A Norwegian Deightrou:  The Fladvad Family’s Dough Bowl

The deightrou, or dough bowl, is one of several Norwegian kitchen implements that my grandmother, Marie Theresa Fladvad, brought with her when she emigrated to the United States in the mid-1890s.

The deightrou was special to her: it had been hand-hewn from a log by her brother, Ole Andreas, as a special gift in honor of her departure from Norway about 1890.

While Ole Andreas made the carrying handles at each end and the inside of the deightrou quite smooth, the underside of the dough bowl was left quite rough and readily seen to be a former log. While a deightrou was used in Norwegian kitchens for kneading dough, my grandmother, Marie, used it for other purposes as well.

A second piece of primitive or rustic equipment accompanied the deightrou: a rounded steel chopper blade attached to a wooden handle. It may sometimes referred to as a scraper, however we called it a chopper. Grandmother, Marie, used the rounded chopper tool to chop up vegetables for the evening meal probably much more often than she used it to knead dough.

There are many old dough bowls to be seen on Etsy and eBay and some other sites. I have created a board on Pinterest and entitled it “Dough Bowls.”

Some of the dough bowls look similar to the one that accompanied Marie on her voyage from Norway to Newport. One description read: “Two-piece primitive wood trencher dough bowl with scraper utensil.”

What size is our deightrou? Deightrous were used for hundreds of years in European kitchens and were usually 30” to 35” long. Some larger dough bowls were as much as 45” long.