In case you didn’t hear, Nordic food is all the rage these days. Unfortunately, because of its associations with hoity-toity Noma, it’s often quite expensive. A meal at the wonderful Aska in Williamsburg will run you $175 and up. That’s why my experience of Nordic food is mostly limited to doing the vodka shots with herring chasers they serve at North Pole Pub, near the Barclays Center. TOTALLY worth the pickled fish breath. Anyway, embrace these upcoming opportunities to experience Nordic cuisine without blowing so much money that you have to shop at Ikea for the rest of your life.

Munchies Festival
Sept. 16 and 17 at Hester Street Fair, Hester and Essex Sts., Lower East Side.
This two-day food fest put on by Hester Street Fair and Vice’s food channel, Munchies (of Action Bronson fame), is going to be a blast. Among the “Vikings in Gastronomy” visiting from most every Scandinavian country are Noma co-founder Claus Meyer, who operates the Nordic-tinged restaurants and concessions at Grand Central Terminal, and Antto Melasniemi, a Finnish chef who has an amazing bio photo. There’ll be a Nordic Cocktail Lab where you can be the very first to try Denmark’s Herbie Gin Export, a beer garden where you can practice your pronunciation of “skal!”, and some Nordic chef talks that you can pretend to listen to while you suck down the aforementioned booze. For the less adventurous, there will also be local favorites like Caracas, Oddfellows, and Baohaus.

Bugs
Sept. 27 to Oct. 3, at Film Forum, 209 West Houston St., West Village; daily screenings at 12:30, 2:30, 4:40, 7:00 & 9:15.
If you couldn’t get enough of the scorpion sushi rolls and the june bug fritters at Brooklyn’s first bug-eating festival this past weekend, a new documentary premiering at Film Forum on Sept. 27 is your chance to learn more about entomophagy. Bugs, by Copenhagan restaurateur Andreas Johnsen, tracks chefs from Denmark’s Nordic Food Lab as they forage, farm and cook insects with people in Australia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Italy, and Kenya (pan-fried termite, anyone?). We haven’t seen the flick yet, but it’s safe to say most of the people featured actually enjoy bug bites.