful.

I'm going to toast it to you.

Thank you so much.

We hope you read this book.

Continue to read widely.

Cook.

Adventurously.

Connie, thank you so much.

And here's my first taste of this.

Aquavit And we say velbekomme when we serve food velbekomme may it do you good.

May it do you good to you as wel We will see you next time on Dinner and a Book.

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.