“We come together, sit down, and put everything aside. The table is where we talk, where we reconnect, where we just figure out each other’s brains.”
For Elisabeth Sofie Hovde, owner of food photography and lifestyle brand Bordfolk (that’s ‘table people’ in Norwegian), the table is the centre of the home and the family. It’s a space of tranquillity and togetherness, or what Elisabeth calls, in Norwegian, ro, tid, pust: calmness, time, and breath. “We can sit round a table for hours!”, she says. “As a family we like to take time to enjoy cooking and to sit down together. That’s what I want to inspire others to do too.”
Bordfolk’s focus on cooking, the home, and the pleasures of food and family has its roots in a project Elisabeth started when studying photography at college. “Our family had lots of my grandmother’s handwritten recipes,” Elisabeth explains. “When I moved out, I began to cook for myself for the first time, using her recipes. But I needed to call her up every night to ask for help! So, for a college assignment, I thought it would be nice to collect some of her and my family’s recipes, photograph the food, and to gather the essence of the family home through the images.”
Yet, if Bordfolk began as a “time capsule” for Elisabeth and her family’s memory, it soon became much more. First, a food photography blog, showcasing Elisabeth’s work and cooking. Then a web shop selling her own prints, lifestyle, cooking and photography books, and bowls and plates. Then, a pop-up shop, and finally in November 2020, a permanent store in Trondheim’s central Midtbyen. Now, Elisabeth says, she’s doing exactly what she’s always meant to be doing. “When I discovered the space for the store”, she explains, “it felt like all the pieces had fallen into place. I love working in a shop. It gives me such a rush when people come in and like the things they find”.
Like everything about Bordfolk, Elisabeth’s approach to curating her store and its products has always been deeply personal. Everything Bordfolk sells has a meaning, or some sort of resonance for Elisabeth. “I’ve always paid attention to the things around me,” she explains, “and I’ve tried to surround myself with things that create a good environment for me and my family. That’s what I do with Bordfolk. I want to sell things that I can stand for. Things should have a story.”
It’s these stories that she now tells through her photography. The Bordfolk store has meant Elisabeth has had to sacrifice her freelance photography work, yet the practice still plays a central creative role in her life and helps to market the brand online. “Photography is my way to express and share my world,” she says. “I can talk for half an hour and feel like I haven’t said anything! But if I show you a photograph, you’ll get what I want to say immediately.”
She is being a little hard on herself. Elisabeth’s impeccable still-life photography does let her products speak beautifully for themselves. Yet, Elisabeth is herself incredibly eloquent, particularly about her values and what she hopes to achieve with the brand: “I want people to find inspiration here, to find things to create their own calm space,” she explains. “Ultimately, for me, the simple things in life build strength. I seek a simple life with things that I enjoy, both to eat and to surround myself with. And I want others to be able to do that too.”
