Janteloven 1 - Rudrüd? Who do you think you are Kristin?

Photo and text from the National Geographic November 2003 issue

Fargo, the 1996 movie, was filled with quirky characters and lots of snow. The film got the snow right, but North Dakota's largest city has a personality all its own.

Get a taste of what awaits you in print from this compelling excerpt from the National Geographic November 2003 issue.

If you saw the movie Fargo, you remember the impossibly flat whiteness. But what you don't remember is Fargo itself, for not a frame was shot here. And so you may not know that Fargo is a city of 91,000 people with another 33,000 just across the Red River in Moorhead, Minnesota. Or that freight trains rumble and moan through the low-slung downtown day and night. Or that within one zip code, 58102, there is a medical center that broadcasts robotic surgeries, a historic Broadway being restored to former glory, and a library where young refugees from Bosnia, Sudan, and Somalia crowd around computer screens, catching up on news from home.

What Fargo did get right is the friendly tenacity of Fargoans, says Kristin Rudrüd, an actress who played the kidnapped wife in the film and who lives here with her ten-year-old daughter. "That spirit of pressing on, one foot in front of the other, with a good heart," is how Fargoans get through their winters, she says. "People seem to obey the Scandinavian concept of janteloven. It means, basically, 'Don't show off.' "