Food and discourse

Food is material substance and signs at the same time, and both aspects participate in people's production of sociality and culture. Language, or discourse, is central as it is used in the circulation of signs, as well as in the negotiation and transformation of them—both concerning meaning and value. The production, negotiation, and circulation happen through different activities and genres. One is marketizing texts such as those quoted in the introduction. As they are mass mediated, they have a potentially large number of readers with whom they may create representations, for example, of an imaginary place known as Bornholm and of a phenomenon labelled ‘Bornholmian food’, and they may foster dreams of travelling—to Bornholm or elsewhere—to explore food and places. They may also have other effects.

Food events give infrastructure (Karrebæk, Riley, & Cavanaugh Reference Karrebæk, Maegaard;, Riley; and Cavanaugh2018) to discourse, including to conversations about the food eaten (Riley & Cavanaugh Reference Riley and Cavanaugh2017). Yet whether talked about or not, food—the material ‘stuff’—adds important meaning potential, for instance, as it may validate or challenge a particular understanding of the event and its participants. This is part of the experiences that food may participate in creating. Memories are connected to food and food events (Holtzman Reference Holtzman2006), and particular foods are sought out to learn about the world and its humans (Johnston & Baumann Reference Johnston and Baumann2010). Language about food adds to the experience of engaging with food in a bodily sense, and the two—material substance and discourse—have a mutually informing relationship (Riley & Cavanaugh Reference Riley and Cavanaugh2017). Järlehed & Moriarty's (Reference Järlehed and Moriarty2018) concept semio-foodscape is meant to capture the ‘multimodal, multidimensional and multisensorial-scape where a given foodstuff's taste and quality gets communicated using various semiotic resources’ (Järlehed & Moriarty Reference Järlehed and Moriarty2018:29). We agree with this approach, but we want to underline that materiality also exceeds the communicative function. Taste and texture, embodied histories, longings and experiences, and senses may be reasons for seeking out particular foods, and they may be integrated in the engagement with, reception, understanding, and production of meaning of food. Thus, we follow Thurlow in seeing food as ‘material, multimodal, and affective practices’ (Reference Thurlow2020:353). In fact, affect is highly important to the consumers of the Bornholmian food experiences, especially as practiced through nostalgia (see below).

Through eating foods with symbolic value and talking about it in the (‘ritualistically’) right way, the eater is—‘eucharistically’—becoming a particular kind of person (Silverstein Reference Silverstein2003:226). Such social identity connected to engagement with particular foods in words and through labor and consumption creates communities. This is argued by Cavanaugh (Reference Cavanaugh2007) in her discussion of the disagreements and difficulties related to the commoditization and possible creation of Bergamo salami as a protected brand: ‘These struggles are about how salami will be produced, circulate, and be consumed, but also about the meaning of Bergamo as a place and community’ (Cavanaugh Reference Cavanaugh2007:151). Food and discourse are political-economic objects and processes. They create economic value and referential, indexical, experiential, and emotional meaning (Karrebæk et al. Reference Karrebæk, Maegaard;, Riley; and Cavanaugh2018:18). When we study food together with discourse, we can see how political-economic processes and more wide-ranging (‘large scale’) social processes interact with the everyday and even ritual encounters between people.

Authenticity

As we show below, authenticity is central in the construction of ‘Bornholmian food’ as meaningful. Authenticity refers to the understanding that something is genuine or real. Coupland (Reference Coupland2003) argues that it is a value system with a number of different meaning dimensions which index place, time, consensus, and coherence (cf. Coupland Reference Coupland, Lacoste, Leimgruber and Breyer2014). At the same time, it varies if or to what degree ‘traditional’ authenticity, indexing ‘essential trueness’, is evoked. Sometimes consumers accept authenticity to be transactional (Pietikäinen, Kelly-Holmes, Jaffe, & Coupland Reference Pietikäinen, Kelly-Holmes, Jaffe and Coupland2016), and it becomes more important whether something could have been true or real, rather than whether it is so. Thereby, not truth, but verisimilitude is crucial. For verisimilitude to be accepted as sufficient by consumers, certain conditions need to be met, and the producer needs to be seen as sincere and possessing relevant authority. Authenticity can be seen as a process—of authentication—rather than a fixed trait, and as ‘an assemblage of signs and components that do the work of authentication’ (Pietikäinen et al. Reference Pietikäinen, Kelly-Holmes, Jaffe and Coupland2016:102).

