Surströmming

So, surströmming is not the name of a place, but almost. Yesterday evening, my camping-ground neighbours, Åsa, Patrick and their young son Leo, shared pizza and beer with me, and asked if I had ever eaten Surströmming. I said I had heard of Surströmming from my previous hosts, but never had a chance to taste it. Patrick asked how I could hope to reach Umeå without having eaten Surströmming, in fact, how could one even cycle without knowing that taste? And Patrick and Åsa said, if you're still here tomorrow evening, we'll have a proper surströmming party, with all the paraphernalia - potato, dill, butter, cream, vodka, beer, and subsequent swim in the lake. Did I have a choice? I had to stay in Burträsk and enjoy the place during one idle day, reading and swimming.

Now, the legend has it that only people from Northern Sweden can bare the taste, and especially the smell of Surströmming, which is herring that has fermented for a long time in a sort of brine. It is supposed to be an acquired taste. My opinion is that it is excellent food precisely with all the paraphernalia - it is essentially circumstancial and local, you can only eat it outside, with tunnbröd (thin bread) and fresh beer, in the summer and by a Northern lake. Provided these conditions, surströmming is universally delicious.

The problem of the locality of food is also posed by other fish products such as Kalles Kaviar, a wonderful pink paste made of fish roe that is eaten on bread, especially at breakfast. Someone affirmed that it could be sold only in this country and nowhere else. Well, IKEA sells something very similar everywhere in the world. But I had never enjoyed it as much as I enjoy it here - back there it wasn't the true Kalles Kaviar experience.