Sami food has deservedly gained attention. Restaurants serve suovas, gurpi, and juobmo, dishes with ancient origins. There is a long tradition of taking care of ingredients in the Swedish part of Sápmi, both among the Sami and settlers.
It’s not entirely easy to distinguish between Sami food and settler food. Before the 1900s, settlements without Sami were rare. Almost every farm had Sami family ties, and therefore different eating habits and ways of handling ingredients have merged over time.
Helpfulness – a matter of survival
Having enough food has been a matter of survival for thousands of years. Helpfulness was another. If I help you now, you’ll help me later. What I don’t have, you do, and vice versa.
Self-sufficiency doesn’t necessarily mean producing everything you need yourself, rather spending time on what’s most natural to acquire or produce. Meat, fish, berries, and other ingredients could be traded and bartered. Even in the Stone Age, people exchanged meat, pelts, and hides, perhaps for coveted flint from Russia’s Onega region or from the Norwegian coastal areas. Food remained a trading commodity well into the 1900s. This was often how people acquired tools, a horse, or a window. Or food items they couldn’t obtain or make themselves.
People in the region obtained food in many different ways and also had many different techniques for storing and preserving food. It was extensive work. Drying, smoking, fermenting, and souring are ancient methods. Knowledge inherited over millennia.
Food before and after the advent of salt
Soured fish, soured meat, and drying, smoking, and freezing food are probably among the most ancient methods, from the time when salt wasn’t available. In winter, it was easy to freeze meat and berries. Either buried in snow, in timbered pole storage houses, or high up in trees to keep predators and pests away. Whole reindeer could be frozen without being butchered first.
A sarvhals – the neck of a male reindeer – was hung up unsalted in autumn and became dried meat by spring. In cold springs with water that never freezes, where drinking water was collected, people stored meat and casks of soured milk and other perishables. Lingonberries and cloudberries stayed fresh until spring. The cold water and oxygen-free environment preserved the food.
Since salt became a trading commodity, it has been used, sometimes abundantly, sometimes sparingly. Salt preserves. It was used to salt fish and meat before curing, smoking, and drying. Meat and fresh fish were cooked with a little salt, but just a little.
Important to be properly full
The most important thing, both in Sami homes and among settlers, was to be properly full. At every meal. Without enough food in the stomach, no one could work, whether in the timber forest, with the reindeer, or at home on the settlement.
Access to fresh food was good, even in winter. While people in cities often had to starve, and farmers in other parts of the country suffered from crop failure, people in the north had food. There were fish, forest birds, and small animals to catch and eat. Domestic animals and reindeer were slaughtered as needed. A single household could slaughter 20-25 reindeer during one winter.
The whole reindeer must be used
In Sami households, reindeer has been the staple food. Everything from the animal was used. Absolutely everything.
The tradition of preparing brain, heart, tongue, entrails, intestines, and hooves largely remains today. Nothing should go to waste, even though tastes have changed over time. In the Princesses’ Cookbook from 1931, published in Stockholm, there’s a recipe for a sandwich dish made from calf brain. The princesses were also taught to grill brain. Old Sami still remember brain dumplings, vuojnam-balte, where reindeer brain was whipped and mixed with flour and a little blood. To make brain dumplings, the reindeer had to be slaughtered correctly, so the brain was undamaged. You could also bake bread from the brain, vuojŋasjgáhkko, a thin, very tender cake that was baked on the fire in the kota. The bread was eaten with cured fish or meat.
Fresh and dried blood has also been an important ingredient for making blood dumplings, blood pancakes, or dumpling bread. Traditional reindeer stew is still appreciated. It’s a hearty meal of blood sausage, blood dumplings, boiled reindeer back and side, and preferably marrow bones too. Served with freshly stirred lingonberries.
Fresh fish was eaten immediately
Fish was best eaten immediately. When the men came home with whitefish catches, the women were ready to clean and cook the fish. As soon as the fish was ready, they ate a hearty meal. Fish to be eaten later was salted, soured, cured, or smoked. Or dried against a sunny wall. Butter on dried fish was everyday food. Not because bread was lacking but because it was simply better food.
Although flour trade occurred at winter markets in Lapland since the 1600s, bread wasn’t daily food, neither for settlers nor nomads. They might get a small sack per year. In the mountain regions, bread and porridge are modern innovations belonging to the 1900s.
Tastes change
Just as some dishes aren’t particularly popular nowadays, there are also many flavors that are no longer as appreciated. Meat that was slightly rancid, goasste, had a particularly spicy taste. Even dried cow’s milk could get that strong, slightly rancid taste that many were fond of. The red fish meat in salted whitefish that had soured in wooden casks and was then cooked was appreciated, but is hardly something that’s popular today.
Good and healthy reindeer fat
To survive in cold climates, reindeer build up large fat reserves outside their muscles before each winter. When spring comes, the fat is essentially gone. Thanks to this, the fat doesn’t store any harmful substances.
Reindeer meat itself is very lean and therefore needs fat when cooking. Sami have always considered reindeer fat healthy. Now new research supports this. It has been shown that reindeer fat from stomach and back has significantly lower cholesterol levels than animal fats like butter, lard, and tallow. The iron content is more than a hundred times higher and the fat contains more B vitamins, riboflavin, thiamin, and zinc. The harmful trans fatty acids are also significantly lower than in butter.
Days of old required more energy
Older Sami believe that people stayed healthy in the past thanks to the fat, which worked like a lubricating oil for the whole body. The fat also provided endurance. The fat has different tastes and textures depending on where on the animal it formed and was traditionally cooked fresh, or smoked and dried.
A reindeer herder, hard-working woman, or lumberjack needed four to five times as many calories as today’s computer technician or bus driver. Even children needed more calories, as they walked, ran, skied, and were constantly moving.
There wasn’t a single sedentary day for anyone.
Fill your energy needs
Take advantage of the knowledge from those who have lived their lives in the region. Throw a piece of dried meat in your backpack on your hiking trip. You’ll be surprisingly satisfied after a coffee break with a few thin slices of dried meat. Treat yourself to freshly smoked mountain char when the opportunity arises. The healthy fats work wonders in a hiking-tired body. A fantastic, and more sustainable alternative to hamburgers, is a few slices of fried gurpi. These are cold-smoked meat patties that taste heavenly with gáhkko, the soft traditional ember cake. If you find cloudberries, blueberries, lingonberries, or crowberries on your way – eat to your heart’s content. Here you have both antioxidants, vitamins, and energy excellently packaged in something that is both delicious and free. Even if you might not think crowberries are the tastiest thing you’ve eaten, you should know that this berry is among the most nutritious and also an excellent thirst quencher.
Choose the golden nuggets from the menu
When you have the opportunity to sit at a set table, either at one of the restaurants in the towns or at one of the mountain facilities, look for the golden nuggets, choose a dish with roots in the local area. A journey becomes complete only after exploring the local cuisine. Jokkmokk’s forests, mountains, and clean waters deliver fantastic ingredients. The preparation has ancient traditions. You can get something traditional on your plate, or something completely innovative where the chef has added new, and perhaps unexpected, accompaniments that make your taste buds soar.
Let your stay in Jokkmokk become a journey in the world of flavors as well.
Sources:
Ryd, Lilian, Urfödan About self-sufficient food among people in Lapland. 2015
Slow Food Sápmi: Taste of Sápmi. Sami food – tradition, innovation and future. 2014
Text: Iréne Lundström Photo: Carl-Johan Utsi