Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times

Pearl Fu (left) with Local Colors and Wally Post of the Sons of Norway talk during the Taste of Culture, a monthly series of lunchtime events sponsored by Local Colors. This month featured Scandinavia, the event at Century Plaza in downtown Roanoke is the second Friday of the month.

Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times

Ashley Rigdon, 15, (left) and her sister Amanda Rigdon, 16, dance during the Taste of Culture, this month is Scandinavia in another installment of the monthly series of lunchtime events sponsored by Local Colors.

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At Friday's monthly Taste of Cultures luncheon, Jeff Rigdon, clad in the leather-and-fur armor of a ninth-century warrior, stood before a cluster of guests who wore new horned Viking helmets.

"Today, everybody is a Viking," Rigdon, president of the local group Vikings of the Valley, told them. "You can do anything you want today because you're a Viking."

On the heels of that declaration, however, he did caution them against leaning forward too fast and accidentally poking bystanders with their plastic horns.

Taste of Cultures, sponsored by Local Colors, spotlights diverse cultures every second Friday of the month at Century Plaza on Church Avenue. This month, the theme was Scandinavia, and the horned helmets weren't nearly as intimidating to some as one of the main courses -- lutefisk, a traditional Nordic dish of cod that is soaked in lye.

Most at Friday's event took such risks in stride.

"The Vikings epitomize the adventurous spirit," Rigdon explained.

Keri Ostby, cultural chairwoman of the Sons of Norway, one of the groups present, said that the response to the lutefisk was positive.

"People were interested," she said. "It went pretty fast."

Sven Dyrkolbotn, a Roanoke resident who was born in Norway, said the dish is tricky to make.

"If you overcook it, it melts, and it's easy to overcook," he explained. "It was missing a little bit of salt, but otherwise, it was great."

The Swedish Club of the Roanoke Valley was also present, serving up a homeland speciality -- meatballs, as well as yellow pea soup.

"I'm one of the two Scottish Swedes in the valley," said Vernon Ferguson, a club member who is also on the Local Colors' board. "Any time we have the festival, people will ask, 'Do you speak Swedish?' and I say, 'As much as I can.' "

Almost on cue, an attendee approached him and spoke in the foreign tongue.

"He asked if I'd been born in Sweden," Ferguson explained.

Pearl Fu, Local Colors' director, made the scene wearing a braided blond Valkyrie wig and helmet.

Taste of Cultures, she said, "shows how diversified Roanoke is. Very often people are reluctant to talk to other cultures. But we're not so different after all, once you start eating with us and dancing with us."

"This is to show you how we eat in our homes," Rigdon concurred. "You can do this nowhere else except Scandinavia. It's the type of food you eat in someone's kitchen, rather than in a restaurant.

"Our group publicizes the positives."

According to Valley Viking Wally Post, those attributes do not include supernatural Nordic rites.

"We do not practice pagan arts, and we do not tolerate pagan arts," Post said. "We don't have anything to do with them."

Friday's event proved so popular that within a couple of hours, there wasn't a meatball to be found.

"It was a success," Ferguson declared. "We ran out of food."