Pickled Herring and Strong Wills

Tekst: Pernille Koch Laursen

Foto: anders beier

Early one morning in 2001, Rikke’s phone rang in Allinge. It was her mother Ruth calling from her childhood home on Frederiksø Island. “Will you be coming home or what?” she asked in her singsong Jutland dialect, and Rikke could hear from the tone of her voice that something serious was afoot. The time had come to make a decision that would change her life forever. 

The question was being asked by a woman who had been running a small enterprise for 33 years from the easternmost point in Denmark and who was now prepared to pass on her life’s work. A woman who, with tireless diligence, strength of will and business acumen, had created a successful enterprise that produces one of most coveted seafood products in Denmark: Ruths Kryddersild (Ruth’s Pickled Herring).

We meet Ruth at her home on Frederiksø Island. Motifs of fishing boats and the sea adorn her sitting room, where ceramics from Michael Andersen in Rønne stand on top of the china cabinet. One of the fishing boat was painted by artist Henning Køie, who used to live next door. Later on, a letter from him would play an entirely random, but vital role in the history of Ruths Kryddersild. 

Ruth grew up in a small Jutland town south-west of Herning. Her childhood home in Kølkær was filled with children and an enterprising spirit. Being enterprising was necessary, because money was tight and everyone had to work hard and do their share. This included Ruth who, together with her twin sister Else, were the youngest in the family. And there was a lot to do, because Ruth’s dad was a man with many irons in the fire who never let the opportunity to make a good deal slip away. He bought an apple orchard, a couple of cows and other livestock, and the processing of the products this generated was something Ruth’s mother and siblings were responsible for. Ruth got up early in the morning and went to bed late in the evening, because she also had to do her homework and keep up with her rhythmic gymnastics team. That’s the way things were and continued to be throughout her life: late to bed and early to rise for a day filled with hard work. 

Ruth moved to Christiansø Island at the age of 16. She packed up everything she owned – which wasn’t much – and set out on the long journey from one end of Denmark to the other, from Kølkær to the Ertholmene archipelago, her destination at the easternmost point in Denmark. She had taken a summer job in the hotel kitchen on Christiansø Island along with her twin sister Else. Else stayed the entire summer, but when she wanted to return home, Ruth made it clear to Else that she would be leaving on her own. She had agreed to continue working in the kitchen over the winter. This was when Ruth became an islander, and that’s how it would remain. She never moved back to her family in west Denmark. 

Ruth compassionately describes the islands’ milieu at that time when she actively joined it. Many people have referred to her as a pioneer and trailblazer, but Ruth seems remarkably unimpressed by her own efforts for the small island community that now numbers about 100 inhabitants. “I’m just me, you know,” she would probably say, if you started lavishing her with too much praise. Back then – in the early 1950s – the islands were a typical, male-dominated community. The men were thick as thieves and preferred to gather at the island’s pub and drink beer, while the women and girls mostly stayed at home. But it was hard for Ruth to see herself accepting this dichotomy. She preferred to find something to do that would channel all her energy and enterprising spirit, so she started up a women’s rhythmic gymnastics group who worked out together at ‘Månen’ (literally The Moon), a local community centre on Frederiksø Island. This became very popular, because something new and different was finally happening. Soon a group of 14 women were working out all winter long in preparation for the big gymnastics presentation, led by ‘Miss Ruth Dahl’, as reported by the Bornholm newspaper. 

On Christiansø Island, a young local fisherman, Lasse, fell head-over-heels in love with the intrepid newcomer from Jutland, but failed to win her heart right away. Ruth fell for another fisherman, married him and had a daughter, Tena. But when the marriage ended, Lasse was swiftly at her door, and Ruth realised he was serious. They got married and moved into a small flat on Frederiksø Island. This is where they had first Rikke and later her sister Gitte. 

Like most fishermen’s wives back then, Lasse’s mother Minna had her very own recipe for pickled herring. Minna and Ruth built up a strong relationship over the years, and Ruth often helped Minna produce her unique herring product. Initially, the herrings were pickled in Minna’s own kitchen. The locals liked Minna’s herring, and reports that an unusually flavourful pickled herring was being made on Frederiksø Island quickly spread to Bornholm. 

Minna died from cancer in 1967 at the age of 54. But before she departed, one of her last acts was to make sure she passed on her secret recipe for pickled herring that had proved its value over time. On the back of a letter from artist Henning Køie, she hastily wrote down the recipe and gave it to Ruth. Ruth sat there in Minna’s now quiet home together with Lasse and new-born Rikke and had to decide what to do with the knowledge she had just received from her mother-in-law. 

