Swedish Diet and Markets, 1893
Nature has given Scandinavia a hard soil, and cold climate, and compelled the farmer to practice, in all things, the most rigid economy.
Location: Sweden
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Sweden and the Swedes by William Widgery Thomas, 1893.
Nature has given Scandinavia a hard soil, and cold climate, and compelled the farmer to practice, in all things, the most rigid economy.
In traveling in August, you will see little yellow bundles hanging upon the birch-trees in the fields. On closer inspection, you will find that these yellow bunches are little sheafs of the twigs of the birch-tree itself. They are cut off, bound up, hung until they are thoroughly dry, and then taken home as winter fodder for the sheep.
In the cold North, the heat of the sun is not sufficient to cure the hay. Everywhere throughout the grass-fields of Northern Scandinavia, you will see structures of poles that look like short sections of tall rail-fence. These are called häsjor. On these häsjor, the grass is laid up to dry, as fast as it is mowed, and thus the wind is made to help the sun in caring the hay-crop.
Indian corn never ripens anywhere on the Scandinavian Peninsula, and it is only in the Middle and Southern Provinces that wheat can be grown. Wheat bread is seldom seen, except in the cities and larger towns, and in the families of the wealthier classes.
Rye, barley, and oats, grow well, however, and rye bread forms the staff of life in Sweden, though, formerly, in hard seasons, straw and the inner bark of trees were sometimes ground up and mixed with the rye that made the Norseman's bread.
The Bread-Pole. Image by William Widgery Thomas.
The Swedish rye cake is hard and brittle as the toughest hard bread used on board our ships; but it is very wholesome, and, if you only have good teeth, you soon get quite fond of it, and frequently choose it in preference to bread made from wheat. This hard rye bread is to be found everywhere throughout Sweden, in city and country, at the King's table and in the lowliest peasant's hut. It usually appears in the form of huge circular disks, as big around as the wheel of a wheel-barrow, but sometimes as thin as a knife-blade.
These wheel cakes have a hole in the middle, and, among the peasantry, are strung on a pole, as a girl would string buttons on a knitting needle.
When the pole Is full, it is hung on the rafters overhead, and the bread broken off day by day as the household requires. Sometimes, entering the house of a peasant, you see half a dozen poles, each the size of a bean-pole, strung full with great disks of bread and hanging side by side close under the ceiling.
You may be certain that very little new bread is eaten by the rural population of Sweden. Many peasants bake bread but four times a year. A grand baking-time once in three months furnishes the family with bread enough to last until the next quarter comes round; and, certain am I,that if we could exchange our hot saleratus biscuit for the wholesome hard rye bread of Scandinavia, it would not only lighten the toil of many an overworked American woman, but prove a blessing to the digestion of all of us.
In the larger cities, families seldom buy flour or make bread. The bread is almost all baked at the bakers'. They sell not only the hard crackers but soft bread of wheat and rye in loaves, which run in size from the smallest roll to the bigness of a cord-wood stick.
The Swedish farmer is often a grazier as well, and in domestic economy the cattle occupy an important place. The Norseman is fond of milk in all the forms into which it can be turned or manufactured, although I suspect, if he has any preference, it is for the soured product.
Solid sour-milk, as firm and hard as jelly, is a leading article of diet in the home of every Swedish peasant. It is placed in the center of the table in a huge wooden trough. It is the only dish. The family and guests gather around the festive board, each armed with a big wooden spoon. Next, the housewife delicately sprinkles the creamy surface with brown sugar and ginger. Then, each one marks out in a V-shape what he considers about his fair proportion of the stiffened lacteal fluid, and in go the wooden spoons, all together, and very actively, till the trough is emptied.
I have often enjoyed such a meal, and often seen it accompanied by the most praiseworthy acts of self-denial and courtesy; but I am sorry to add that an American gentleman, who was once a fellow-traveler with me in the wilds of the North, occasionally evinced a reprehensible desire to remove the ancient landmarks, and commit a trespass on his neighbor's territory where the rich cream lay thickest.
Milk in this form is called fillebunke, and it is related that once a Swedish sailor, lying at the point of death in a hospital at Naples, and thinking of the home of his childhood, cried out in delirium: "Fillebunke! fillebunke! "
"Ah!" said his pious Italian watchers. "Hear! he is calling upon the patron saint of his country."
This happened to be the turning-point of the fever, and, from that hour, the sailor, who had been given up by the doctors, began to get well. "It is Sancta Fillebunka who has saved him," said the watchers. "What a powerful saint he must be, to be sure, who can thus tear a man from the very grasp of death!”'
So they hastened to enroll this guardian angel of the Swede among their own divinities, and to this day, so the story runs, the simple Neapolitans, when sickness is upon them, cry: “Sancta Fillebunka! Sancta Fillebunka! ora pro nobis!''
Which, rendered into plain English, is: "Oh, Saint Bonny-clabber! Oh, Saint Bonny-clabber! pray for us!"
A pretty sight is the Swedish village-market. Should you be up betimes on a market-day, and drive to the outskirts of the "by," you will see the peasant girls all trooping toward the town. All have a silk kerchief neatly tied about their blonde heads, and all are barefooted. They all have shoes, to be sure, but these they carry in their hands and not till they get to the borders of the town do they sit down and put on those precious shoes, which have cost them so large a part of their slender wages.
Returning to the town, we find the large open square filled with long lines of rude country wagons. From one end of these narrow carts, the farmers are selling vegetables and fruit; while, at the other, their little horses are munching dinner from a truss of hay.
The market-place is lined with booths, doing a brisk business in candy and toys, gingerbread and gimcracks. Crowds of Swedish peasants in their bright costumes stroll through the market, chaffering, chatting, and laughing along the booths and wagons. While, upon a platform of boards, in a field hard by, the lads and lassies dance all day long to the music of a violin and accordion. And they dance with so much spirit and vigor—the lassies especially—that you can scarce believe they are the same prudent girls who were so careful not to wear out their shoes in the morning.
Apropos the accordion, it may be mentioned that, of all musical instruments, it is the one that country swains delight most to perform upon. Its long-drawn-out and plaintive notes are supposed also to exercise the most enticing power over the rustic and lowly beauties of Sweden. Piglock—the house-maid's lure—it is often jokingly called by the Swedish gentry.
Thomas, William Widgery. Sweden and the Swedes. Rand, McNally & Company, 1893.
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