Swedish Language Blog

As a Swede living abroad, the monthly trip to IKEA is big treat. Not so much for the flat packs and the tea candles, but more so for the mouth watering food department. Lingonberry jam, pickled herring, knäckebröd, Daim cake… Well, you probably all know what it’s like. Or, what it WAS like, I should say. Because over the past years, IKEA have slowly but steadily changed the stock from familiar Swedish meatballs-sausages-cookies-herring-bread-coffee-brands to IKEA’s own brand IKEA Food. Pretty much all food you buy in IKEA nowadays are IKEA Food labelled or will be in the near future, and this makes the expat in me quite sad. A bit pathetic, I know. But there was something quite fulfilling about seeing the familiar brands of meatballs-sausagge-cookies-herring-bread-coffee on our kitchen shelves. Not to mention, the quality of it the ‘proper’ stuff.  It’s of course rather obvious why IKEA is doing this and understandable as well, I suppose. But it doesn’t change the fact that I still want my Leksand’s Knäckebröd and my Pågen’s Hönökaka.

One good thing being a Swede living in the UK is Totally Swedish. It’s a Swedish shop based in London which has become so popular it is now a chain (read more here!). The deliver all over the UK for a reasonable price and it’s like Christmas Eve all over when the delivery guys knock on the door. I have a few friends in USA who use Sweden’s Best  for their Swedish food fix and someone once recommended Sverige Online for deliveries worldwide.

Where do you people turn when you need a dose of Sweden? And what are your absolute favourites that you would happily pay loads for in your local supermarket?

My top 5 Swedish foods are the following tasty five:

*Almond Cake made from the chocolate brand Daim. Cake heaven.
*Falukorv, my favourite a sausage that you must and should eat with…
*…Snabbmakaroner, the pasta of all pastas – and they are ready in only three minutes!
*Hönökaka, a sweet bread from the west coast of Sweden.
*Leksands knäckebröd, read Katjas post about this deliscios type of bread here!

It’s August. You knew that though. What you might not have known though is that August is also the month for crayfish parties throughout Sweden (and really wherever I find myself in the US).

Crayfish are essentially tiny little lobsters. A form of shellfish that is common in Cajun culture. In Swedish culture though, the crayfish is cooked quite differently. And by differently I mean boiled in salt water with dill. And that’s it. They are delicious.

Eating a crayfish is a messy affair. You’ll want to start by letting the crayfish cool. Obviously. Obviously because when you pick up your first crayfish you need to unfold the thing and suck out all of the juices. No one likes sucking boiling crayfish juice into their mouths.  Once you’ve sucked the dill and crayfish juice out, it’s time to pop the tail off and eat the meat.  There’s not a lot in there, but it’s worth it.  Some people, and by some people I mean my very Swedish father, eat all the disgusting crayfish excrement within which includes everything from eggs to I-don’t-want-to-know-what. Once the tail has been dissected, it’s time to crack open the claws. Which are even smaller than the tails. There is even less meat here, but it adds to the whole experience of eating crayfish.

Along with the crayfish, you’ll probably want to serve potatoes, preferably färskpotatis which are known as new potatoes in English. You’ll also need some knäckebröd, some cheese, some salad, and of course – cheese pie. Specifically Västerbottenpaj.

Of course, no Swedish tradition is complete without alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol. Namely snaps – akvavit.  Shots of akvavit generally go hand in hand with the crayfish.  And over the course of the evening, those shots are accompanied by plenty of drinking songs.

Below you’ll find a YouTube clip with lyrics. And of course, you can find the lyrics to Helan Går here on Transparent’s blog as well.

All this tends to be done outdoors. Or at least is attempted outdoors. The weather is notoriously fickle in August in Sweden.  Along with the food, snaps, and singing, people tend to wear bibs (remember that sucking? It gets messy), and ridiculous looking conical party hats.  If you can work in a crayfish motif as often as possible, all the better.

Crayfish parties are traditionally held in August due to laws that limited crayfish fishing to the late summer months. Like August.  Of course, now you can find frozen crayfish on sale just about all year round coming from China and Turkey, but that doesn’t stop the Swedes from doing the majority of their crayfish consumption in August. Traditions die hard. 

If you have been to Sweden you might have noticed in restaurants or in supermarkets, how many choices there are for vegetarians, not only vegetarians but vegans, people who don’t tolerant milk or gluten, people who don’t eat pork etc. etc. There are endless substitutes, tofu, soja protein, vegetables, beans, Quorn and many other options for people who have chosen to eat somewhat different food from the majority of society.

Whatever the reasons, passion for animals, health reasons, religious reasons, a medical condition, political statement or just because, the fact that people no longer eat exactly the same things in Sweden has allowed the Swedish food market and society develop enormously.

In foods stores, restaurants, schools, workplaces, hospitals and for meetings you can order, buy and receive these different food choices. Even on airplanes you can order for example “lacto-vegetarian food” (a person not eating meat, fish, or egg but does eat dairy products). A huge variety of terminology has developed as well as the products you can find in Sweden and Swedish everyday life.

There are lots of animal rights demonstrations in Sweden; I think that a lot of people are no longer surprised by the fact that people are taking stances for what they believe in. Demonstrating against fur, mink farm etc.

In different parts of Europe there are a lot of Jews and you can see posters about kosher food, although in Sweden Kosha food isn’t that common, at least you don’t see posters in bus and train stations like in some other countries.

From kindergarden age and up, you see kids line up together at lunch time to get their food. Seeing one or two of your classmates getting different food is a surprise, and at the age of 4 or 5 you might not be able to explain to everybody why you are eating different food from everybody else. But around the age of 11 or 12 or so discussions start taking place in the cafeteria. “Why do you eat different food from us?” usually starts conversations. And later on those discussions progress to ethical and moral debates. That different food choices are discussed openly is something relatively new.  Before children accepted that ‘she can’t eat pork’, but the reasons were not gone into.

In junior high school in a class of about 25 students it is not uncommon that there are about 2 or 3 vegetarians (1 vegan) in that class. 1 person who doesn’t eat pork, 1 person who doesn’t eat gluten and a couple of people who are intolerant of milk.

Is it common in your country that people eat slightly different food? In food stores have you noticed a lot of substitutes recently?

And what do you think about it?