by Gay Strandemo
The Icelandic Roots Writers Group wrote about summer memories for their April assignment.
Summer childhood reminds me of ice cream. My family would rent a cabin yearly at Timberlane Resort, located on Leech Lake near Walker, Minnesota. Our neighbors the Larsons got our family into going there with them because it was near the mother of the family, Noni’s hometown. Noni’s family owned a vacant piece of land on a peninsula nearby named Rogers’ Point, named after Noni’s family, who were descended from a famous Ojibway chief named Bugonaygiizhig, or Chief Hole-in-the-Day.
After swimming all day we’d go into Walker and go to the Dairy Queen, where I unfailingly ordered a cherry Dilly Bar. I read last year that Dairy Queen was discontinuing that flavor, which mystified me because it was definitely the best one. I read a comment on Yahoo about that which said, “Okay, my year is ruined.”
At home, I would ride my quarter horse, Bayou—beautiful in his dun-colored coat and blonde mane and tale—to the local drive-in for a cone. Once, with typical teenage disregard for weather and other hazards, I rode there with my sister seated on the back end of my horse. We rode away eating our ice cream cones when suddenly a magnificent storm blew in from seemingly nowhere. The cones were thrown and miraculously my sister stayed on the horse as we beat hell home.
When my family bought a fold-out camping trailer, we started vacationing with the Larsons at Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba. My sister, the Larson girls, and I would go to the green-painted roller rink in Wasagaming to buy their triple-headed ice cream cones. Our favorite flavor hands down was the licorice swirled with vanilla which reminded me of a zebra. Even years later, I wondered why I could never find that flavor in the States.
A couple years ago I saw an Icelandic video with a man who was driving around the country ice cream hunting, an activity called Ísbíltúr, and at the end of it he said, “And now for the favorite flavor, licorice.” Aha, I thought, so it’s an Icelandic thing!
Traveling to Iceland for the first time last August, my husband spied an ice cream store in Reykjavik and suggested that I check out their flavors. Lo and behold, there were not one but three different kinds of licorice ice cream. I tried them all and was in ice cream heaven.