The majority of us have felt the warmth of gathering around coffee with friends. What we don’t know is that this experience is rooted in Nordic historical tradition and that two local women are trying to document this connection and share with others.
Corey Kingston and Samantha Albert met and immediately bonded over their individual travels to Copenhagen. Albert had gone through a fellowship during her time at the University of Washington and Kingston went during an architecture study abroad program. Both instantly fell in love with the coffee culture during their travels.
“I don’t even know how the idea came. I had wanted to open a Nordic style café for a while and then it merged into this idea of writing a book,” says Albert. “We want to inspire people to take a moment out of their busy lives to enjoy a cup of coffee with their friends.”
In order to do this, they needed money. So they created an account on Kickstarter, the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects. Their page talks about their mission to document this historical tradition and its modern representation for an American audience. The tentative title for their book is “Takk: Explorations of Nordic Café Culture,” and they are aiming to raise $16,000 by May 7. Albert says beginning a Kickstarter account is more work than you think; they had to reach out to multiple friends for help with the video and animation.
“The Kickstarter site makes it so that you can only really get accepted if you have a very clear project in mind with a clear product that you’re going to produce at the end of it,” says Albert. “Details have to be clearly laid out and you have to really prove that you have done the background research on the financials of it.” They see their project as part of a much larger movement around the philosophy of connecting with friends over coffee or food. They see it as promoting the idea of small intimate gatherings.
Albert says her dream goal would be to eventually open her own café, “Ballard would be the dream place because of the Nordic heritage there, and there aren’t any like this there right now.”
