The American author Eric Dregni wrote the book In Cod We Trust: Living the Norwegian Dream after spending a year in Trondheim with his family.Fed pickled herring and gjetost brown cheese as a toddler, Eric Dregni grew up in Norway’s colony in America: Minnesota. As the recipient of a 2004 Fulbright Fellowship in Creative Writing, Dregni lived in Trondheim, where he survived a dinner of rakfisk (fermented fish) thanks to 80-proof aquavit, took the “meat bus” to Sweden for cheap salami with a busload of knitting pensioners, and discovered his great-grandfather’s house in the Lusterfjord only to find out it had been crushed by a boulder then swept away by a river. Dregni's Scandinavian roots did little to prepare him and his family for the year in Trondheim eating herring cakes, obeying the conformist Janteloven (Jante's law), and enduring the mørketid (dark time).In Cod We Trust is one Minnesota family's spirited excursion into Scandinavian life. The land of the midnight sun is far stranger than they previously thought, and their encounters show that there is much to learn from its unique and surprising culture.Eric Dregni is a freelance writer and an assistant professor of English and Journalism at Concordia University in St. Paul. He lives in Minneapolis.

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