A very Norwegian Easter ?

Easter is a big deal in for most Norwegians, those born with skis on their feet will head to the nearest snow filled mountain where they’ll return with fabulous snow goggle Easter tans. We eat Easter Lamb, have Easter breakfast and those that are into books will no doubt be reading Easter crime. It’s a holiday filled with murder mysteries, crime on tv and rebuses to hunt down your cardboard Easter egg filled with Easter marzipan and sweets. Sitting in powdery snow with the sun beaming promises of lighter days, eating oranges and kwik lunsj (similar to kit kat but if in company of a Norwegian the two are under no circumstance to be compared) and drinking copious amounts of hot chocolate is what Easter is all about. It’s a festival of togetherness where you celebrate the return of the sun.

We try to go back home for Easter most years, but those years that we don’t I try and keep as many of the traditions alive as I can. We mark the start of Easter by painting eggs and hanging them on twigs of pussy willow for decoration, usually surrounded by gorgeously yellow daffodils, which are called Easter lilies in Norway. Rather fitting if you ask me.

Easter crafts

This year we’ve painted our eggs with the Okonorm Finger paint. Once decorated, the eggs are hung on twigs and used as the centrepiece for any meals consumed during the holiday. But with the amount of eggs we’ve decorated this year we had to call in the extra help of the namaste tree to decorate in the lounge. I have added decorative eggs that we’ve decorated with at home since I was a little girl, and if that’s not the real beauty of tradition then I don’t know what is.

There’s an abundance of eggs that needs using after we’ve blown them out to be light enough to hang, so true to traditions the trusted waffle iron comes out. And if we were in Norway it would be served with the infamous Brown cheese, but here we use just jam and sour cream (don’t knock it until you’ve tried it).

Easter eggs

We have reusable cardboard Easter eggs that will be filled for Easter morning with Ostheimer, Cocoa Loco buttons and Tony’s chocolonely. The beauty of these eggs are that they can be filled with whatever you want and can be used again every year.

As the children grow so will our list of traditions, but for now they’re content with what we have, and better yet – the English Easter means Hot cross buns, and it doesn’t get much better than that does it!