Norwegian Breakfast
The Great Narrative of the Family and the Nation
By Runar DøvingEnglish
The Norwegian home-made lunch, matpakka, is a special case in European culinary history. During the 1920s persistent Norwegian nutrition experts succeeded in changing the school meal from cooked food to bread, fresh milk and raw vegetables. In 1936 one proposed that the children should bring the prescribed food from home. This brought on a change of fare also in the households. The matpakke hence became a large-scale disciplinal project where children at the same time were the objects of governmental prescriptions and the subjects carrying them out. Still today it is a marker of national identity and a moral anchorage.
Keywords
- food
- discipline
- nutrition
- modernity
- Norway