A quick note on Norwegian food

I did not eat the whale sausage, nor the moose filets, nor the reindeer stew.  I ate a lot of salad.  In fact:  pro tip for vegetarian travelers to Norway:  the Spar supermarkets have a very good salad bar, better and way less expensive than you'll find in most restaurants. 

I have to mention two standout treats from the land of the midnight sun:

1. Boller / buns - soft, pillowy, fluffy spirals or domes of enriched dough.  You can get them with cheese or raisins or cinnamon or custard--all kinds of ways.  But to my mind the king of buns is the cardamom boller.  Imagine the best cinnamon roll you've ever had but replace the cinnamon with cardamom, and replace the thick white icing with a layer of caramelized sugar.  

[Here are a lot of boller at a bakery in Bergen]

2. This crazy ice cream bar:

Forget what you think you know about crappy mass-produced frozen novelties, because this little slice of heaven-on-a-stick is no Good Humor disappointment.  The Creme Ekte Pistasj is a big oval of pistachio ice cream with a shell of nut-studded salted pistachio, and it has a tube of pistachio custard tunneled through the middle.  Probably for the best that I can't find them in my local supermarket.