Coffee with cold milk in Telemark

I spent the Summer of 1967 on a traineeship with Norsk Hydro in Oslo. This was arranged with an international organisation called AIESEC, which at that time organised unpaid placements (they would now be called ‘internships’) with employers in different countries for students studying economics or commerce. My first AIESEC placement had been in the previous year with a small printing company in Reykjavik, where all the employees knew each other by sight. Norsk Hydro was a very different enterprise. It was the largest industrial enterprise in Norway, involved in mining and metal-processing, chemicals and fertilisers, and oil. I was based in its headquarters, and supervised by a kindly man called Mr Falkenberg. I stayed at first in the University student village, and later in a room in the Eastern suburbs. I visited the Viking ship museum, the Munch museum and the Holmenkollen ski jump. I swam in lakes and walked through the woods that surrounded Oslo. I also spent a lot of time strolling round the City centre, and was surprised to find that its citizens enjoyed eating in open-air cafes and drinking excellent coffee. Neither of these activities were common in England at that time.

Part of my traineeship involved a tour round the various industrial sites in Southern Norway that were operated by Norsk Hydro. Mr Falkenberg drove, and we stayed in hostels owned by the company. One of the places we visited was Rjukan in Telemark, located in a deep-sided valley. In the Second World War, Norsk Hydro had been taken over by the German company IG Farben, and had produced heavy water, important in the production of nuclear weapons. Norwegian commandos destroyed this facility in 1943.

After we left Rjukan, Mr Falkenberg steered the car along a heavily-potholed mountain road, which eventually led to a rather alpine-looking hotel. We stopped for coffee and a cake. There was a strange atmosphere in the place. After we left, Mr Falkenberg expressed his disgust with the hotel’s owners, who had been notorious collaborators with the German forces. The local authority took its revenge by refusing to repair the road leading to the hotel. What made matters even worse for Mr Falkenberg was the way the hotel served its coffee: “No cream with it”, he said, “not even warm milk - just cold milk”. Ever since then, I have associated coffee served with cold milk as fit only for Nazi collaborators.