Authenticity is normally irrelevant to what is seen as ‘ordinary’. With respect to food, this is probably related to an anti-industrialization discourse. Authentic food products are situated, place-invoking, and crafted, in contrast to place-less, mass-produced, and processed (Trubek Reference Trubek2008; Autio, Collins, Wahlen, & Anttila Reference Autio, Collins, Wahlen and Anttila2013; Weiss Reference Weiss2016). Also, whereas Coupland (Reference Coupland2003) argues that value is a ‘meaning dimension’ of authenticity, we find authentication to both presuppose and produce value, at least as a semiotic process. Authentic is a meaning used in the production of value and distinction—in comparison to the ‘inauthentic’ (Shankar & Cavanaugh Reference Shankar, Cavanaugh, Shankar and Cavanaugh2017). This means that we rely on a meta-pragmatic framework of value-creation in authenticating practices (Manning Reference Manning2012). In Cavanaugh's work on the Bergamo salami, this meta-level framework is the source of the struggle, not whether the salami is authentic. The salami has great cultural significance in the community—heritage and territory are meaningful in an embodied way—but transforming it into a marketable luxury good changes its character fundamentally, as it is removed from territory and local, identifiable producers, and made uniform and standardized: ‘A regulated recipe or a promotion of endless variation across hundreds of small producers—either result establishes standards for evaluating ‘the real thing’, but only one changes the actual product so that its very experience is altered’ (Cavanaugh Reference Cavanaugh2007:168; also Leitch Reference Leitch2003). Bornholmian food shares very little of this. Bornholm has no culturally entrenched reputation as a food destination, and although smoked fish is traditionally associated with the island, it does not have the deeply rooted sentiments of the salami. The fresh fish to be smoked is even imported—and has been for decades. The process of inventing the phenomenon of (authentic) Bornholmian food is a metapragmatic (implicit) acceptance of its performative, dynamic, and transactional character.

Our study also reveals a discursive creation of eliteness, especially in connection with the food enterprises not situated on the island, and here authenticity becomes relevant too. Mapes (Reference Mapes2018) argues that authentication is central to the construction of eliteness and shows how this happens through the rhetorical strategies of, for example, historicity, simplicity, lowbrow appreciation, and locality/sustainability (Mapes Reference Mapes2021). Most relevant to our concern is the strategy of historicity where ‘the centering of historicity and tradition romanticizes terroir and origin, and capitalizes on the normative practices of the past’ (Mapes Reference Mapes2021:159). This is salient in all our sites, although in quite different ways (see below). Lowbrow appreciation is a fetishizing of rural, working-class, immigrant, and minority cultures. This appears in the celebration of simple Bornholmian cooking and the presentation of it as different and exotic, especially in the Brooklyn context. Finally, locality/sustainability is relevant in the continuous creation of the link between the place and the food. In this article we understand elite as performative, not as a stable characteristic of a person, based on their wealth or other measures of power (even though these are of course important aspects of access—not everyone has access to performing eliteness). Whereas authenticity and elite discourse (Thurlow & Jaworski Reference Thurlow and Jaworski2017) are central to the construction of ‘Bornholmian food’, so are nostalgia and the exotic as we see in the analyses below.

Changes across the discursive chain: Exoticization and nostalgia

Much sociolinguistic literature on authenticity has focused on this as a background assumption (Bucholtz Reference Bucholtz2003; Eckert Reference Eckert2003), its production, negotiation, and contestation (e.g. Pietikäinen et al. Reference Pietikäinen, Kelly-Holmes, Jaffe and Coupland2016; Maegaard & Karrebæk Reference Maegaard and Karrebæk2019), or the tensions between authentication and other processes, such as commodification (Duchêne & Heller Reference Duchêne, Heller, Heller and Duchêne2012; Cavanaugh & Shankar Reference Cavanaugh and Shankar2014). Sociolinguists have shown that social meanings transform and change across discursive chains, not the least in commercial contexts (Cavanaugh Reference Cavanaugh2007; Agha Reference Agha2011; Thurlow Reference Thurlow2020), but little has been said about the changes of values and meanings of authenticity. Jaworski & Thurlow (Reference Jaworski, Thurlow and Coupland2010) demonstrate how tourists who pay for experiences appropriate activities and objects, and in this process may add new meanings. Even if the tourism agency aims to authenticate an activity or a material object, the consumer-tourists may search for something else—perhaps in addition to something authentic—and focus on this in their uptakes. Exoticization is associated with the tourist experience (Long Reference Long and Long2003). It refers to something out of the ordinary, socially distant, or norm-breaking (Johnston & Baumann Reference Johnston and Baumann2010:ch. 3), and it is produced as a contrast to the domestic, ordinary, unnoticed. Discursively producing something as exotic is a way of creating difference, creating the Other and otherness (e.g. Said Reference Said1978; hooks Reference hooks and hooks1992), and it is essential in much of the tourism industry as well as in (elite) foodie discourse (Johnston & Baumann Reference Johnston and Baumann2010:ch. 3). As argued by Johnston & Baumann (Reference Johnston and Baumann2010), to identify as a foodie is a way of claiming and creating distinction, and food globetrotting draws on culinary colonialism: ‘the search for exotic foods is … inherently contradictory given this built-in tension between a neo-colonial search for status and distinction in exotic food choices, and a democratic impulse of cultural inclusion and culinary cosmopolitanism’ (Johnston & Baumann Reference Johnston and Baumann2010:95).

