SHELLEY JOHANSSON

Swedish Fish

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Christmas 1993: lutfisk

Lutfisk is whitefish that has been preserved by being soaked in a solution of lye (lut) and water, and then dried. Before eating, it is reconstituted to a gelatinous texture. Lutfisk has been prepared in Sweden and Norway since at least the 15th century.

It was my first Christmas in Sweden. I knew the holiday meal, the julbord, which translates literally to “Christmas table,” was a varied set of classic dishes served as a buffet. But I didn’t yet speak Swedish, hadn’t yet lived in the country, and that’s all I knew. On Christmas Eve, Ola’s mother, Kerstin, gestured for me to go first through the buffet line, because I was a guest. Ola’s grandparents smiled encouragingly. Feeling like a fish out of water, I glanced at Ola – little but the ham was familiar, and the table was groaning with food. He saw my discomfort and grinned reassuringly, showing the dimples I loved, and grabbed his plate.

“Here, I’ll help you. Take a good bit of this, take just a little of that, this sauce goes on that, you’ll like this, AVOID THAT,” he said, gesturing at sylta, a quivering glob of gelatin-flecked meat.

He continued coaching me as we went down the table, filling our plates. Afterward, we went to get our bowls of lutfisk, which I had heard of, thanks to A Prairie Home Companion. 

I took a tentative spoonful and discovered that lutfisk has a mild taste and odor. Its terrible reputation is wholly because of its texture, which is mushy, almost jello-like, and thoroughly unappealing. Kerstin had countered this by making a slightly-more-palatable thick stew out of it. I learned later that nobody has preserved lutfisk at home for a few generations now, but grocery stores stock greyish globs of it vacuum-sealed in plastic at Christmastime.

Ola made sure I didn’t take much, because it’s not very good – nobody seems to truly relish lutfisk, but as with so many food traditions, taste is beside the point. So we ate it that Christmas Eve. Because we – and everyone in Ola’s family – were coming to understand that the two of us would be together for the rest of our lives, and eating lutfisk is just what you do in Sweden at Christmas.

Summer 1996: catfish

Named for their “whiskers,” catfish are a bottom-feeding fish that is easy to farm in warm climates. About 60% of US-produced catfish is farmed in the Mississippi Delta. Considered “a poor man’s fish,” baked and especially fried catfish is a favorite in Southern cuisine.  

Ola and I had just moved from Sweden to Knoxville so that he could pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee. We were roadtripping with my best friend, Stephanie, and her new husband, a UT math professor named Stefan. The wedding had taken place in Stefan’s native country of Germany a few months before, and we were headed to her mom’s in Greenville, Mississippi, for a stateside reception. 

A couple hours after we arrived, Steph and her mom were going over the reception menu at the kitchen table. 

“…and melon balls and butter mints,” Steph’s mom concluded triumphantly. As a native of Nashville who’d gone to college with Steph in Jackson, Mississippi, I started snickering at how stereotypically Southern the menu was, like something out of Steel Magnolias. 

Steph caught my eye and read my thoughts, and we both started to laugh. Ola and Stefan looked around for the joke. 

An off-duty cop who was a friend of the family stopped by and offered to take us catfish fishing. Desperate to get out of the house, Steph agreed for all of us, and we piled back into Stefan’s Nissan sedan to follow the cop’s pickup truck.

Ola had never seen a catfish farm before. Regular rows of rectangular earthen ponds were criss-crossed by rutted dirt roads across the faded, flat landscape, and I braced myself with one hand against the car roof as the Nissan jounced along. The pickup skidded to a halt.

“What is he doing?” Stefan said. “WHAT is he DOING?” he repeated, as our host grabbed a handgun from the glove compartment and ran toward the tall brownish grass surrounding one of the ponds. 

“Rattlesnake, but ‘e disappeared!” our host hollered, on his way back to the truck. He clambered back in and continued down the row.

All four of us – especially the Europeans — were glad to have a few moments to collect ourselves before our host stopped, waved us to a particular pond and set us up with gear. Ola baited his hook and was first to cast through the thick, humid air.

“I got one,” he yelled, raring back with his fishing rod.

The fish fell off the hook at the shoreline, and Ola climbed down after it, kneeling down in the dried mud and grass to grab its flailing body before it slid back into the opaque water. Realizing the danger, I opened my mouth but couldn’t get words out fast enough.

“Motherfucker!” Ola exclaimed as he stood up, dancing with the writhing fish. “OW!”

Ola, who had discovered how hard it is to rinse off soap in soft water when showering the previous evening, had encountered another Southern phenomenon — fire ants, or as Steph and I always called them, “tiny red shells animated by Satan.” Fisherman that he is, he made it to the cooler with the slippery fish before he started wiping dozens of biting ants off his calves, cussing rhythmically and colorfully in Swedish.

