The main character in the film is called Professor Isak Borg, a widowed and rather grumpy 78-year-old physician. The reason that so many Swedes regard smultron with such affection is because of Smultronstället, a film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman and released in 1957. Even Vår Kokbok, Sweden's most popular cookery book, doesn't have a single smultron recipe! Smultronstället Sorry for ranting, I just hate it when a few minutes/seconds of extra research could have cleared up some confusion for a lot of people.The mere mention of smultron (wild strawberries) to most Swedes is likely to produce a smile, even though they are unlikely to be their favourite berry! In truth most Swedes prefer cultivated strawberries and regard smultron as something of a novelty. Of course, the etymology of this term is trivial to figure out, but I don't know why this trivia was even mentioned in the post to begin with, so perhaps not? It might also be worth pointing out that in the case of the Bergman title, "Smultronstället" refers to something very specific, and is a common idiom, namely, a place that only you and your family/close friends know about and cherish. Although it might not sound like it, this is actually the charitable critique, if he is actually fluent in Swedish, I wouldn't know where to begin. It would be way better if they asked a Swede before publishing things, in the case of Swedish translations, and perhaps reaching out to an Icelander when they're trying to translate Old Norse. It's actually quite embarrassing how many times a 5-year old's comprehension of Swedish could clear things up in the case of professors playing fast and loose with translations of Swedish or Old Norse. One can only hope that not many other academics read this and spin things off of such a poor foundation, and instead opt to figure things out on their own, which is bound to be more reliable than basing anything off of this. In the end one of his theories may be right, but one would think he would mention that "jordgubbe", also means "earth berry", I'm actually quite frustrated that he's not concerned about creating a myth around what the word "smultron" means, isn't his job to bring clarity and not confusion? As people here have already pointed out, "jordgubbe" is the commonly used word for "strawberry" in Swedish. I guess it mostly comes from the plant variants used, and how much light the plant gets in a day during the growing season.įinally, Estonian for "strawberry pie" (maasikapirukas) is Finnish for "earth-swine devilish" so perhaps there's something to that thing about earth, after all. In my mouth, the difference between an American garden strawberry and a Scandinavian one is about as big as the difference between an apple and an orange. Garden strawberries in Scandinavia and Baltics (Sweden, Estonia, Finland) are also quite different from the garden strawberries that come from France or Spain or anywhere in the USA. It's considered a different fruit across here (even if it is not really a fruit but an "aggregate accessory fruit").Īlso in Swedish, it has a completely different name (garden strawberry is "jordgubb" while the wild one is "smultron"). The wild ones are very aromatic, although (being wild) less consistent in taste. Same here across the gulf, that's how we collected them as kids.īTW, the berries in the pictures are indeed wild strawberries (Fragaria vesca), which are quite different from garden strawberries (Fragaria × ananassa).
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