The media texts quoted in the introduction exemplified the association between authenticity and the exotic, but also a sentimental longing for the past, that is, nostalgia. Exoticization and nostalgia are cultural practices (Stewart Reference Stewart1988), they are often positive evaluations, and they draw on a desire to frame the cultural present in relation to an ‘other’ world (Stewart Reference Stewart1988). In the case of nostalgia, this ‘other’ world is a past world, and rather than creating otherness, it claims or creates relatedness to this past, to past selves, or to imagined past selves. Tannock (Reference Tannock1995:454) suggests that it involves a search for continuity where dis-continuity between past and present is experienced (Davis Reference Davis1979:35). This may be a way of coming to terms with the present: ‘Nostalgia, by sanctioning soothing and Utopian images of the past, lets people adapt both to rapid social change and to changes in individual life histories’ (Davis Reference Davis1979:110). Sutton (Reference Sutton2001) argues that the sensuality of food is a compelling medium for memory, and several studies take up the relation between food and nostalgia (also Holtzman Reference Holtzman2006). In contemporary food culture, nostalgia is part of some of the elements that are used to create value such as simplicity, geographic specificity, history, and lowbrow appreciation (Johnston & Baumann Reference Johnston and Baumann2010; Karaosmanoglu Reference Karaosmanoglu, Cramer, Greene and Walters2011; Mapes Reference Mapes2018). The search for the original as longing for an imagined past before modern times—a pre-modern, non-industrial, more ideal condition—intersects with the idea of authenticity: ‘The desire for authenticity dovetails with critiques of the risks of modern industrial society, making it easy to see the positive outcomes associated with a search for authenticity in food choices’ (Johnston & Baumann Reference Johnston and Baumann2010:83).

We finally highlight three points from this discussion of authenticity, nostalgia, and the exotic. First, nostalgia and the exotic are often conflated with authenticity (in relation to the exotic, see Johnston & Baumann Reference Johnston and Baumann2010:87), but they engage in other indexical relations and contrasts. Second, these meaning constructions essentially concern contextualization. Eating a Danish pastry on Granny's grave may create a feeling of nostalgia if one always had Danishes with Granny. But the Danish pastry bought in an anonymous bakery or a supermarket loses out on the authenticity scale. Third, even though a restaurateur focuses on authentication, presenting names of producers, AOC labels, local production sites, and so on, guests may use this as a starting point of a new process of meaning creation, and the important indexicalities change over the discursive chain. Some people may take a presented narrative, or a food product, as a steppingstone for ‘eating the Other’ (hooks Reference hooks and hooks1992) whereas others may be eating an (imagined) past considered to be their own in some sense.

In this article we use the theoretical framework presented above to show how the phenomenon of Bornholmian food is produced as material and symbolic value and meaning in different locations—on Bornholm, in Copenhagen, and in Brooklyn, New York—and we show how these processes are linked to other well-known processes of distinction, creation, and the production of ‘eliteness’.

Bornholmian food on Bornholm

The official Bornholmian tourism website uses a stylized version of a smokehouse as the logo to index ‘Food and drink’ (see Figure 1). This establishes smokehouses as important, even iconic, to the understanding of the island and its food scene to potential visitors. It is perhaps also in itself inviting tourists to visit a smokehouse for a meal.

Figure 1.

Logo from the official Bornholmian tourism website.

The smokehouse is a cultural institution with a long history on Bornholm, but also with a fluctuating presence. When smoked fish (herring in particular) became an export good in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, many new smokehouses emerged, but most were abandoned between 1950 and 1970 when the Baltic Sea experienced serious pollution and a decline in fish. During the past twenty years, about a dozen have reopened, but primarily during the summer, and there is no serious export. Furthermore, to accommodate to less tradition-bound (or less adventurous) palates, they offer mackerel, salmon, shrimp, and so on, in addition to herring. Many smokehouses have a small eating area, and they serve the fish rather unadorned, usually only accompanied by rye bread, white bread, or potato salad—and perhaps a slice of tomato and a lemon wedge (see Figure 2). Simplicity seems to be a key word when describing both food and semiotic landscape.

Figure 2.

Svaneke smokehouse. Top left: The building and the outside seating area. Top right: Entrance to the smokehouse. Bottom left: Interior of the smokehouse, the counter. Bottom right: A platter with smoked fish, potato salad, three dipping sauces (mayonnaise, mustard, and ‘remoulade’), and rye bread served at the smokehouse. All photos taken by the authors.

As shown in the photos, hardly any effort is made to underline or indicate the link between Bornholm, Bornholmian history, and food culture, on the one side, and the restaurant, on the other, except for the Bornholmian flag at the entrance and the sign of the interest organization ‘Regional food culture Bornholm’ (Figure 2, top right). The white buildings and chimneys in themselves evoke Bornholmness—but only to visitors already familiar with Bornholmian smokehouses (Figure 2, top left). The interior is left plain and unadorned. It may even appear cheap because of the low-key furniture and almost industrial layout, and because of the presentation of the menu—laminated photos on the wall behind the counter—which is reminiscent of a lowbrow diner or fast-food joint (Figure 2, bottom right).

One could argue that there is no need to demonstrate Bornholmness when on the island; it is self-evident. But even though Bornholmian authenticity is not articulated, it is presupposed as the smokehouse is drawing on a smokehouse frame both in terms of the food choices and decor. Yet, as noted earlier, today all fish are imported, and the variety available at the smokehouse is much greater than it used to be. The authenticity of the smokehouse is thus clearly fabricated in some sense.

