Today provided another of those little rewards that make being an author almost worth the trouble. I spoke on the phone to a lady from Ingebretsen‘s Scandinavian store.
If, for some obscure reason, you don’t live in the Minneapolis area, you probably don’t know about Ingebretsen’s. It’s a community institution. It started (if I have the story right) as a neighborhood grocery on Lake Street, catering to Scandinavian immigrants, back in 1921. The neighborhood remains an immigrant center even today, except that the immigrants now tend to be Mexican and Sudanese. But through all the decades, Ingebretsen’s has remained on the old corner, faithful to the neighborhood, dispensing lutefisk, flatbread, goat cheese and herring to a small but grateful public.
Somewhere along the line they expanded to include a Scandinavian gift shop, and they’re the best and most successful brick-and-mortar enterprise of that sort in the metropolitan area. I make a pilgrimage every Christmas season, and it’s usually a long walk from wherever I can find a place to park. Before stepping inside to join the throng, I have to make a conscious effort to abandon all concept of personal space.
I wrote to Ingebretsen’s, along with a couple other midwest dealers in the same sort of line, after West Oversea came out. I enclosed copies of reviews and a free copy of the book. The lady at Ingebretsen’s told me she’d read the book and enjoyed it, and had added it to their winter catalog (which I knew about) and to their web site (which I didn’t).
Don’t mess with me. Among Minneapolis Norwegians, Danes, Swedes and Finns, I now have street cred.
That’s cool.
Does Minneapolis have any Icelanders, and do they shop at Ingebretsen’s?
I suppose there are a few. I think I’ve seen an Icelandic ethnic paper on sale there.
EXPANDING YOUR SCOPE A BIT…
My son’s mother-in-law helps manage a Japanese/Chinese/Asian supermarket in Portland and Seattle. Obviously they cater to the growing Asian market that resides in our areas. The shop you mention in your post seems almost like Mom and Pop are still there running the place. Mom in her white-haired bun and apron and Pop with his green visor and sleeve garters….
Well, I think, many Asians like the new, bright and shinny. As much as this market provides totally accurate products for their needs, the costs are, to me, incredibly high!
Is this similar to your Ingebretsen’s?
Ingebretsen’s is a holdover. It’s a neighborhood store that, in general, no longer caters to the neighborhood, like one of those old inner city churches whose members, descendants of the founders, drive in from the suburbs to worship.