Volunteers have the perfect recipe for a successful Scandinavian Christmas market

Volunteers at Hull’s Danish Church are rolling back the years to recreate favourite recipes from their homeland after starting the preparations for their Scandinavian Christmas market.

As well as filling their freezers with festive food, members of East Yorkshire’s Nordic community – some of whom have been helping at the market for more than 30 years – are stocking up with stylish Scandi design and decorations.

They and other volunteers are working flat out to make sure the shelves are full for the market on Saturday 29 November which attracts people from across the north and is the biggest source of funds for the church.

Charlotte Theill, manager of the Danish Church and its cultural and community arm Nordic House, said: “We now only have a handful of church services here every year but we play an increasingly important part in the local community, supporting charities and providing a venue for the arts and social occasions. The Christmas market is at the heart of that.”

Recent research has found photographs which indicate the market may date back as far as the 1930s. They show that a bazaar was held in 1933 in the original church, which was bombed on the eve of its 70^th anniversary in 1941 and rebuilt a few yards away at the corner of Ferensway and Osborne Street in 1954.

Also members of the Church on the steps of the original building at the bazaar in 1933.

Hanne Hamilton, a Dane who lives in Beverley and has been attending the church since the mid-1960s, said the market in its current form was launched in 1969. Pre-Covid it used to attract more than 800 people over two days. Now it welcomes almost the same number in just one day.

Charlotte said: “People come from far and wide – the Scandinavian community from west of the Pennines and south of the Humber and a lot of people from in and around Hull. Some of them have been coming here for years and  they tell us that they see it as the start of their Christmas.”

The crowds flock to the church to buy festive delicacies and stylish gifts that they can’t find anywhere else. They also pack out a pop-up café serving open sandwiches of salmon, prawns and herring as well as home-made fishcakes, gravlax, rye bread and a liver pate prepared by Danes to their secret recipe.

Hanne joined Dorthe Hostick, chair of the church social fund and a volunteer at the market since the 1970s, in making fingers of Kransekage.

Dorthe said: “It’s our festive cake for all the special occasions and we have been selling it at the market for 30 years or more. We usually make it as decorative rings but for the market we make fingers so more people can have them. We import our marzipan from Odense and that’s what makes them special!”

The first few batches are for the freezer and Dorthe will keep baking until a few days before the market, when her focus will switch to organising the Scandinavian gifts and decorations with more deliveries arriving every week.

Hanne will soon start work baking festive biscuits with the flavours of honey, syrup, cinnamon, cloves and ginger. For the pop-up café she will work with her daughter Bodil Hamilton-Cody to make fishcakes to her own recipe.

She said: “We make pastries and biscuits at home and bring them in to sell at the Christmas market and we make the fishcakes on the day – they always sell out in the café.

“Everything is made from recipes we have been using for many years. In the early 1970s I helped the pastor’s wife make pate using minced liver and fat which we got from a local butcher. We mixed it in a tin bath and baked it and sold it in foil trays for people to take home. It’s still very popular but we don’t use the bath anymore!”

Plumrose, which operated in the Old Town of Hull in the 1960s and was a subsidiary of the Danish Crown meat processing company, used to donate products for sale at the market. The Church still receives donations of cod from UK Fisheries Ltd for the fishcakes, with salmon from Bakkafrost and prawns from Nordic Seafood UK for the open sandwiches.

Charlotte said: “We couldn’t hold the market without the help of the businesses and our volunteers – there will be about 50 here on the day running the stalls, preparing and serving the food and generally making sure everybody has a fantastic Scandinavian festive experience.”

The Scandinavian Christmas Market will take place on Saturday November 29 from 10am until 4pm at the Danish Church in Osborne Street, Hull. Admission is £2, which includes Danish mulled wine and a festive biscuit, subject to availability.

A mini market featuring stalls but not the café will take place at the Church on Saturday 6 December to give people a last chance to buy Scandinavian gifts before Christmas.

Main pic shows (from left) Charlotte Theill, Dorthe Hostick and Hanne Hamilton with the Kransekage.