Interviews with guests revealed that the link between food, island, and smokehouse, however implicit, was perceived as important. Many visitors saw a visit to a smokehouse as an obligatory part of the Bornholmian experience. Some guests responded to the promotion material from the tourism agencies where Bornholm was presented as an exotic destination, different from what the visitors knew from home, and different from the rest of Denmark. Others came because they always did, because of childhood memories, because of family relations, or due to other personal historical reasons (see below).

One guest tells the us that he and his wife went to a smokehouse: “because we have to experience some of the old traditions that Bornholm has”. He thereby articulates the visit as a mandatory activity for a holiday on the island, and it is linked to traditional Bornholmian culture. In extract (1) we find a similar account.

The couple here became aware of the existence of smokehouses through the tourist material (lines 6–9), and they use the informational material as a guide in their exploration of Bornholm. The tourism agency turns out to be a central agent in creating meaningful links between Bornholm and the smokehouses, and these links are implicitly confirmed through the tourists coming and eating here. When we ask about it, the links are made explicit. In extract (2), we talk to a Swedish couple from Lund, a town in Skåne in southern Sweden.Footnote ⁴

The couple tells us that they visit the smokehouse because it differs from what is available at home (line 2). The difference is interpreted as a feeling of authenticity (line 5). The woman laughs as she says this. We see her laughter as a reflexive move and a meta-pragmatic comment, at the same time signaling a degree of distance to the utterance (Glenn Reference Glenn2003:104), acknowledging that the experience in the smokehouse is not authentic in a traditional sense, and that putting this into words in itself reveals a discrepancy to traditional understandings of authenticity. This is underlined by the addition liksom ‘kind of’ (line 7). In this way, the extract both points to how food creates group identity, here the group being tourists who use tourist material to orient themselves in the unknown territory, and it also points to what Pietikäinen and colleagues’ term transactional authenticity (Pietikäinen et al. Reference Pietikäinen, Kelly-Holmes, Jaffe and Coupland2016) as well as some of the hesitancy associated with this. This interpretation is substantiated by the formulation “eh should we say” (line 5), an additional metapragmatic framing that creates distance to the utterance or demonstrates an understanding that ‘authenticity’ is a frequently evoked meaning used in commercial settings today.

Other guests visited the smokehouse because of nostalgia (cf. Holtzman Reference Holtzman2006). An elderly man who came with his wife told us that his grandmother used to work here. He remembered coming to the smokehouse at four o'clock as a child to have smoked herring with his grandmother. He explained that the Bornholmian food scene had changed, now “there are lots of posh smokehouses (.) that was not the case when I was a child”. Past times are here constructed as different from, and possibly more authentic than, the present-day food scene. Other guests also cherished the memories of earlier visits, for instance, a woman with her husband: “we always come at least once a year (.) we always eat at Svaneke Smokehouse always once (.) it's fantastic (.) I have to go and see the same things eat at the same places”. This is another celebration of past experiences and memories. Continuity and discontinuity play important parts in the creation of this cherished past, although to different degrees and in different ways. The guest who told us about his experiences with his grandmother constructed this as a lost past, which he brought back by returning to the place where they spent good times together and engaging in the same activity of eating smoked herring. The posh smokehouses to him were a new development which established an opposition to the ‘old days’ where a smokehouse was a humbler enterprise. The guests who return every year to “see the same things eat at the same places” establish continuity between past, present, and perhaps future events. Both types of links between present and past are central to rhetorical practices of nostalgia (Doane & Hodges Reference Doane and Hodges1987:3), as both continuity and discontinuity can be seen as prominent aspects of nostalgia (Tannock Reference Tannock1995:456).

In sum, the Bornholmian smokehouse can be understood as a location where not much explicit discursive framing of the place or the food as Bornholmian is done. The guests are already familiar with the link to Bornholm—although they may have learned this through tourist material—and do not need or seek further assistance in ascribing meaning to the experience. Moreover, they fill out the experience in various ways, creating temporal links or seeing the visit as an exotic escape from the everyday.

Bringing Bornholm to Copenhagen: Restaurant Koefoed and Restaurant Kadeau

Koefoed and Kadeau are both Copenhagen-based high-end restaurants, who present themselves as Bornholmian through discursive and other semiotic work. As the connection to Bornholm gives them their brand value in a saturated high-end food market, it is important, and it is made available in various ways in the restaurants’ semiotic landscape (see Figure 3). We have presented in-depth analyses of the restaurants and the restaurant experience elsewhere (Karrebæk & Maegaard Reference Karrebæk and Maegaard2017; Maegaard & Karrebæk Reference Maegaard and Karrebæk2019); here we limit our account to a few important points.

Figure 3.

Decorations at Bornholmian restaurants in Copenhagen. Top left and onwards to the right: Shelves with jars containing pickled or fermented produce; a jar with a label indicating the content and when and where it was found; a poster showing the forest pigs with a label below naming their owner and the place; a poster with a drawing of a forest pig, the text says: “did you know that the pigs at Koefoed come from Svaneke where they ‘make pigs’ like in the old days?”, below it reads ‘a small forest pig’. Bottom left and next: Photos of people who caught or foraged ingredients for the restaurant; a cocktail glass with a Bornholmian dialect word engraved; a poster showing the most well-known tourist attraction on Bornholm—Hammershus castle; a glass with the contour of the island engraved on the bottom; a shelf with tourist souvenirs. All photos taken by the authors.

