Author: Anne Ewbank / Source: Atlas Obscura
Few obituaries are written for laughs. Yet a recent obituary penned by Reverend John Klawiter of Forest Lake, Minnesota’s Faith Lutheran Church was intended to evoke giggles as well as grief. The obituary wasn’t for a person, but for a dinner the Church had held for the last 70 years.
This wasn’t any old dinner. The church’s annual function featured Scandinavian specialties, such as lefse, a potato flatbread, and lutefisk, a notorious treat of dried cod or other whitefish reconstituted in a lye bath. As a result of heavy immigration from Norway, Sweden, and Finland in the early 20th century, many Minnesotans celebrate the holidays with Scandinavian cuisine. In fact, more of the ammonia-scented specialty is eaten in the Midwest than in its ancestral home. Faith Lutheran church was no different. For 70 years, on the second Tuesday of December, hundreds of volunteers prepared lutefisk, lefse, boiled potatoes, and meatballs for still-more hundreds of diners. After all, Klawiter says, Faith Lutheran was once known as the Swedish Lutheran church.
This year, however, there will be no lutefisk. “Faith Lutheran Scandinavian Dinner, also known as ‘The Lutefisk Dinner’ or ‘Holy Tuesday,’ has peacefully died at the age of 70,” Klawiter wrote in the Forest Lake…
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