And it wasn’t even worth it, as we pulled a fish out of the water with each cast. Catfish are known for their tough, leathery skin, and as the large cooler filled I started to wonder – who the hell was going to clean them? 

Our host invited us back to his house for a drink, and on the way we dropped off the cooler at a catfish cleaning place. Ola reached for his wallet.

“Don’t worry about that,” our host said with a grin, waving Ola off.  “They’s all on parole, they’ll do it for free.”

Summer 1997: inlagd sill

Inlagd sill is pickled herring, made by marinating salted herring in vinegar, sugar, onions, allspice, bay leaves, and peppercorns. Eaten in Sweden year-round, inlagd sill can be made at home or bought commercially. It is on the menu at every major holiday.

Ola and I bought our first house and got engaged as his studies continued in Knoxville, but neither of us remember why he wanted to find some inlagd sill there. Maybe we were going to make the traditional meal for midsummer, the quintessentially Swedish celebration of the summer solstice, or maybe he was just feeling homesick.

He looked in all the local grocery stores without luck — this was before the advent of internet shopping. But one day we were enjoying a sandwich at Harold’s, a local Jewish delicatessen.

“There! Look,” he cried, almost knocking over his chair as he lunged toward a glass jar in the small grocery section, just beyond our table. 

Once home, we opened the jar to a satisfying pop, and prepared hardbread to receive the sill. Each filet was firm and juicy, just as sill is supposed to be. My engagement ring glinted as we held our sill sandwiches under our noses to sample the aroma. We each took a bite and chewed thoughtfully.

“Well, what do you think? Is it the real thing?” I knew what I thought – I’d lived in Sweden and become fluent in its language and customs, including food – but he was the Swede.

“Hmm. The spices aren’t exactly right. But it’s close, and it’ll do.”

We nodded sagely in agreement, munching.

Summer 1999: redfish

Redfish are game fish found on the shallow Atlantic Ocean coastlines of the United States. Adults are up to four feet in length and weigh over 50 pounds. Redfish filets have a mild, sweet flavor with a medium-firm texture. 

My Papaw expertly positioned his motorboat in the swelling waves as Ola and I fished, right at the mouth of the lagoon where the tide currents were strongest. Salt in the air and on our skin, we cast our lines into the waves as far as we could without losing our balance on the heaving boat. The surface of the swells was covered with seaweed, and it took a bit of luck to get our shrimp gig baits in the water without catching a seaweed frond. 

The fishing was good, and a lot of boats were out. Ola’s line jerked.

“Got one, I think,” Ola hollered, adjusting his stance against the pull.

“Atta boy! Now don’t rush it, we got all day and that’s just 30-pound test,” Papaw said, referring to the strength of the fishing line. Papaw had a pretty decent boat, but he bought fishing equipment with economy in mind, as it never lasted long – if it didn’t get lost to the sea, it’d wear out in the Florida sun and salt. 

Seagulls wheeled overhead as I reeled my bait in. Ola’s reel squealed, disgorging line as he worked the fish patiently, letting it run several times, waiting for it to tire. I stowed my rod and reel, grabbed the net, and positioned myself at the edge of the boat to land his prize.

The dark shadow of the fish was visible before it broke the water, and I estimated it was about three feet long.

“That’s a nice one,” Papaw said approvingly. Ola worked it to the edge of the boat and I maneuvered the net under its body. He dropped his reel and helped me land the fish as Papaw cackled in delight.

“Just a bit bigger than what you used to catch as a kid in Sweden,” I laughed to Ola, who spent his childhood carefully cataloguing his freshwater catches in a notebook he still has. 

“He’s a good boy,” Papaw said, nodding toward my husband of less than a year, who was struggling to disentangle the fish from the net. “He’s a goooood boy.”

Summer 2013: surströmming

Literally translated to “sour herring,” surströmming is traditional to Swedish cuisine as far back as the 16th century. It is herring preserved by fermentation that occurs inside sealed cans with just enough brine to keep the fish from rotting outright.

Ola liked to brag about surströmming. We were enjoying a beer on our back patio one Pennsylvania summer evening with our next-door neighbor, Dave, and the subject came up yet again. Now, Swedes are so understated that there is no word for understatement in Swedish – “not bad” to a Swede is “freaking awesome” to an American. Yet everything Ola said about surströmming sounded like a gross exaggeration.

“Surströmming’s reek is unlike anything you can possibly imagine. Some airlines even ban people from taking surströmming cans onboard, because the pressure might make the can explode at altitude!”

“Ola, you go on and on about surströmming, but we never ate it when we lived in Sweden, or any time we’ve been back to visit.”

