Why Swedes do Christmas best
Forget turkey, sprouts and a stuffy lunch. In Sweden Christmas is a riotous affair, featuring silly drinking songs, shots of aquavit and a smörgåsbord of smoked reindeer and pickled herrings
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12:00PM GMT 15 Dec 2014
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On December 24 in Sweden, Advent candles flicker from every window, paper stars flutter from door frames and snow envelops the streets like the thick, even icing on a Christmas cake.
All is silent. Or is it? If you stop for a moment, you may hear singing – and perhaps a muffled clinking – drifting from a nearby house.
A carol? Not quite. It’s a hymn to drinking shots and it goes like this: “Doooown in one/ Sing 'hup-de-la-la-la-loo-lah-lay’, down it/ Sing 'hup-de-la-la-lah-lay’/ And whoever doesn’t down it in one go, won’t get the other half either…”
Swedish Christmas appears cosy and twinkly but it can be a raucous affair. A chorus of Helan Går – literally, “neck the first drink” – signals the start of aquavit shots, endless “skåls!” and a Viking feast of epic proportions.
The normally reserved Swedes adore a silly drinking song, or “snapsvisa”. So beloved is Helan Går, that when Sweden won the Ice Hockey World Championship in 1957, the team sang it on the podium instead of the national anthem.
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By nightfall on the 24th, the Systembolaget (those rather grim, state-run booze shops) have been stripped bare: the aquavit is chilled, the glögg warmed.
The julbord – a seasonal take on the smörgåsbord – buckles under the weight of herring pickled with mustard, schnapps, onion, sour cream and caviar, as well as gravad lax, smoked reindeer, meatballs, sausages, a side of baked ham, pâtés, lutefisk (an air-dried or salted white fish), and much more. Food is laid out buffet-style, divided into hot and cold tables, allowing guests to graze for hours, punctuated by toasts and choruses of “down in one”.
The toasts aren’t just to be heard in Sweden: they’re also part of the celebrations at my family’s home in Hampshire on Christmas Eve. My Stockholm-born mother Elisabet (Lisa, to all apart from her late parents) has made sure we stay in touch with Scandinavian traditions – and the most important of these is the Christmas Eve spread.
Olivia warming up the meatballs, wearing the Lucia candle crown, traditional on December 13th
And this December, I have decided to bring a piece of Sweden to my flat in Brixton, too, by creating a julbord for friends. My edited version of the Christmas extravaganza usually includes a variety of pickled fish and cured salmon, served with new potatoes and dill, spiced red cabbage and hard-boiled eggs topped with Arctic caviar. And lots of aquavit, naturally.
The main event is always Jansson’s Temptation, said to have been named after Pelle Janzon, a greedy singer of the early 1900s. It’s similar to a dauphinoise, but made using matchstick potatoes and studded with Swedish “anchovies”. These are actually sprats, pickled in salt, sugar, allspice and cloves. When the dish is baked on a low heat for a long time, the breadcrumbed top crisps up, while the potatoes become meltingly soft and the sprats dissolve into the cream to make a deliciously salty sauce.
But before cooking can begin, ingredients must be sourced. With all things Scandinavian being so fashionable (food, furniture, thrillers, chunky jumpers…), getting hold of the basics for a Swedish celebration is straightforward. M & S carries a good gravad lax along with the essential mustard and dill sauce; Waitrose stocks a selection of rollmops and Lidl is even offering up smoked, cured reindeer steak this year.
But the spiced sprats essential for the Jansson’s and the elderflower aquavit necessary for a proper Swedish party remain a rarity, so I head to the Totally Swedish in Marylebone, London. The place is packed with blondes, including one who looked fresh off the Victoria’s Secret catwalk.
If you’re pressed for time, you can buy bags of meatballs, jars of the lingonberry sauce they’re served with and pick up jars of herring ready-pickled and flavoured. Do I cheat? A bit – marinating a side of salmon and chopping a mountain of potatoes into matchsticks is quite exhausting enough. I learnt everything I know about Swedish food from my mother — and she also thinks life is too short to make a million meatballs.
Some of the Christmas spread, including Jansson's Temptation, reindeer, herring and gravad lax
It used to be even harder. When Ikea opened in the UK in 1987 we were able to source basics there while my grandfather posted more unusual Nordic delicacies to us. Throughout December a succession of packages from Stockholm would arrive containing carefully-labelled Tupperware, filled with home-cured herring.
Adults released elderflower aquavit from layers of bubble wrap, while my brothers and sister and I received boxes of Marabou chocolate and wooden gnomes with cotton-wool beards, sometimes perched on little logs. Swedes – I don’t think my grandparents were the only ones – seem to have a weakness for Christmas gnome tableaux. I later learnt to appreciate the liquor, too – my brothers more so, cheerfully ignoring my mother’s pleas to sip, not neck. “It’s traditional – listen to the song!”
Much of Scandinavian winter food is pickled, smoked or cured so it can withstand a North Sea crossing pretty well. But there were hiccups. I pity the postman who delivered a reeking gravlax to us in 1988.
For my London celebrations, I prepare my own salmon a few days in advance, according to my mother’s recipe: combine two parts sugar to one part salt, add crushed white and black pepper and handfuls of fresh dill. Then pack it round the fish, wrap, weigh down, put in the fridge and turn after 24 hours.
There are variations on the marinade. I call chef Niklas Ekstedt, who is running a Christmas pop-up at the National Archive in Stockholm, for some tips. He tells me he adds grated beetroot during the curing process, which adds an earthy flavour and an interesting purple tint to the flesh. He also recommends jazzing up the sugar and salt mix with crushed coriander and fennel seeds.
TV chef Leila Lindholm has ideas, too, including the addition of warmed honey and curry powder to herrings and a dash of espresso to the mustard sauce served with the gravad lax. I decide, on reflection, that it is probably safer to stick to my mother’s instructions.
After an eternity of chopping, marinating, and braising, my feast is ready. The Advent candles are flickering; the table is complete with embroidered tablecloth and gnomes borrowed from my godmother – and I am badly in need of a schnapps or three.
My boyfriend, three friends and I begin with crisp bread and cheese, gravad lax and pickled herrings, washed down with elderflower aquavit. “Drinking shots with your starter seems an odd idea – but somehow it really works with the richness of the fish,” says Jonny. Joe works his way through almost the whole plate of reindeer while Laura tucks into the mustard herring. “It all tastes so much lighter than turkey and all the trimmings,” say the girls. I decide not to mention the litre of cream that I’d poured into the Jansson’s.
I also elect not to tell Joe about the radioactive reindeer. The meat, now increasingly popular, became a rarity for many years after the nuclear explosion at Chernobyl in 1986, which irradiated the reindeer of northern Sweden. All that remains is to introduce my friends to the delights of the Swedish sing song. Skål!
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