49 Fun Facts About Scandinavian Food

Surströmming is a fermented version of which fish?

Baltic herring. The small strömming is caught before it spawns and salted so lightly that it ferments instead of rotting; the gas goes on building until the tins bulge.

Why did Sweden once ban surströmming sales before late summer?

To keep unripe fish out. Tins had been reaching shops before the fish had fermented, so a law fixed the first day of sale; it lapsed in 1998, yet the tins are still held back for a late-summer 'premiere'.

Lutefisk is dried whitefish cured in what?

Lye. It was first made from birch ash, and the soaked fish is so caustic that it must sit in fresh water for days before it can be cooked.

Which fish is most commonly used for lutefisk?

Cod. It starts as stockfish, cod dried hard on outdoor racks; days of soaking are what turn it soft and jelly-like again.

Smørrebrød is usually built on which bread?

Rugbrød. Slices of the dark rye were a plain packed lunch until Danish kitchens of the 1880s began piling them high with roast pork, fish and liver pâté.

What does 'smørrebrød' literally mean?

Butter and bread. Swedish is odder: its word for the same open sandwich, smörgås, joins 'butter' and 'goose', the goose being a lump of butter that floats up in the churn.

Swedish lussekatter, saffron buns curled into an S, are baked for which winter feast?

St Lucia's Day. On 13 December a girl crowned with candles leads a white-robed procession, and the saffron buns are handed round with coffee.

Gravlax is traditionally served with hovmästarsås, a sweet sauce built on which condiment?

Mustard. Norwegians simply call it sennepssaus, 'mustard sauce'; it is spooned over salmon that has been cured, never cooked, under salt and sugar.

The 'grav' in gravlax refers to what medieval practice?

Burying the fish in sand. Medieval fishermen salted their salmon and left it to ferment lightly above the high-tide line; today's version is only cured, never buried.

Swedish meatballs are traditionally served with jam made from which berry?

Lingonberry. Swedes treat the tart jam as an all-purpose relish, spooning it over black pudding, fried liver and even porridge as well.

About how many meatballs a year was IKEA selling by 2022?

1 billion. Meatballs reached the menu only in the mid-1980s, when IKEA overhauled its ailing restaurants on its founder's conviction that shoppers with full stomachs buy more furniture.

In 2018, Sweden's official Twitter account claimed meatballs originated where?

Turkey. The tweet said King Charles XII brought the recipe home from exile in the early 1700s; a leading Swedish food historian called the story fabricated.

What colour is the smooth outer layer of a traditional Swedish princess cake?

Green. The cookbook that carried the recipe called it plain 'green cake'; its author taught three Swedish princesses, and their fondness for it is said to have given the cake its royal name.

Thursday pea soup in Sweden is said to date from when Friday was what?

Fast day. With meat off the table on Fridays, Catholic households are said to have filled up on pea soup and pork the day before, and the habit outlived the Reformation.

In Sweden, Thursday's pea soup is traditionally followed by which dessert?

Pancakes with jam. The thin pancakes joined the soup later, and the pair still turns up in school canteens and army mess halls every Thursday.

Swedish 'ansjovis', baked into Jansson's temptation, are really which small fish, cured with spices?

Sprats. Swedes have sold spice-cured sprats as 'ansjovis' since the 1800s, so English versions of the recipe keep calling, wrongly, for anchovies.

Smörgåsbord won American fans when Sweden's pavilion served it at the 1939 World's Fair in which city?

New York. The pavilion's Three Crowns Restaurant made the buffet famous; at home it had begun as a side table of snacks taken with schnapps before dinner.

What is the Swedish Christmas buffet called?

Julbord. It is a smörgåsbord eaten in courses, cold fish first, built around a Christmas ham that is boiled, then glazed with egg and breadcrumbs.

Why was Swedish crispbread traditionally baked as a round with a hole in the middle?

To hang it on poles. Households baked only twice a year, so the rounds were threaded on long poles under the ceiling, where they dried and kept for months.

What is the Swedish coffee-and-cake break called?

Fika. Sweden banned coffee five times between 1756 and the early 1800s; today many Swedish firms make the fika break mandatory.

Swedes mark Kanelbullens dag each 4 October with cinnamon rolls whose dough is also spiced with what?

Cardamom. It is what sets the Swedish roll apart; the day itself was invented in 1999 by Sweden's Home Baking Council to keep people baking at home.

A semla is a soft wheat bun filled with whipped cream and what?

Almond paste. Finns often swap it for jam, so their bakeries sell both kinds and the country argues every year over which filling is the real one.

Semlor are traditionally associated with which day?

Shrove Tuesday. It was the last rich treat before Lent; legend has it that King Adolf Frederick died in 1771 after a feast that ended with 14 of them.

In which month are Swedish crayfish parties traditionally held?

August. A law against overfishing once held the crayfish season back until then, so the first catch became a party, eaten outdoors under paper moon lanterns.

Under EU rules, akvavit's dominant flavour must come from caraway and/or which seed?

Dill. Norway's Linie aquavit goes a step further for its flavour: the oak casks are shipped to Australia and back across the equator before bottling.

What is the best-known Swedish drinking song sung before a shot of akvavit?

