It’s season for picking fruits and mushrooms in the wild. Lundagård’s new columnist Kate Monson guides you through the Swedish forests.
I’ve been living in Sweden for less than a month and I’ve already picked wild blueberries, scrumped armfuls of sweet apples, nibbled on freshly picked plum crumble and gobbled up mouthfuls of foraged mushrooms. Harvest season is upon us and the age old tradition of Allemansrätten (“every man’s right”) is, it would appear, being used to its full advantage by the students of Lund.
And with a number of the city’s streets lined with fruit trees, their bulging branches bending themselves perfectly into your path, you don’t have to wander far to find yourself a haul of tasty treats. Fruktsam is one fantastic resource for local edibles growing in public spaces.
Further afield lies Söderåsen National Park (about 50km north of Lund) has over 1,500 hectares of verdant forest, sparkling waterways and stunning panaramas to explore. It’s an attractive place to visit for the average walker, but for the forager it’s a veritable wonderland. Bend down to elf height (about a foot for the uninitiated) in shady spots and you’ll be sure to find some wild blueberry bushes. Whether you’ll find any fruit is another matter of course; they’re a popular treat for both humans and animals!
Mushrooms and their exotic cousin the toadstool are easier to spot – blooming out of dead logs, cascading down live tree trunks and nestling in damp hollows – but tougher to distinguish when it comes to edibility so are perhaps not an option for everybody. If you’re lucky you’ll bump into some seasoned foragers who will offer you a taste of their finds. I stumbled across a group who had collected mounds of cauliflower mushrooms that they’d been ‘living off’ for four days. Freshly fried in butter, in the forest, they’re a real treat!
For those of you who are keen to venture into wilder parts of the country, here are a few things you might find useful:
- Bring a basket to carry your foraged goods home in (that’s assuming you don’t eat them all on the way, which can be a challenge in itself!)
- Wear long socks or trousers to protect your legs from spikes and nettles when forging forth through angry undergrowth.
- This harvest calendar will help you know what to look out for when.
- As the old saying goes: “all mushrooms are edible, but some you can only eat once“. To avoid any mishaps – magic or otherwise! – this online guide is a fantastic resource for aspiring pickers.
- If you’d rather avoid the hard work of foraging for yourself, one option is the Kiviks Musteri, which runs regular ‘Cider to Calvados’ tasting nights accompanied by tasty Skåne tapas. The next event is September 20th.
But while foraging is a great excuse to get out into the beautiful Swedish countryside and connect with its landscape and traditions, picking hasn’t all been good news this year. The summer brought stories of thousands of migrant workers from Thailand, Bulgaria and the Ukraine entering the country to harvest wild berries.
The confederation of Swedish trade unions (LO) went so far as to call the work “modern slavery” due to the conditions many of the labourers are kept under. When berries are scarce, pickers are often unable to cover the costs of plane tickets, food and lodging. Up to 60% of Thai workers do not make a profit after months of backbreaking labour and many find themselves burdened with heavy debts. Additionally, while visas are only meant to be granted if companies offer decent lodging and a minimum wage, recruiters get around the rules by turning to newer members of the EU who can work in Sweden freely for three months.
So it would seem there is a lot more hidden beneath this country’s foliage than it first appears – and while much of it is sweet and succulent, some of it is more unsavoury than you might have imagined…
