Nordic Cuisine, but National Identities

This article is a cross-national comparison of how food is promoted on tourism websites offering information about Denmark and Sweden – two countries with big national projects targeting the promotion of culinary excellence, following the initiation of “New Nordic Cuisine” (NNC) in 2004. The aim is to study similarities and differences in the projects of these two countries, both quantitatively and qualitatively. 19 out of 32 (approx. 59%) Danish texts referred to a shared Nordic culinary identity, whereas this was only the case in five out 51 (approx. 10%) of the Swedish texts. Moreover, the qualitative analysis also revealed that “Nordic” cuisine was almost interchangeably connected to Danish cuisine, while in Sweden NNC was more peripheral and culinary excellence was construed as specifically Swedish. We thus criticise the generally accepted idea that NNC is a post-national food movement, seeing it instead as a means to achieve different gastronationalist ends for these two Nordic countries.KEYWORDS: culinary tourism, gastronationalism, gastronomy, New Nordic Cuisine, New Nordic Diet