We start by the semiotic landscape where the restaurant has made various strategic choices in order to make the universe of interpretation available. Thus, the porcelain used in the restaurant is created on the island. Although not everybody can appreciate this, this is an act of authentication because Bornholm is famous for its pottery and glass design. In Restaurant Koefoed the shape of the island is sand-blown onto the surface of plates and glasses, and Bornholmian dialect words are sand-blown onto handmade cocktail glasses as material signs that point to the island (see Shankar & Cavanaugh Reference Shankar, Cavanaugh, Shankar and Cavanaugh2017; Maegaard & Karrebæk Reference Maegaard and Karrebæk2019). The produce and some of those people who foraged for it, grew it, or raised it are displayed—people in black and white photos, and produce in jars, often with labels offering the name of the person who prepared this item. In Restaurant Koefoed, the main wall decorations are large posters with photos of Bornholmian locations and of pigs, sheep, and other animals running freely in the Bornholmian landscape. Thereby the restaurant connects with Bornholm and with the animals who are served to the guests. There are also more humorous elements, including kitschy tourist souvenirs and a poster with a drawn pig informing guests that pigs are ‘made’, that is, raised and slaughtered, ‘as in the good old days’.

The pictures in Figure 3 show how authentication is carried out through representations of Bornholmian locations, Bornholmian produce, and Bornholmians. There is coherence in the narrative as everything points to Bornholm. Expressions such as ‘the good old days’ (cf. the forest pigs) point to a past when producers and food produce were ‘real’ and close to the consumer, and although foraging and fermentation may be trendy, these practices also index past times. Fishermen and other producers on the photos are old, weather-beaten, and rural looking (or: certainly not urban). All of these are instances of the rhetorical practices of nostalgia. Nostalgia is also evoked by waiters when they tell guests about Bornholmian traditional culture or their own personal history (however, due to space limitations, not shown here). It is clear, then, that the restaurants create value through nostalgia (Stewart Reference Stewart1988; Holtzman Reference Holtzman2006), and nostalgia becomes part of the meaning of Bornholmness.

Compared to the smokehouse on Bornholm we thus find a much more articulate creation of links to Bornholm and much more points to Bornholm in the semiotic representations. It also creates a sense of ironic meta-commentary when signs of eliteness (e.g. the white tablecloths and handblown glasses) are presented side by side with products of mass consumption (the mass-produced tourist souvenirs), something which is reminiscent of practices among contemporary elite foodies (Johnston & Baumann Reference Johnston and Baumann2010; Mapes Reference Mapes2018). This suggests acceptance of authenticity as verisimilitude, and perhaps of authenticity as being understood differently depending on the context where it is made relevant. We might, then, also see this difference between the construction of ‘Bornholmian food’ on the island and in the Copenhagen restaurants as a matter of whether the experience is constructed as elite to some degree.

As we have argued elsewhere (Karrebæk & Maegaard Reference Karrebæk and Maegaard2017; Maegaard & Karrebæk Reference Maegaard and Karrebæk2019), the restaurants provide a universe of interpretation, and Bornholm emerges through a semiotic assemblage (Pietikäinen & Hegel Reference Pietikäinen and Hegel2021). Bornholm is available as a potentially meaningful resource that guests can choose to engage with and through this the restaurant, and guests add particular value and meaning to the restaurant experience. In extract (3), the waiter Henrik asks two guests if they would care for a ‘salt-fried herring’ as part of a lunch platter. Salt-fried herring is not as well-known a Bornholmian delicacy as smoked herring, but still generally indexically tied to Bornholm. The guests have just been introduced to the different choices, including the herring, and now the waiter is taking their orders.

Guest1 accepts the waiter's suggestion: “yes we sort of have to taste that”, which in Danish both presupposes a shared understanding (jo) of the herring as an obvious choice and downgrades the claim of this as obvious (næsten), thereby making it easier for Guest2 to be of a different opinion. Instead of replying explicitly, Guest2 tells Henrik that she has a Bornholmian friend who makes this dish (lines 4+6). This counts as a confirmation of the choice and also creates a personal connection to Bornholm. The waiter continues on the thematic line of personal connections to Bornholm as he says that several staff members are Bornholmian: “so we a:re we are a little local” (line 13). To establish this link is to connect restaurant and island on a personal level—claiming shared ontology (Coupland Reference Coupland2003)—and at the same time to validate his position as an expert on Bornholmian food. Food is thereby central to the processes of authentication carried out in this excerpt, and so are the personal histories of both waiter and guests. These histories do different things, though. In one (by the guest), it suggests a reason for her coming to the restaurant; it demonstrates interest in the Bornholmian universe; and it shows her as a particular kind of receiver of the authenticating work—namely as knowledgeable about the food. In the waiter's case, it is used to authenticate the restaurant or perhaps more precisely to show that here they have the expertise and position to do authenticating work. In fact, we did not meet other guests at Restaurant Koefoed where a guest demonstrated a personal connection to Bornholm. However, we did not meet any Danish guests that denied knowing the island either (this would in fact have been surprising as Bornholm is very well-known). Still, the waiters worked explicitly to make Bornholmness available in their discursive presentations of the food and the restaurant, and they adjusted their presentations carefully to the guests’ responses. Some guests did not respond to Bornholm as relevant at all (see Karrebæk & Maegaard Reference Karrebæk and Maegaard2017), whereas others co-constructed it, as in excerpt (3). This makes the very construction of Bornholmness and the relevance of this a dynamic and negotiable enterprise with various potential effects for meaning-making and exploitation for value construction.

