Paul Connolly, right, gets his first smell of surströmming in 2022.
Paul Connolly, born in London, lives in Skellefteå:
All my Swedish friends claim to love surströmming. I know it's not easy to provoke most Norrlanders into an open disagreement, but my friends' unanimity on their love for fermented herring is absolute. I find it quite touching.
But when it comes to other aspects of northern Swedish culture, my friends are usually a little more comfortable deviating from the norm.
Ice swimming? "F**k off, I'm not getting in there - that water's freezing!"
Sharing the bill at a bar or restaurant? "Sure, I don't mind if you pay for the whole thing. Bye!"
But suggesting to a Skelleftebo that they might dislike surströmming is unthinkable. Even under duress, being held at gunpoint, a northern Swede would refuse to denounce their beloved, pungent fish delicacy.
Such devotion to surströmming would suggest that every August, when it's official fermented herring premiere ('surströmmingspremiär'), my friends sit at home guzzling tin after tin of the stuff.
Instead, the "fish" (Is it actually still a fish by now? Surely, after at least six months in the tin, it has evolved into another, altogether more unholy, lifeform), is only consumed in a kind of ceremony of the wrong.
Some can't get enough of the fermented fish.
First, some poor soul, probably an older Swede who has totally lost their sense of smell (and most of their nasal hair) after years of surströmming tin-opening, has to go outside to puncture the tin, which is sometimes so bloated by the demonic gases inside it resembles a football.
Surely, the fact that you must never open a tin of this filthy sludge inside for fear of rendering your home forever uninhabitable is a tiny sign that it might not taste that great.
Then, back inside the house, using a method that closely resembles delicate brain surgery, my pals painstakingly hide a microscopic speck of fish under an avalanche of potato and onions on a piece of tunnbröd.
How can they taste the surströmming under all that other stuff?
The fine art of burying the surströmming.
If they truly adored the taste, they'd be digging into it directly from the can, just like the way Winnie the Pooh enthusiastically plunges his paws into a big jar of honey.
I'm not really sure that it is about the taste - as Akvelina says, it's more about the ritual and the cultural significance.
Surströmming is a proud part of northern Swedish heritage, and a bloody good excuse to get together with friends and family and to drink lots of aquavit.
After all, if you drink enough aquavit it can burn away the taste and smell of pretty much anything - even surströmming.
Akvelina Bergsten, Skellefteå born and bred:
Akvelina Bergsten
I get that surströmming most likely sounds awful to anyone who hasn't grown up around it. I mean, it is fermented fish. It smells like death. No, scratch that, it smells even worse.
But, when I get a whiff of that horrid stink, it brings back memories. I remember what it was like back when I was a small child being given that awful old-people candy by my dad's aunt. Running around on the green fields with my sister. Counting the dots on the back of a ladybug to "find out how old it is". Singing "små grodorna" around a midsummer pole.
I remember Swedish summers in the countryside as a child. Because that's all surströmming is to me. It's memories. It's tradition.
I'm trying not to sound too poetic, but surströmming really feels like a core part of my "Swedishness". (It sounds awful to say that fermented fish feels like the basis of my whole nationality).
And it's not just tradition for me, and not just a part of my nationality; it has been a part of Swedish culture for maybe 500 years.
There's nothing I can say to Paul's claims about it being smelly because it is. It just is. But I think he misses the point.
But not everyone loves surströmming.
When Swedes say they like surströmming, I think they like the memories, the community, the belonging. It is a ritual, a time to reunite with family members you almost never see otherwise, a time to, like Paul so eloquently put it, "Drink lots of aquavit".
And also, it doesn't taste bad. It just tastes like salt. It's basically potato, butter, some other toppings of your own choosing, and some salt (OK, it's fermented fish – just don't think about it too much) on a piece of bread. Don't be so dramatic.
I think surströmming could be a great introduction for newcomers to the more unexplored parts of Swedish society.
To any newcomer scared of the surströmmingspremiär today, I have three suggestions
- Let a trusted Swede guide you through it. And do make sure they are "trusted" because the stakes are high, and if someone was wanting to make you suffer, this would definitely be the time they would choose to do so.
- Don't knock it before you've tried it (like at least twice, or three times, or maybe give it like ten years, then you'll understand the nostalgia and that's when you'll see the beauty of it).
- Let someone more experienced buy the fish; you don't need your first experience of surströmming to include being elbowed in the ribs by someone else's grandmother over the last tin in the supermarket.