So+Lo’s serves Icelandic food in downtown Fargo



so lo fargo

Despite North Dakota being home to the largest concentration of Icelanders per capita in the U.S., it’s not easy to find traditional Icelandic food in the state’s biggest city.

That is, until married couple Jen and Chris Nelson opened So+Lo’s, offering the famous Icelandic Skyr, pronounced “skeer”, along with other Icelandic-American food.

Skyr is a yogurt-like Nordic staple Icelanders have made since the Viking Age.

Jen Nelson, who was a Moorhead Public Schools art teacher for 22 years, got the idea after falling in love with the food during a 2025 trip to Iceland. She went with a group called Icelandic Roots, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving Icelandic history and heritage.

“My mom is 100 percent Icelandic, and my dad was 50 percent,” she said. “I'm very interested in my heritage. I always have been.”

vintage postcards
Vintage Icelandic postcards line the wall of So+Lo’s Icelandic restaurant in Fargo, North Dakota on Thursday, April 2.
Noah Block | MPR News

On the trip, she discovered a love for the simple, yet high-quality food.

“I fell in love with the skyr,” Nelson said. You can buy it at the grocery store, the gas station, they have it at hotels. It's literally everywhere.”

Skyr could easily be mistaken for regular Greek yogurt that could be in your fridge right now.

“It tastes like yogurt, it looks like yogurt, it acts like yogurt,” Nelson said.

However, due to the way it’s processed, it’s technically a type of cheese.

Like yogurt, skyr is made from milk and a bacteria culture, but it is usually higher in protein and lower in fat.

When she came back from Iceland, Nelson taught herself how to make skyr at home. It only needs three main ingredients: skim milk, a bacteria culture and rennet – an enzyme that commonly comes from the stomachs of cows.

But, after mixing the milk and bacteria, the mixture must be kept at over 100 degrees for hours.

After making a few batches, the couple thought it was the perfect opportunity to open a business selling skyr.

 Icelandic skyr
A bowl of Icelandic skyr.
Courtesy of Jen Nelson

“We knew that nobody had skyr,” Jen Nelson said. “We thought that might be something unique to offer to the downtown Fargo community.”

While Nelson has no food industry experience, her husband has a long history of cooking professionally, working in various restaurants in the Fargo area over the last couple decades.

Even so, he said his wife is the undisputed authority on the Icelandic staple.

“Jen is the expert of the skyr, to tell you the truth. I'm learning that from her,” he said.

They decided to open So+Lo's and named it after their two kids, Soley and Arlo.

Now, the Nelson’s make fresh skyr daily at So+Lo’s, topping it with fresh fruit, honey and granola.

ceramic plates
Ceramic plates handcrafted by Jen Nelson on display inside So+Lo’s in Fargo, North Dakota. on Thursday, April 2.
Noah Block | MPR News

How it’s going

Some of the first people to try out So+Lo's menu were members of the Icelandic Klub of Fargo-Moorhead.

“We're thrilled that she's giving it a chance,” said Susan Sigurdson, the club’s president. “She served us pönnukökur the other night, and they were delicious.”

Aside from skyr, So+Lo's serves a few other Icelandic dishes, like rúllupylsa – pronounced roll-a-polsa –, thin slices of seasoned meat, and pönnukökur – pan-no-cooker – Icelandic pancakes.

Sigurdson said much of the Icelandic food she grew up with was passed down from her grandparents and was often the result of necessity.

“They were really basic foods,” Sigurdson said.

The staples included lots of cured and smoked meat and fish, foods that were hearty and could stay edible for a while.

She also remembers skyr.

“My mom used to make it and, as a child, I didn't care for it because it's got a little bit more of a tart flavor and I didn't care for it. I think it’s good now,” Sigurdson said.

Jen Nelson said the goal of the restaurant isn’t just to highlight how delicious Icelandic fare can be.

“Preserving cultural heritage through food, I think, is really big,” said Nelson.



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Looker Data Actions – Table of Content

What is Looker?

Looker is an enterprise for BI- Business Intelligence tool, embedded analytics, and a data application platform. Looker became a part of google cloud in 2020, and from then, Looker provides users to create and share insightful visualisations of the data. It is a web-based or on-premise tool. It collects, visualises, and analyses data, but starting with Looker requires heavy effort as we have to format and model data in a particular way with LookML; it can not process data and create reports independently. Google cloud’s & Looker data analytics platform will provide options to deliver value with robust and new insights.

What are Looker Data Actions?

Looker actions is a data activation tool that analyses data in real-time, and data activation is a method to turn insights into actions. With Looker API calls, users can perform tasks in other tools, and LookML triggers an API call in a particular field. Data activation is generally done by picking up clean and modifying data from the data house and sending it back to business teams like marketing or sales.

Looker actions mainly focus on sending data back to business users, and they get real-time data and act accordingly. Looker tools support work within other tools too. Tools like slack, updating values, warning team members in tools, sending emails, and automating them are the popular ones that are used.

Why Data Actions?

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Using Looker’s standard tools, you can move through your workflow quickly. Looker Actions enables us to create and act on your data. From interacting with your users to revamping records in any of the application domains you use, you can do it all.