To sum up, in the Copenhagen-based restaurants we have seen that much more discursive work is carried out in order to construct the experience as Bornholmian. In the process, the restaurants draw, among other things, on both material décor and on waiters’ interaction with the guests. In the discursive strategies deployed both by guests and staff, nostalgia seemed to play an important part in the meaning-making, as it did on the island of Bornholm, but in other ways, here more in line with the historicity dimension described by Mapes (Reference Mapes2018, Reference Mapes2021) as part of an elite discourse. In Brooklyn, the link to Bornholm needs even more explication as we see below, but at the same time it involves some of the same discursive strategies.

Bringing Bornholm to Brooklyn

In the Brooklyn restaurant we found a mix of semiotic resources pointing to Bornholm and Denmark more generally (Figure 4). Danish pastries were on display on the counter, photos from well-known tourist spots in Copenhagen decorated the walls, logos from Danish commercial food products were placed around the room, including one from a famous Danish aquavit company. The name of Restaurant Bornholm made Bornholm an obvious interpretive context. A Bornholmian flag was placed at the front door, there was a poster with a drawing of the island, a clock with the time on the island as well as in Brooklyn, and Bornholmian food items were presented on the menu. The menu also informed guests how and when the Danes eat. Although this probably does not differ significantly from how many Americans eat, the account, beginning with ‘Most Danes have three meals a day…’, constructed it as something in need of an account and thus interesting, different, and exotic, an impression embellished by the Danish language items on the menu: Kylling, Flæskesteg, Herregårdsbøf, and Plankebøf. This both authenticates the restaurant and constructs it as elite; Jurafsky, Chahuneau, Routledge, & Smith (Reference Jurafsky, Chahuneau, Routledge and Smith2016) concluded that high-end restaurants in the US had a relatively high proportion of foreign (non-English) words on their menus. Similarly, Androutsopoulos & Chowchong (Reference Andruotsopoulos and Chowchong2021) show that Thai script inside Thai restaurants in Germany orient to both Thai guests and other guests to create a meaningful and authentic space.

Figure 4.

Decorations at Restaurant Bornholm, Brooklyn, New York. Top left: The counter. Top right: The restaurant menu. Bottom left: A framed photo of Nyhavn in Copenhagen. Bottom second from left: A framed graphic illustration of the shape of Bornholm seen from above. Bottom second from the right: Two clocks showing the time in Brooklyn, NY and in Denmark, resp. Bottom right: The restaurant entrance with a Bornholmian flag. All photos by the authors.

The semiotic foodscape suggests a universe of interpretation against which the food and the restaurant can be evaluated as authentic expressions of Bornholmness. Bornholm is evoked through conventional indices such as the language and the flag. This is traditional authenticity with a focus on a genuine, real Bornholm. Bornholm is also exoticized through the use of language, the clock that situates it in a different time zone, and the description of Danish eating patterns. Simultaneously, we find a slightly curious mix of universes; Danish pastry (which is much loved in Denmark in general) has no particular Bornholmian affinity, neither do the linguistic items that figured on the menu, the places on the posters nor many of the brand names highlighted in the dining room. Denmark and Bornholm were thus both suggested as relevant universes of interpretation, and although Bornholm is Danish, it is precisely its difference from the rest of Denmark that gives it a special value in Copenhagen or on Bornholm—and also elsewhere. But Bornholm probably makes little sense to most US guests, and by including (better known) indexes of Denmark/Danishness, the owners had better possibilities for strategic value creation. Thereby what Bornholmian means certainly changes in this context.

The semiotic landscape was a backdrop to other things going on in the restaurant, and although it needed not be made relevant, it was present as a meaning potential to be drawn upon. In other data from the Brooklyn restaurant, we see how a dinner experience is articulated. We focus on data from a special Bornholmian Gourmet Night. The chefs who cooked were from the Copenhagen restaurant Restaurant Koefoed, introduced above, including Thomas, the owner. On this evening, the regular menu was substituted by a special menu; Thomas and his Copenhagen team offered many of the dishes that they normally served in Copenhagen. When the guests arrived, they were greeted by Thomas or one of the local owners (Susan and Frank) and they were offered seats, a pre-dinner drink, and snacks. When all guests had arrived, Susan tapped her glass, and delivered a welcome speech (see extract (4)).

