Svamp!

Finally, I got out mushroom picking! I have this stereotype of Sweden that includes a romantic notion of friluftsliv; one of the notions I have is that everyone gets out into the woods to pick berries and mushrooms (svamp!)…and the fact is, many people do! I have now joined the ranks of the mushroom pickers. Quick lesson, the brown mushrooms in the photo above are Trattkantarell (Cantharellus tubaeformis) and the yellow mushrooms are Yellow Kantarell (Cantharellus cibarius).

I had the good luck of meeting Acke and Mary at the previously described Crayfish party and they took me out for an adventure in the woods North of Angered. We picked, we hiked, we drank coffee and ate sandwiches (fika)…it was friluftsliv at its finest! One sets out into the forest to find mushrooms, but we found a lot of other interesting things as well—thus, the element of an adventure. One of things we found were ghostscapes of past farming and human settlement in the forest. I like the definition of landscape as nature and culture bound together…it is interesting to wander through a forest noting birds, moose droppings, hummocks of soft moss, mushrooms (of course) and then stumble upon an old wall, an old property corner marked with stones, a foundation…stories of another time in this place.

While worried that the mushroom season was too far gone, we actually did quite well. Our success meant that we had a lot of cleaning to do! So, while I cleaned, Acke and Mary cooked a 5-course mushroom dinner!! It was mushroom tapas! Mushrooms sauted, mushrooms in a sauce on bread, mushroom soup, etc…all of it was delicious! While cooking and cleaning we listened to the radio—listened to Sweden lose to Denmark in a crucial fotboll match…it is on to the World Cup for Denmark, but alas, not for Sweden!

Acke and Mary live in an outlying suburb of Göteborg (25 minutes by tram from my place in the center of town). It is a part of town known for the large immigrant population; Once a nation of emigration, Sweden is now a nation of immigration (given the sport event of the weekend, I should note that the star player of the Swedish fotboll team is Zlatan Ibrahimović, born in Sweden of Bosnian/Croatian parents). It is interesting to think how American cities typically have had have ethic ghettos in the middle/city center, while European cities seem to have these communities on the fringe (Kerry noted that Prague and Paris have a similar arrangement as Göteborg and Stockholm). What is additionally interesting to me about Angered, North of Göteborg, is despite the large public housing units concentrating thousands of residents, these complexes are surrounded by forest and lakes; I don’t know if the residents of Angered access this beautiful wild space, but they are surrounded by it…An interesting question of the Friluftsliv i Förändring project is how do you welcome immigrant groups into the woods and wilds of Sweden?

Mmm, more thoughts about access to nature...

A great weekend! Friday night was billed as Kultur Natta in Göteborg (Culture Night). All over town one could find music, dance, film…I went to a play, “Three Bears and an Otter.” A gay themed event exploring the “solidarity” of gay community in Sweden…Whoa! It was a long way from gay theater (complete with giant dancing penis, sorry no picture) to mushroom picking on Saturday…an interesting slice of Swedish culture.

Note the brush in the photo above, one end is a knife for cutting the mushroom, the other a brush for cleaning it--no water for cleaning, just makes the mushroom slimy.