Lingonberries in Småland

Could it possibly be from Astrid Lindgren and her stories about Emil, which almost every Swede knows, what “krösamos” is. “Krösa” is otherwise just a southern-Swedish dialect variant of lingonberry, and the old woman in the Emil books known for telling ghost stories is “Krösa-Maja”, which has been kept as her name in the English and German translations, but in Danish she is called “Tyttebær-Maja”.

At Astrid Lindgren’s Näs they allow lingon- and blueberry bushes to line paths. A flirt to Astrid Lindgren’s stories, of course. Lingonberries are strongly associated with Småland and Öland, and still the obvious choice for several Småland and Öland dishes, such as kroppkakor, lufsa (a kind of potato pancake with pork, cooked in a baking tray), raggmunk and hyttsill. And of course one drank “krösadrecke”! On Öland, however, there are different opinions on whether lingonberries belong with kroppkakor or not.
Here it is also not as easy to pick lingonberries, and earlier one exchanged the berry for grain and other things one had in abundance.

In Småland there have always been plenty of forests, and thus plenty of lingonberries. So many that during the late 1800s the berries were exported to Germany – where they were used, among other things, to give red wine a better colour. Around 1890 the annual lingonberry export from Kronoberg County was about 2,600 tons, or 438 railway-wagon loads.
This was almost as much as Sweden’s total export of forest berries nearly 100 years later, in the early 1980s! For the record we can add that lingonberries were also exported from other parts of Sweden, as well as to England, the USA and the Nordic neighbour countries.

Whether with meat, fish, porridge or potatoes – during the 19th century lingonberries were eaten with almost everything. Mixed with milk people ate lingonberries with “grynkorv” and “blodpalt” (a dish called “korv å palt å krösamos”), it was often eaten during slaughter‐time and with pickled herring and potatoes. For the poor in Småland lingonberry mash was among the most important condiments with potatoes, more common than herring. Around the turn of the last century you could even find krösamos in the cakes at the Öland celebrations.
Contributing to the berry’s popularity is the fact that they are packed with vitamins and minerals, they contain the natural preservative benzoic acid, which makes them relatively easy to store even without sugar, and they are firmer and easier to pick than other berries. The lingonberries were squeezed without sugar (which was in short supply until the end of the 1800s), sometimes together with honey, and still achieved good shelf‐life.

When one used to go into the forest to pick berries, it was lingonberries one meant. Around Lidhult outside Ljungby it is said to have been an especially popular activity. The area is today unofficially called the “Lingonberry region”, as a result of the Medicinal Plant Association in Gothenburg in 1904 starting a lingonberry processing company right here. AB Lingon became the area’s first female workplace in the form of a company, offering many jobs. For many the lingonberries gave a much-needed addition to the dowry.
And perhaps it was the lingonberries that paid for the wedding dress.