“People eat it all the time in northern Sweden. They have outside parties to eat surströmming – you have to eat it in summer, because it stinks too bad to open the can inside.” He nodded at Dave, knowing I’d heard all this a hundred times.

“So what? Your family is from southern Sweden. How many times have YOU eaten it?”

He paused for a moment, met my eye, and smirked.

“Well, I ate it once when I was 10. Maybe twice.” 

Dave, who knew us both well, burst out in boisterous guffaws, and Ola and I joined him. I decided to throw down the gauntlet.

“Put up or shut up, sweetheart – you figure out how to get some, and we’ll have a surströmming party.”

The three of us enthusiastically agreed. So Ola ordered a can. It sat in the refrigerator, bulging ominously, as suspense built and the party invitations went out. 

The day of the party arrived, and we made sure we had other food on hand. Because nobody was going to fill up on surströmming, of that we were sure.

With uncharacteristic dramatic flair, Ola marched through the guests with a folding table, making a big deal of setting up a place to prepare, far away from the patio. He retrieved the can and placed it ceremoniously next to the flatbread, sliced boiled potatoes, and diced onion that would complete the dish.

“HOLY SHIT,” Dave exclaimed as Ola opened the can, and the pungent odor wafted back toward our houses. “He wasn’t kidding.”

The stench was that of a full seafood market dumpster in 100-degree weather, with a heavy overtone of sulfur. As the guests groaned in anticipation, Ola assembled a tray of open-face surströmming sandwiches, each the size of a deck of cards. The fumes were practically visible.

Everyone bravely took a bite. The taste was sour, the texture squishy, and worst of all was the rotted stink. But the taste didn’t live up to the smell, not really anyway.

Until you burped. 

The next day we felt like the smell was oozing out of our pores. Dave, who had unwisely left his windows open, complained his house smelled like a morgue. 

It had been an experience, but Ola and I made a pact — the next time we threw a traditional Swedish party for our American friends, we’d do midsummer, because that food is actually good. 

Christmas 2020: gravlax 

Lax is salmon, North Atlantic fish that are known for returning to their stream of origin to spawn.  Traditional in all Nordic countries, gravlax is salmon cold-cured with sugar and salt, infused with fresh dill and served with a mustard sauce.

Christmas 2020 was to be the first Christmas Ola, me, and our 17-year-old daughter, Linnea, ever spent home in Pennsylvania. Our usual trip to Nashville to see my family was out of the question because of the pandemic, and we were all a little melancholy – aware that we were lucky in the larger scheme, but sad for all we would miss.

Ola and I were in the car one late December day, on our way home from Christmas shopping. Suddenly I had an idea.

“Hey, I know what – we can do a julbord!”

“We could try, but there are no gourmet groceries here and it’s too late to buy ingredients online.”

“It’d give us something to focus on, something to do together to make Christmas festive this year,” I countered, warming to the idea. “Honey, we haven’t eaten that food since we lived in Sweden 25 years ago.”  

Ola glanced at me, startled.

It really had been that long. So much had happened since then. We’d lost all eight of our grandparents, and my dad. We’d raised our daughter into a delightful young woman. There had been so many trips back to Sweden and other wonderful international destinations. Ola had achieved tenure and was now a full professor. We had built a rich and fulfilling life together, curating our own family blend of Swedish and American culture and traditions. And there was still so much more to look forward to, even during the pandemic. 

Ola smiled, his dimples accompanied by a spray of laugh lines around his eyes. 

“Let’s do it.”

We started to brainstorm the highly specific menu, and possible sources and substitutions for ingredients. Meatballs, braised red cabbage, hardboiled eggs, beet salad, and apple walnut salad were straightforward enough, and we knew we had a tin of anchovies for the Janssons frestelse, a delicious scalloped potato dish. 

Ola said he could try to approximate the vörtbröd, a brown rye bread with raisins, by substituting Southern sorghum for Swedish dark baking syrup.

Neither of us brought up lutfisk. We knew we couldn’t get it, and we knew we wouldn’t miss it. Inlagd sill would be unavailable, too, but we’d just have to do without it.

It felt like a scavenger hunt, questing all over town for ingredients. We scored a fresh ham at the Italian grocery. At Aldi Ola found cocktail sausages that were close enough to prinskorv. Scouring the seafood section at Giant Eagle in an unsuccessful search for caviar, I found salmon packages marked “gravlax,” a favorite julbord dish.

“Look – gravlax!” I waved the package in Ola’s face. “I thought we’d only be able to find smoked salmon.”

“It’s SEVEN BUCKS for that tiny package?”

“Let’s get two.” 

Our julbord wasn’t complete that Christmas Eve. But it was ours, and it was more than enough.

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