How tacos became Norway's national comfort food

An oil boom, a supermarket opportunity and decades of adaptation transformed the taco from a Tex-Mex import into one of Norway's most beloved traditions.

It is Friday night in Bergen, Norway. Emil has rushed home from work and is busy laying the table while his wife Sofie sprinkles seasoning over a dish and their children carry bowls of toppings to the dining room. Like many families across the country, they're gathering for a cherished weekly ritual.

But they aren't eating dried cod or fresh Atlantic salmon. They're eating tacos.

The start of Norway's weekly taco obsession

Every Friday, millions of Norwegians take part in tacofredag (Taco Friday), a custom that has become a fixture of Norwegian family life.

This distinctly Norwegian tradition began thousands of miles away, in the US state of Texas. When Norway started drilling for oil in the North Sea in the late 1960s, it needed expertise from abroad. Among the arrivals were Texan oil workers and consultants, who brought not only knowledge of drilling but a taste for Tex-Mex.

A canny Norwegian shopkeeper in Stavanger began importing international food to serve this new community, and over the following decades supermarkets started stocking Old El Paso and Santa Maria Tex-Mex supermarket kits. What began as an expatriate craving slowly became a national ritual.

Today supermarket aisles across Norway are full of pre-packaged Tex-Mex food, stocked with brightly coloured boxes of taco shells, seasoning mixes and mild salsa. Tacos are now so embedded in Norwegian food culture that the country's statistics bureau has even created a "Taco Index" to track the price of typical taco ingredients. The obsession even extends to Norway's most famous footballer: in a "day in the life" video, Erling Haaland says tacos are "one of my favourite things".

The Norwegian hot dog

Norwegians have form when it comes to adapting other countries' food staples. A pølse med lompe consists of a frankfurter wrapped in soft potato flatbread, topped with shrimp salad, potato salad or crispy fried onions. Its condiments, in a nod to its American roots, include French's yellow mustard and ketchup.

"The Norwegian taco is a state of mind – it's like asking a Swedish person what fika is," says food writer Helle Øder Valebrokk, journalist and author of Taco!, an award-nominated Norwegian recipe book featuring a taco recipe for every Friday of the year. "I call it the Norwegian Happy Meal: on Taco Friday, you make your own tacos with the meat, vegetables and salsa, so everyone gets what they want."

The result is a food tradition........

© BBC