I cannot believe I am writing this, but it feels like the Lodge has started the Holiday Season already. We had a major blowout success with the Viking Fair! Our vendors had great items for sale and that included many “Viking” items. Our lefse and Holiday baked goods flew out the building as we sold every lefse round and cookie that we had. The breakfast and lunch items were extremely well received and contributed to our Viking theme.

Thanks to the many volunteers, especially Eunice Blum, who did a wonderful job. Hope you saw our television promotion on KRDO with our speakers Adam, Mike and Eunice promoting the Fair. It really was unbelievable.

Our October Heritage meeting featured Adam presenting a very interesting talk on his family’s emigration story followed by a YouTube presentation on his summer trip. Our November Heritage will focus on the current Norwegian food fads of taco Fridays and pizza. The lodge will be providing pizza and tacos. Members are encouraged to bring salads, desserts, and other favorites.

Our cooking club will continue baking lessons on 23 Oct and 30 Oct. The first class featured making ‘sirupsnipper’ and ‘goro’ cookies. We still have ‘tyskejiver’, ‘kringler’, ‘krumkaker’,’ sandbakels’e and ‘kransekakestenger’ for future dates. The lessons start at 9:00 AM. The lodge will supply all the ingredients for the Cookie Classes. The seven cookies for these classes represent the types of cookies often used for the traditional seven cookies of Christmas in Norway.

Our major event in November is the Lutefisk Dinner on 15 November. Dave is already in Minnesota to pick up the lutefisk. In preparation for the Lutefisk bake sale we will be making cookies at the lodge on 6 and 13 Nov to supplement your home baking efforts. So, bring your cookie supplies and enjoy the companionship as you bake your donation.

New officer elections for 2026 will take place at the November Heritage meeting. Members have volunteered for the President, Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary positions. Other positions are still vacant. Please contact me if you wish to volunteer. New nominations will be accepted up to the actual voting. 

I gave you the good news earlier that we sold all the lefse. The bad news is we sold all the lefse. In order to support the Christmas Market at Trollheim and our own lutefisk event we will be required to have more lefse making days. Our lefse baking schedule will be 28/29 October 4/5 November and 11 November. I know that this adds more work to everyone’s schedule, but I hope that enough members will turn out to meet the need.

 Finally, December events begin with our lefse cooking for the Holidays on 6 December. Like last year the lodge will provide lefse dough for members/guests to make their own lefse. The lodge will also provide packing material for the finished lefse. There will be two sessions starting at 9:00 and 11:00. We will have sign-up sheets at the November Heritage meeting or you can call me.

In closing, Bjorg and I want to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. I hope everyone is finding at least one Fjellheim activity in the Heritage meetings, cultural presentations, language classes, painting classes and special events to enjoy. If you have suggestions, please contact me – we are willing to try anything! 

Fraternally Terry Mapstone