On May 20, the 56th annual Norwegian Day Parade will march down Bay Ridge’s Fifth Avenue to commemorate the 1814 signing of Norway’s constitution. But an observer of the strip’s mix of Irish bars, Italian restaurants, and Muslim-owned businesses, might wonder why Brooklyn’s Norwegians chose this neighborhood in which to celebrate.

Reidun Thompson can explain. When she moved to Bay Ridge from southern Norway in 1962, the neighborhood was known as Little Norway, home to more than 50,000 Scandinavians and Scandinavian-Americans. The area had its own Norwegian-language newspaper and so many dining options that Eighth Avenue was called Lapskaus Boulevard, after a traditional Norse Stew.

These days, the few Viking sons and daughters that remain have but one way to get a Scandinavian home-cooking fix: the Danish Athletic Club, a nondescript, low-slung building at the center of an unlovely block of 65th Street. The stretch is littered with auto collision shops and bookended by Getty service stations.

“There are people who drive by for 20 years and never see this place,” Ms. Thompson, the manager of the club, said. The Swedish and Norwegians have their own social clubs nearby, but they all visit the Danish Athletic Club, because it is the only one that still serves food. The dining hall — which has the cozy, woodpaneled atmosphere of a Minnesota Lion’s Club — is open for business Wednesday through Sunday nights. A small, rotating menu is written on dryerase boards. Recurring specialties include karbonade kaker, finely ground meat patties seasoned with allspice and nutmeg, and served with fried onions and lingonberries; the large potato dumplings known as kumpa; herring in cream, and, yes, lapskaus. Less adventurous diners can opt for pot roast or liver and onions. A full meal, including soup or salad, and a variety of side dishes, costs $14.95.

On a recent rainy Friday evening, attendance was sparse. Severt Strom, the white-haired, Norway-born head of a local bridge club, was chatting with an old friend. A man and four women who have been eating at the club “for decades” sat at a round table beneath an oil portrait of then-Princess, now-Queen Margrethe II of Denmark.

“Sometimes we can have three people here. Sometimes we are full,” Ms. Thompson, a no-nonsense woman of abundant energy, said. “It’s hit and miss. I can never, ever figure them out. They just show up. They only make reservations on big days like Mother’s Day and Easter Sunday.”

At a nearby table, the club’s vice-president, Peter Berard, patiently sipped a cup of split-pea soup. “You came on an off night,” he said. “It’s usually pretty busy. The rain kept them away. With old people, if it rains or snows, they stay away.”

Mr. Berard, a retired newspaper pressman, has been vice-president for three years, despite the fact that his veins hold only Irish, German, and French blood. “It used to be ‘X’ amount of the membership had to be Danish,” Ms. Thompson explained. “Then it became just Scandinavian. I don’t know what percent is Scandinavian now, but it’s very small.”

The club was founded in 1892 in Red Hook by a group of Danish wrestling enthusiasts. It moved to its present location in the 1940s. Mr. Berard said membership, which once stood at 800, has fallen below 100, but a push is now under way to recruit new people. All comers, Scandinavian or not, will be considered.

Ms. Thompson herself only became a member in 1990, but has been waitressing at the club since the 1960s, pitching in when she wasn’t busy at the Atlantic Restaurant. The Atlantic was the last Scandinavian eatery on Eighth Avenue to close its doors. Ms. Thompson wanted to buy the business, but the owners sold it instead to a Chinese family, who converted it into the Wee Kee restaurant. Undaunted, she convinced the owners to keep a few of the classic dishes on the menu. Thus, for a few years, until it closed in the mid-1990s, Wee Kee was the only Chinese-Norwegian fusion restaurant in New York City.

When Ms. Thompson became manager of the Danish Athletic Club in 1992, she brought those recipes with her. (Having tasted karbonade kaker at both the Wee Kee and the club, this reporter can testify that nothing has been lost in the trip.) The food is prepared by a Puerto Rican chef so adept at his art that club members have nicknamed him Uola, a common Norwegian name.

Ms. Thompson said she is thinking of opening the place up for Sunday brunch. This will give her the opportunity to serve Scandinavian pancakes. Whether the locals all will turn out a hearty stack of the flat, square flapjacks, she does not know. “You know the Norwegians,” she said. “They always keep moving, they never stay in one place.”