In Susan's speech, Bornholm is absent. She mentions the word Danish (lines 6–8) several times, as well as Copenhagen (line 3) and Danish American (line 8). The framing is Denmark and Danish food, and the accommodation of this to American tastebuds is relevant: “Danish American (.) the way (.) you like it” (line 8). When her husband, Frank, takes over, he continues in the same vein. He explains that the most important thing in the restaurant is hygge, introducing the globally known Danish concept, which at that time (January 2017) was a new, frequently mentioned phenomenon in American media.Footnote ⁶ Frank explains that the concept entails relaxing, having fun, and enjoying the evening. When he mentions the word, the guests immediately respond by laughing. This indicates the shared knowledge of both word and connotations, and possibly also that they are aware of the invitation to become part of a playful construction of Danishness, a construction where the essential elements need to be articulated explicitly in order to be attended to and thus to become ‘real’.

While the first two welcome speeches contain no mentioning of Bornholm, the island is the primary focus of Thomas’ welcoming remarks in a ritualistic food presentation (see Mapes Reference Mapes2021:241 ff.; see extract (5)).

In the first part of his speech, Thomas mentions his own connection to Bornholm, he refers to it as “my island” and the place where his parents live (line 1). Thereby he presents himself as an authentic Bornholmian through history, flesh, and blood, drawing on historicity and ontology (Coupland Reference Coupland, Lacoste, Leimgruber and Breyer2014, see also extract (3)). As explained by Manning (Reference Manning2012:21), the linking of product and person takes place through a discursive chain of authentication, and we might expand this linking to also involving place. Thomas further explains that in his restaurant in Copenhagen they not only rely on his own connection to Bornholm and on serving Bornholmian food, but also on “storytelling” (line 3) about the “food and the people and the nature” (line 4). This comment points to how discursive representations of Bornholm play an important role in creating Bornholmness in the restaurant, and it invites the guest to participate in such reflexive work.

Ontology is a dimension of authenticity (Coupland Reference Coupland2003), and in the case of food, the concept of terroir links food directly to the soil and landscape of a particular place (Trubek Reference Trubek2008). Thomas points out (extract (6)) that the local climate (“lots of sunshine”, line 2) and geology (“a granite island”, line 3) makes Bornholm suited for completely different produce than the rest of Scandinavia. Still, this is interesting as Thomas is not only engaged in the speech act of presenting food as Bornholmian. He continues to explain that in fact the guests will not taste produce from Bornholm but produce that could have been from Bornholm: “not the raw materials from Bornholm but the raw materials that we have on Bornholm” (lines 8–9). Again, an indication of verisimilitude (cf. Pietikäinen et al. Reference Pietikäinen, Kelly-Holmes, Jaffe and Coupland2016).

A final example shows how Thomas, regardless of hedging his comments, continues to construct the food as both authentic and exotic, creating value for the food served, and at the same time embellishes the discourse with other sensorial stimuli: material objects (the ingredients) and smell. This happens while the first course is being placed on the tables.

Thomas uses food to create a distinctive Bornholmian identity (cf. Holtzman Reference Holtzman2006:368ff on the use of food in identity processes). He introduces the “national dish” (line 4) from Bornholm: “Sol over Gudhjem” (line 5). As Thomas uses the word national when describing the dish, he suggests that Bornholm is a separate nation. In extract (6) we saw a similar representation as Thomas describes the temperatures on Bornholm as higher than “in the rest of the Scandinavian countries” (line 2). This adds to Bornholm's position as a unique location, even within Scandinavia, which is a way to argue for value. Value is also created through the construction of Bornholm as exotic, here focusing on the smokehouses. Thomas continues to explain that the dish that the guests receive is a fine-dining reinterpretation: “a modified version of the national dish on Bornholm” (lines 4–5). It is not authentic in the sense of original, but it is authentic in the sense of building on the original. At the same time, Thomas has established his authority as a genuine Bornholmian, both through explicitly accounting for his personal relation to Bornholm and through his use of we when referring to Bornholmians. This makes it legitimate for him to present such a reinterpretation. Furthermore, Thomas adds that in the version that the Brooklyn guests are served, other ingredients have been used (salmon instead of herring, lines 8–10). This removes the dish even further from something original, and the name has been changed accordingly. The name change adds a humorous level—acknowledging the inauthentic character—and simultaneously argues for an increased local relevance (“Sol [Sun] over Brooklyn”, line 10). The final aspect of Thomas’ introduction of the dish concerns the smoke in the jar. Thomas introduces smokehouses and smoked fish as something essential to Bornholm and to Bornholmians, and he suggests that: “the smell you have here in the restaurant is actually the same smell as you're having when you're sitting on a smokehouse on Bornholm” (lines 14–15). The sensory stimulus of a smoky smell from the jar is pointed out, and it is explained to the guests how they should interpret it. This is somewhat similar to Frank's explanation of hygge (as mentioned, Frank used this term in his follow-up on Susan's talk that was shown in excerpt (4)), but this time in a different realm, referring to something more concrete. Thomas also claims that this concrete stimulus is one of the important ways in which they bring the guests to Bornholm. They use the smoke because: “what we want to do today is to create a sense of being on Bornholm in the in the heart of Brooklyn” (line 16–17). Overall, the restaurant's presentation of the Brooklyn dinner experience shows how the food itself is not enough to be interpreted as something genuinely Bornholmian. It has to be framed and presented semiotically and discursively, and thereby it becomes a co-constructed or negotiated phenomenon (Piëtikainen et al. Reference Pietikäinen, Kelly-Holmes, Jaffe and Coupland2016).

