In the fall in Sweden a lot of people love to take long walk out in the forest (skog). Looking for mushrooms, picking berries or just to be surrounded by beautiful leaves. Often during those long walks (a least in the north of Sweden) people can spot wild bears or elk/ moose  (Älg ). If there is a bear (Björn) in a certain area word will get around pretty quickly about it.

In the areas where there are a lot of berries (bär),  it is a yearly ritual to go out and pick tens of liters of blueberries (blåbär) or Lingon berries (Lingonbär). Different months have different berries to pick. Right after the summer (the first weeks of August) people pick blueberries. After that, mostly all through September and some of October, Lingon berries are picked.

Mushrooms (Svamp) are also a serious business. When it comes to good spots people have their own that they most likely have used for years. These spots have to be kept secret so that nobody come and picks them clean. A good berry or mushroom spot is seen as a gold mine, and thus treasured as one. If you are just walking past a berry picker you can very easily be given suspicious looks, just because the people are worried about you picking what they see as “their” berries. Shortly said people can get very territorial about their favorite picking spots.

Once the berries and mushrooms have been picked they have to be taken care of. A lot of weekends in the fall are spent sorting and cleaning berries carefully making jam (sylt), freezing or drying mushrooms and making late night sandwiches with sautéed mushrooms on top.

Lingon berry jam is a very commonly used jam in Sweden, used with meat, potatoes, in porridge or on pancakes, substituting accompaniments like ketchup, salsa and even sweet jams.

Even school time is designated to berry picking. Some schools have as a yearly tradition that their students go and pick Lingon berries that they then get as homework to clean and then bring back to school for the kitchen staff to make jam out of. The students and teachers then get to eat the jam that they have made themselves during the school year.

Vocabulary:

Sylt = Jam

Lingon bär = Lingon Berries

Blåbär = Blueberries

Svamp = Mushrooms

Skog = forest

Älg = Elk

Björn = Bear