Norwegian Tip/Fact of the month

I though I would start this series of Norwegian tips and facts that I will publish every month. And guess what, this months subject is the Cheese Slicer! You many now know this, but the cheese slicer is a Norwegian invention by Thor Bjørklund from Lillehammer in the year 1925. He was irritated of how ugly the cheese became when using a knife, so being a carpenter himself he designed the cheese slicer based on that of a carpenter’s plane. You can actually see that they are very much alike.

Becoming popular fast, the cheese slicer began mass production in 1927, and it was of course patented. It still excists to this day is still very popular. You can easily find it in Scandinavia or other nordic countries. It’s also quite common in Germany, Switzerland, France and the Netherlands. What all of these countries have in common (and probably the reason for the cheese slicers success in these countries) is that cheese is a common thing, eaten often (on bread mostly) and that they have lots of types of cheese that are hard to slice other ways.

With time a lot of different types of cheese slicers has come, some that made patterns in the cheese, non-stick cheese slicers or cheese slicers made of plastic. In 1971 a manufacturer in California made their own type of cheese slicer where you used a wooden board and a steel wire to slice your cheese. More popular in North America is also a type of oldfashion slingshot-looking device made of metal with a thin metal wire which is suited best for soft cheeses like mozzarella. But nothing has beaten the original cheese slicer from Norway yet! Here is the homepage to Thor Bjørklund & Sønner which was founded by Thor Bjørklund.