Helan Går. The title means 'the whole goes down', an order to drain the first glass; Sweden's 1957 world-champion ice hockey team sang it in place of the anthem.

What do Danes call the pastry the rest of the world knows as 'Danish'?

Wienerbrød. It means 'Vienna bread', because the layered dough reached Danish bakers from Austria in the mid-1800s; in Vienna the same pastry is called a Kopenhagener.

Flæskesteg, a Danish national dish, is roast pork always served with what?

It is the traditional Christmas Eve dinner, with boiled and caramelised potatoes.

Rødgrød med fløde, the Danish dessert served with cream, is a thickened pudding of what?

Stewed berries. Red ones such as strawberries and redcurrants are cooked and thickened, and Danes have used the dish's name to test foreigners' pronunciation since the early 1900s.

Danish æbleskiver, whose name means 'apple slices', are today what kind of Christmas treat?

Round pancake puffs. The first ones really were pieces of apple fried in batter; today the batter is cooked on its own in a pan of round hollows.

What prize traditionally goes to whoever finds the whole almond in Danish risalamande?

A marzipan pig. The pudding's name is mock French for 'rice with almonds', yet the dish is wholly Danish and only became a Christmas fixture after the Second World War.

What is the Danish hot-dog stand called?

Pølsevogn. It means 'sausage wagon', and many really are on wheels: the vendor, the pølsemand, tows the whole stand home at closing time.

Which Danish restaurant was named the world's best five times between 2010 and 2021?

Noma. The name runs together nordisk and mad, 'Nordic food', and its kitchen built menus from foraged herbs, seaweeds and long ferments.

Who co-founded René Redzepi's famous restaurant in 2003?

Claus Meyer. A year after they opened, he gathered chefs from across the Nordic countries to sign a manifesto for cooking with local, seasonal produce.

The 2004 New Nordic Cuisine manifesto was drawn up in which capital?

Copenhagen. Twelve chefs from across the Nordic countries signed it at a symposium there, pledging purity, freshness and simplicity, and the Nordic governments then backed the idea with a food programme of their own.

Stegt flæsk, voted Denmark's national dish in 2014, is crisp fried pork with potatoes and which sauce?

Parsley sauce. The plain plate of pork, potatoes and white persillesovs took over 44% of the public vote, beating meatballs and other classics.

Brunost gets its brown colour and sweet taste from what?

Caramelised milk sugars. Whey is boiled down until its lactose browns, so by international definitions brunost is not a true cheese at all, just what cheesemaking leaves behind.

Which kitchen tool did Norwegian inventor Thor Bjørklund patent in 1925, modelled on a carpenter's plane?

The cheese slicer. It shaves thin, even curls off a block, which is exactly how Norwegians eat their sweet brown brunost on bread and waffles.

Fårikål, Norway's national dish, combines mutton with which vegetable?

Cabbage. The name says it, får i kål, 'mutton in cabbage'; when a minister ran a contest in 2014 to pick a new national dish, Norwegians simply chose it again.

Norway's Fårikål Feast Day falls on the last Thursday of which month, at the height of the lamb season?

September. Lambs spend the summer on rough open pasture and are slaughtered in autumn, so that is when fresh meat for the long-simmered stew reaches the shops.

Norwegian rakfisk is made by fermenting which fish?

Trout or char. The gutted freshwater fish is salted so lightly that it ferments for months in its own brine, then is eaten uncooked on flatbread with sour cream.

Pinnekjøtt, Norway's Christmas dish of salted, dried lamb ribs, is traditionally steamed over a rack of what?

Birch sticks. They hold the ribs above the water so the meat steams; by one account these pinner gave the dish its name, by another the word means the ribs themselves.

Smalahove, a western Norwegian dish traditionally eaten before Christmas, is made from what?

A sheep's head. It is singed over an open flame, split in two, salted and often smoked, then boiled until the meat loosens; the eyes are left in.

Norway's salmon farmers opened a vast new market in the 1980s by persuading which country to eat salmon raw?

Japan. Sushi chefs there had never served salmon raw, for fear of parasites in wild Pacific fish, until Norway arrived with a glut of farmed Atlantic salmon to sell.

Hákarl, Iceland's fermented national dish, is made from which animal?

Greenland shark. Its fresh flesh is loaded with urea and unfit to eat, so the meat is buried to ferment for weeks and then hung to dry for months.

Which thick cultured dairy food, made in Iceland since Viking times, is now sold worldwide like yogurt?

Skyr. Shoppers take it for yogurt, but cheesemakers class it as a fresh cheese, and its roots go back to Viking-age Norway.

What does salmiakki, the black sweet that Finns eat by the bagful, taste of?

Salty liquorice. The salt is ammonium chloride, long used in cough medicine, and the sweet is thought to have begun as a pharmacist's pastille.

What does the Swedish term husmanskost describe?

Everyday home cooking. Plain farmhouse fare such as pea soup, meatballs and fried hash is now a point of pride, with its own section on Swedish restaurant menus.

At Swedish midsummer, new potatoes are traditionally served with what?

Pickled herring. Several kinds are set out at once with chives and soured cream, schnapps is poured, and the summer's first strawberries arrive on a cake for dessert.