Guests at Brooklyn Bornholm. At the Brooklyn restaurant many guests offered their reasons for coming to the dinner to the restaurant staff. A few guests did not have any relation to the island at all but were Danes living in New York and they were searching for a place for celebrations such as a religious confirmation. But many guests motivated their visit with a relation to Bornholm. Such relations were not necessarily straightforward, though. A few guests were Danish, and a few were from Bornholm. Most often, they saw the national or local category as more or less a self-explanatory reason for coming. A few guests were Norwegian or Finnish or had Scandinavian relatives and explained that they wanted to show Scandinavia to their partner or friends. This way, the meaning of Bornholm was transformed to something more generally Danish and even Scandinavian.

In extract (8) we show the presentation by a Danish-Finnish couple and Thomas’ response. Guest2 is telling Thomas about an upcoming trip to Bornholm but turns it into a narrative about the only time he was at Bornholm. He mentions sleeping “on the deck of the ferry” which is an experience shared by many Danes. Bornholm was (and is) a popular destination for school excursions and for groups of young people in general, and they used to take the overnight ferry. “Sleeping on the deck” thus tells the story of a past where Bornholm was much less accessible from Copenhagen than today where a bridge, new train connections, a faster ferry, and reasonably priced flights are all available. This highlights the past. Thomas responds to the story by repeating (line 4 and lines 7–8) that it is a “beautiful place”, and something they should look forward to. Then he asks if they will only be going to Bornholm or also Copenhagen (line 10). This way Thomas—probably inadvertently—demonstrates how he finds it curious just to go to Bornholm, at least when you come from far away, and that the next relevant place to visit is the capital. Copenhagen is thereby made relevant in relation to Bornholm.

Guest1 reacts to the question about Copenhagen by stating that they will not be going there this time (they have been there before), but that they will be going to Finland “because I want to show him Finland because that's what I am I'm Finnish” (line 13). The guest accounts for the decision not to go to Copenhagen (“I went to Copenhagen three years ago”, line 11), which suggests an understanding that visiting Copenhagen would have been the obvious thing to do, again relating Bornholm and Copenhagen. In line 13 then, the guest states that they will be going to Finland, and this turn begins with a “but”, implicating that the trip to Finland is somehow a substitution for a trip to Copenhagen, and that it has some of the same value.

A similar construction is seen in extract (9) where Frank, the owner of the Brooklyn restaurant, is talking to a couple among the guests.

When Frank arrives, the guest exclaims that the food is delicious. He moves on to explain that they have come to celebrate his wife's birthday, that his wife is “of Norwegian descent” (line 3), and that they have visited Norway several times. This is only relevant if Norway is seen as related to Bornholm. The established link between Bornholm and Norway is accepted by Frank who responds with a “so you know the way it's” (line 4), which implies that a Norwegian and a Bornholmian experience will be somehow similar.

The Brooklyn case is different from the two previous ones in that the staff cannot assume any prior knowledge of or emotional attachment to Bornholm. This is clear from the way the entire experience is discursively constructed by the owners and Thomas. We have shown that the staff makes connections to different places and thus introduces a larger universe of interpretation. The discursive construction of Bornholm as both different from and related to Denmark is seen in the presentations of the courses as well as in in the welcome speeches (extracts (4)–(7)), and here in the conversations with guests (extract (8)), but other parts of Scandinavia are also evoked. Thus, the value of Bornholm is created by situating it within a larger and more well-established universe of interpretation, making it possible for the guests to appreciate the value of the Bornholmian dinner experience. At the same time, the Brooklyn case resembles the two others by stressing the link to a lost and sought-after past. Nostalgia (Stewart Reference Stewart1988; Holtzman Reference Holtzman2006) comes forward in the way Thomas presents the dinner experience, and in the way some of the guests are claiming a relevant connection to Bornholm by explaining that they are of Scandinavian descent or that they have past experiences of visits to Bornholm. Finally, included in the Brooklyn dinner experience are also well-known contemporary fine-dining practices such as the ritualistic food presentation (Mapes Reference Mapes2021) (which would be rather inappropriate in the smokehouse on Bornholm), and the reinterpretation of a traditional dish into a new version. This new version was quite recognizable as pointing to an elite experience in its minimalistic expression (Van Leeuwen Reference Van Leeuwen2016:111), the smoke, and as it is served in a traditional pickle-jar—a trendy serving concept in high-end restaurants at the time. So, at the same time as we move from the island and further away, we see an increase in discursive work and a further underlining of the exotic, creating distinction. It seems, then, that in the same process as ‘Bornholmian food’ is produced and authenticated for consumers with lesser prior knowledge of Bornholm, it is also produced as elite, using well-known scripts and materialities, recognizable to global consumers.