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Slack:

Notify your team of changes in activity directly from Slack.By directly injecting data into conversations, you can directly answer important questions.Custom commands that query Looker directly through Slack can be distributed to the rest of your company.

Segment

Looker email cohorts can be easily managed by sending lists to Marketo, Hubspot, Airship, and other services.With the click of a button, you can activate win-back and upsell campaigns.

Twilio:

Ad-hoc sends allow you to quickly send a text message to any phone number in your database from Looker. It doesn’t matter if you’re sharing your knowledge by sending data or simply creating a custom message on the fly.Schedule text messages – sharing insights with customers is an effective way to build relationships. Schedule data delivery to those who require it the most at your preferred interval. Use the Twilio Action to set up text alerts to easily notify customers when something happens, such as a delay in an order or an outage on their instance.

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Zapier:

With the Tray Action, users will be able to seamlessly integrate Looker queries into their daily workflows. Upload data to a cloud storage solution, distribute reports via an email list for the team, or even send reports to customers. Use this Action for a variety of scenarios with Zapier’s extensive integration list, the sky’s the limit.

Salesforce:

As you progress through the sales cycle, update the contract value of each new deal.

Twilio:

Use Twilio to send promotions, customer satisfaction surveys, and other notifications to customers.

Exavault:

Schedule the SFTP delivery of Looker dashboards, visualizations, or data to ExaVault. Avoid email size restrictions and ensure that your Looker data reaches the people and systems that need to process and analyze it. The following are some examples of use cases for this Action:

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Amazon Sagemaker:

Using machine learning algorithms on Looker data, use Amazon Sagemaker to predict, forecast, or classify data points.This Action allows you to send the results of a Looker query to XGBoost or Linear Learner to train a model for regression or classification, or to perform predictions on the results of a Looker query using a previously trained model. The Action is made up of three parts:

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SendGrid:

  • Ad-hoc sends allow you to quickly send an email from Looker to any email address in your database. Whether it’s sharing your knowledge by sending data or simply creating a custom message on the fly.
  • Schedule emails – sharing insights with customers is an effective way to build relationships. Deliver scheduled data to those who need it the most at the interval you specify.
  • Email alerts – using the SendGrid Action to easily notify customers when something happens, whether it’s a delay in an order or an outage on their instance.

High touch :

Reverse ETL has features lacking in Looker Actions and reduces the barrier between them. High touch is one of the alternatives to Data Actions, and reverse ETL copy’s data from analytics platforms or data warehouses to operational systems of record. Hightouch clears the problem by leveraging Reverse ETL, which transforms data from the data warehouse and synchronises it back to the native tools of businesses like Marketo, amplitude, Hubspot, iterable, salesforce, Google sheets, etc.

With hightouch, users can map attributes like purchases and emails to any field. It saves money and time by synchronising data at specific locations and ensures that no duplicate data is present. In Looker Actions, there is a limit on updating end tools, but in Hightouch, we are free to update any field and can send data in batches, unlike in looker Actions. High touch directly integrates with LookML and Looker, and it benefits companies to connect directly with Looker and view their reports.

Auger.AI:

This Action also reduces the workload of each data scientist because anyone in a company can run and deploy a predictive model with a few clicks. To create an accurate predictive model, use this Action with any labeled dataset, such as:

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DataRobot:

This Action also reduces the workload of each data scientist because anyone in an organization can run and deploy a predictive model with a few clicks. Utilize this Action to:

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Airtable

Looker Airtable Action transfers data from Looker to your Airtable spreadsheets. Using this Action, you can create and update Airtable spreadsheets for a variety of purposes, including:

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  • Keeping track of any backend infrastructure issues as they arise.
  • Keeping a list of customers who have been affected by high-severity issues.

 What are the problems with Looker Data Actions?

Looker’s premium features created a revolution in Business Intelligence tools and have provided many solutions in BI. Every software has its drawbacks, and Looker is not exceptional, but its advantages make it one of the best tools in BI and have a strong premise.

Large data volumes can not be handled upto the mark by Looker Actions. Data differencing or diffing will not take place in Looker Actions. Diffing is a method used to check if there are any changes in data before sending it to another system or application. Looker’s Data modelling, unique coding language (Look ML), and data matching capabilities are constrained to use. Companies have to duplicate their data into LookML, and companies with native tools or current data models cannot transform their data.

Many companies rely on SQL to modify their data. LookML is partially built on SQL, and users are needed to learn an entirely new language. It is expensive and time-consuming for businesses that are not yet using Looker. There are also some effective and easy tools to transform data ex. DBT, which is fully developed on SQL and automatically updates models. Developers and engineers can quickly transform, orchestrate and model their data.

Developers and engineers can use it to orchestrate, transform, and model their dataLooker Actions lack batching capacity for many destinations. Looker Action will send all the records irrespective of their duplicates. If a massive amount of data is to transform, it may fail because of the rate limit issue.

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In the above blog post all the looker data actions are explained, you can select your interested action to perform  the business operations. Had any doubts, please drop your queries in the comments section, our experts will get back to you shortly.

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