“What we discard is often good for us, and ordinary things can be life-saving”.
I am sitting cross-legged on a wooden bench, holding my notepad close to my heart. I’ve been to a few unusual philosophy classes, and this feels like one of them. There’s sunshine, and an intense breeze coming from the sea just a few metres away.
I’m on the island of Vrångö, a tiny but breathtaking fraction of the 30,000 islands scattered all around Sweden. The lukewarm May sun is about to set, and its rays are reflected on the calm sea, bouncing off millennia-old, smooth rocks in the shape of round hills.
It’s not a philosophy professor talking, and Plato is not the matter at hand. Holding a silver plate full of seaweed of all shapes and colours – from rubbery emerald green, to glossy deep purple, and ribbed matte black – is Karolina Martinson. She is also known by her company’s alias ‘Algblomman’, meaning ‘seaweed bloom’ in Swedish.
‘Seaweed safaris’ on Swedish islands
For islanders across Sweden, fish and seafood are embedded in their diet as much as in their culture. Midsummer celebrations take the shape of a crayfish boil enjoyed by family and friends around a bonfire. Pickled fish and salmon roe spread are synonymous with breakfast.
But as the marine fish population dwindles due to climate change and water pollution (particularly felt across the Baltic and North Sea), people like Karolina have started looking for their next meal closer to shore.
“You put on a wetsuit, grab your clipping tools and your net, and go harvesting in a kayak”, is how Karolina describes the ‘seaweed safaris’ she leads in Vrångö and neighbouring island Styrsö, where she lives. Guests are taught how to find and forage the best seaweed for their supper, and put together a delicious seaweed-based meal at the end.
It’s not the first time I’ve come across the concept. In my native Sicily, the jewel in the crown of the Italian peninsula, adapting to what the sea gives you has been commonplace for millennia. One of my fondest childhood memories is eating crunchy whitebait fritters, made with fish so tiny and useless that fishermen gave them away for free after finding them at the bottom of the valuable catch.
About 2,300 km away from my Mediterranean home, Vrångö island soon becomes the unlikely link between my passion for food and the ancestral ways connected to island nourishment I have forgotten after so many years on dry, urbanised land.
Harvesting seaweed is nothing new – it’s about restoring our ancestral diets
Karolina’s devotion to interconnectedness is something the wider island reflects. Vrångö is home to 241 people and is defined by a strong sense of community.
I learn this on day one, when the local restaurant owners, Jennie and Andreas Wijk, deliver a breakfast basket containing fresh fruit, cheese, and bread they baked just around the corner to my harbour-view room. But no seaweed (yet).
Originally from mainland Sweden, Karolina remembers asking locals if they had any traditional ways to eat seaweed in the archipelago when she moved 25 years ago.
“Eating seaweed? It’s never gotten that bad”, was their response, to Karolina’s amusement and disappointment.
“They considered seaweed garbage, something smelly and slimy that caused trouble to their boats, and had to be rid from the shore,” she explains.
Just like in Sicily, islanders used seaweed for its nutrients, feeding it to cattle and enriching the soil with it. Eating it was a lost tradition that belonged to their prehistoric ancestors, as Karolina’s decade-long research revealed.
Sugar kelp, Irish moss, sea lettuce, and mermaid’s necklace are only a few of the varieties she displays on the plate. Some are caught in the depths, some grow close to shore, she explains, but all make for delicious food, rich in nutrients – from dessert when candied, to salty, crisp-like snacks when deep-fried.
No one was paying much attention to seaweed when Karolina started, and this spurred her on, something of a thread in her life, as she acknowledges.
“Before I got into cooking seaweed and researching it, I was an artist working with upcycled materials. Then, I worked with social enterprises, helping women in jail, and people with mental illnesses, among others”.
“So the connecting thread of my life has been looking at what gets thrown away – it can be food, it can be things, sadly, it can be people. And I want to lift them up, avenge them.”
Summer like a Swede with a kräftskiva and a whole lot of fika
Memories of May Day celebrations at home slowly start to surface as Andreas Wijk drops crayfish after scarlet crayfish into a gurgling pot, letting off dill and beer-flavoured steam.
Grilled, not steamed, may be my seafood cooking of choice, but though our methods may differ, the atmosphere surrounding the crayfish feast is something anchored strongly to memories of growing up watching my uncle cook fresh fish.
Soon after the plates are set, a bottle of bubbly is popped, and everyone prepares to stack their silver trays with a bounty of seafood – freshly-cooked crayfish, smoked shrimps, and roe dips and dill aplenty. The bubbly flows, and conversation (and songs) come naturally.
The backdrop to this festive occasion is the gorgeous harbour at Jennie and Andreas’ restaurant, Hamnkrogen Lotsen. The name is a direct link to a pirate who was particularly prolific in the archipelago and happens to be related to the Wijks.
My skin still glowing with a sun tan, and my mind pleasantly cast back to a floating sauna, I eventually go back to mainland Sweden. Sitting in the quaint town of Alingsås on a muggy afternoon, I already miss island life. But, to my surprise, the connections to my native home don’t end in Vrångö.
Alingsås has gotten Sweden talking since the 1800s, as the birthplace of fika. A quintessentially Swedish custom, the ingredients to fika are as follows: a hot drink, a small bite (preferably sweet), a companion for conversation, and sitting down.
Once a coffee break enjoyed by women working at the mill, fika is now something every single household in the country does. “It is very democratic”, explains Fika tour guide Kersti Westin. “From the Swedish Royals, to the lowest-earning worker, everyone does fika.”
To other countries in which coffee culture doesn’t come naturally, this may sound like a shocking custom, but I fully get it. The Italian way, knocking back espressos at the local bar, is also a similar excuse for a chat with a coworker, friend, or family member.
“It’s time set aside during the day to check in with one another. No phone, no coffee on the go. You share the bitterness of life, but also the sweetness”, Kersti smiles as we walk into Viola Cafe, about to savour their award-winning Silvia cake.
Four stops later in the fika tour, I am more than just a hopeless romantic, reminiscing about my roots. I am a fika convert, and I can’t wait to go back to my adopted home in the UK and mix a taste of Swedish fika tradition with Sicilian coffee – a last, sweet reminder of home.
The writer was a guest of Intrepid, which offers a Taste of Scandinavia trip (7 days), or a 15-day Scandinavian Explorer covering Norway, Sweden, and Finland.
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