The Twelve Tasks of the Festive Season — Task the Second: The Silent Nights:
– Read a book set in one of the Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland and/or Denmark), where winter nights are long!
Inspired by Lillelara’s advice to Olga Godim, I changed plans on this one and revisited Babette’s Feast, Tania (Karen) Blixen‘s love letter to the culinary arts, set against the bleak background of (mostly) midwinter in a Pietist religious community in a remote Norwegian fjord. It’s an apt read not only for this square but also for the season, as the feast is Babette’s selfless gift to the two women who, suspicion against “papists” notwithstanding, have taken her into their home after she had lost her own. I’d read it for the first time after having seen the movie, with the sumptuous visuals of the feast (as contrasted by the dour setting of the protagonists’ lives) still freshly in my mind, and I loved it even better then; but I’m still happy I decided to reread it … and few can hold a candle to Blixen’s gift of setting the atmosphere of a story.
