#uff-da

Uffda in da fjords

There’s a little phrase we use in the Upper Midwest. It’s the color black; it goes with anything. It’s duct tape and can hold things together. It’s a Scandinavian hangover that’s not entirely traceable nor translatable in modern dialect.

This is Uffda.

An Uffda is necessary when you drive your car over a puddle that was actually concealing a pothole.

When your roommate tells you how many stitches she had to get after cutting her hand on a thrift-store glass while washing the dishes, the first thing you say is Uffda!

When picking up a heavy box, grunting is barbaric. An Uffda will do.

A groan and an Uffda are acceptable post-meal compliments.

When a family member dies suddenly and you don’t know what to say, whisper “Uffda, Uffda, Uffda”.

My sister manages a daycare – four year olds who tip their sippy cups over will point at their spilled juice and proclaim “Uffda!” In North Dakota, where the winter lasts long and the wind wails mightily, “Oh dear” is lacking, “Oh my” is too prissy. We need something solid and hearty. 

I swore to only ever use my Uffda’s sparingly and sarcastically. I wanted to be modern and worldly and the phrase felt old-worldly and ridiculous more than anything. I didn’t appreciate the versatility of Uffda, the possibilities of pronunciation and nuance. 

I liked other parts of Scandinavian heritage. The food parts. The thick dumplings in knoephla (neff-la) soup; the bitter flavor of sauerkraut (sower-krowt); lefse (leff-suh) at Thanksgiving, a flat potato-bread slathered in butter and sugar; meatballs at Christmas. And all the sweets – krumkake (croom-ka-ka) with its delicate waffle-cookie crunch;  Rømmegrøt (room-meh-grawt) thick batter covered in the butter we seem to love; and kuchen (coo-gehn) a personal little custard pie that comes in non-traditional flavors of peanut butter, chocolate chip, nutella. 

It wasn’t until I moved far away from home, where suddenly people think I mispronounce “root” and “roof” –the o’s too short and dull, but too long when I say “moose”, that I found myself uffda-ing unironically. 

Microsoft Word does not recognize Uffda. Not many outsiders do either, but they almost instantly understand it. Sometimes there’s nothing else to say, and sometimes it conveys everything at once. A magic, guttural, all-encompassing thing to utter.

wooops.