Ruth knew that the recipe was unique. She was fully aware of the meticulous preparations needed to prepare the popular herring, and she knew that she had to continue selling it. Ruth was given the option of taking over roomy premises in an old smokehouse and dinghy workshop along the waterfront. This is where she started up ‘Ruths Kryddersild’ after a minor rebuilding and refurbishment project, but without substantially increasing the production. After Minna passed away, however, Svaneke Marketing Cooperative started buying all the herring that Ruth could manage to make. In Minna’s day, the product had been marketed by word of mouth, but Ruth took the money that her family had inherited from Minna and bought a telephone. This was before telephones were common household objects, and it became an important device in Ruth’s development of the enterprise. 

Everything in the production process was handmade, from the mixing of the herbs and spices (which until then had been ground in an old coffee grinder), to the filleting of the herring and the production of the brine used to ripen the herring fillets. And they only had a limited workforce at their disposal. As Rikke and Gitte grew up, they would help Ruth, and some local women did the time-consuming filleting on the quay outside. When boxes of herring were hoisted up onto the quay from fishing vessels, they had to be dressed and iced as quickly as possible. Afterwards, they were put in a basic brine for a few weeks before being transferred to the herbal brine. Ruth also started experimenting with new flavours. Her own favourite was onion herring, but producing this variety in large quantities was slow and difficult, so she gradually phased them out of the product range. Later on, Ruth added tomato herring and curry herring, which are still sold to this day. 

The pickled ‘Kryddersild’ variety was always the cornerstone of Ruths Kryddersild, though, and this was also the flavour that TV chef Claus Meyer fell in love with when he became acquainted with Ruth’s products. It is still somewhat of a mystery how he heard about the herring, but the connection might have been through TV journalist Rolf Jonshøj who frequently visited Christiansø and Frederiksø in the summer and always took a portion of Ruth’s herring back home with him to Copenhagen. Anyway, one day Ruth received a phone call from Claus Meyer over in Copenhagen. He asked if she would like to have her herring take part in a newly established ‘slow food fair’ in Copenhagen. Ruth gladly accepted the offer, and packed up a decent selection of products and took them with her for Copenhageners to taste. It was a thrilling experience. Encountering all the other ‘slow food’ producers was exciting and they exchanged ingredients at the end of the fair. Ruth’s family ate hearty meals back home on Frederiksø in the weeks that followed. 

After the fair, Ruth was contacted by the supermarket chain FDB (now COOP), who wanted to market her herring. Ruth wasn’t interested. Not out of modesty, mind you, as Ruth knew full well that her herring was a unique product. But she wanted to focus on selling her products solely to fishmongers and speciality shops, because she felt that this was where they belonged. Perhaps this also explains why she insisted on selling the herring in bright red containers with a contrasting bright green label. She had once read in a magazine how colours could affect horses. Red made them go wild, while green had a calming effect, so that’s how her herring should be packaged. Similarly, it is possible to assert that Ruth is both the wild, powerful woman who upped sticks and journeyed forth on an adventure, while at the same having both feet firmly planted on the ground and not letting anyone push her around. She does what she does, and the devil may care what others think.

In that late summer morning in 2001 when Rikke received her mother’s phone call, the adventure was also summoning her. After thinking it over, Rikke pulled up her own stakes and returned home to Frederiksø Island. Initially, she left her husband and child behind on Bornholm and moved into her old childhood room in her mother’s house, with a special, wonderful feeling of having come to the right place: home. In 2011, Rikke definitively took over the company from Ruth and her third husband, Olav, and she is now alone at the helm running Ruths Kryddersild with her own sense of the concept. An important aspect of this is the intimacy, the humour, and the rewarding contact with her customers. The joy of staying connected to one’s roots and origins is clearly noticeable in the company of both Ruth and Rikke. 

Today, Ruth is in her early 80s, but you would never guess. As she sits in her living room, telling stories, she only occasionally rests her hands on the armrests. Hands that over the years have filleted countless herrings with a tireless drive in all kinds of weather. Hands that have diligently and adeptly processed the herrings and brought irresistible flavour experiences to oceans of people. Ruth built up a sound enterprise back in the day when women were still a rare sight among business leaders. Using her mother-in-law’s recipe as her starting point, she created a top-quality gourmet product and handed over a viable business for future generations. Because the impression made by these three strong women – Minna, Ruth and Rikke – each in their own separate generation is an important part of the story about Ruths Kryddersild: their sense of humour, their bite and their will to create something big in a small place.

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