As Sandy Stevenson on Tour Scotland has been kind enough to give me a few shout outs over on Twitter and allowed me to find new and interesting people to follow I wanted to celebrate the joint heritage of the Scottish and Scandinavian peoples.  

Barn, bord, stol

There is more than genetics we have in common. Culturally speaking we share a heritage, which is not least obvious in the language and social awareness. We are both clan cultures.

My husband, who is of Scottish descent, often jokes that he probably has more viking blood than I do and he’s quite possibly right as I’m a mongrel. I have Swedish and Traveler blood on my mother’s side, but on my father’s there is Roma, German, Hungarian and French. 

Fishy stuff

I went looking for a recipe that I felt would celebrate a joint heritage and found a breakfast dish that was very popular around the turn of the last century. It’s called “sillpölsa” in Swedish.

“Pölsa” is the Swedish version of haggis, made from lungs and heart – primarily from cattle or moose – mixed with barley and the word is no doubt of ancient origin. In Danish “pølse” means sausage, so I suspect it simply means chopped meat.

Now, “sill” – meaning herring – has been a staple in all the Scandinavian countries historically and even though it may not be eaten as much as previously in Sweden no Swedish smörgåsbord is complete without pickled herring.

I had a vague recollection of having heard the name of this dish, but never eaten it. The Internet seemed pretty oblivious to it as well. Most of the couple of dozen references to it comes from the same basic source. However, I think it sounds really interesting and I will try cooking it as soon as I’ve been to town to pick up some salted herring fillets.

Additionally I will pick up a couple of “böckling”, the Swedish version of kippers, since I think it may be quite delicious to use those.