{"id":77506,"date":"2025-10-06T15:31:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T13:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.visitsmaland.se\/upptack\/lingon-i-smaland\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T16:15:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T15:15:13","slug":"lingonberries-in-smaland","status":"publish","type":"guide","link":"https:\/\/www.visitsmaland.se\/en\/discover\/lingonberries-in-smaland\/","title":{"rendered":"Lingonberries in Sm\u00e5land"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Lingonberries in Sm\u00e5land <\/h1>\n <\/div>\n
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\n Lingonberries in Sm\u00e5land <\/h2>\n \t\t\t
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Raspberries and blueberries aside, it\u2019s the lingonberries that rock! Historically, the lingonberry was the most important berry in Swedish food culture: it was collected all over the country and eaten with almost everything. In Sm\u00e5land there was a company called \u201cAB Lingon\u201d and enormous quantities were exported.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n

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\n Astrid Lindgren and the lingonberry <\/h3>\n
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Could it possibly be from Astrid Lindgren and her stories about Emil, which almost every Swede knows, what \u201ckr\u00f6samos\u201d is. \u201cKr\u00f6sa\u201d is otherwise just a southern-Swedish dialect variant of lingonberry, and the old woman in the Emil books known for telling ghost stories is \u201cKr\u00f6sa-Maja\u201d, which has been kept as her name in the English and German translations, but in Danish she is called \u201cTytteb\u00e6r-Maja\u201d.<\/p>\n

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At Astrid Lindgren\u2019s N\u00e4s they allow lingon- and blueberry bushes to line paths. A flirt to Astrid Lindgren\u2019s stories, of course. Lingonberries are strongly associated with Sm\u00e5land and \u00d6land, and still the obvious choice for several Sm\u00e5land and \u00d6land 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 \u201ckr\u00f6sadrecke\u201d! On \u00d6land, 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.<\/p>\n

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\n Plenty of Lingonberries <\/h3>\n
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In Sm\u00e5land 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 \u2013 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\n Our Swedish national berry \u2013 a historically important vitamin bomb <\/h3>\n
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Whether with meat, fish, porridge or potatoes \u2013 during the 19th century lingonberries were eaten with almost everything. Mixed with milk people ate lingonberries with \u201cgrynkorv\u201d and \u201cblodpalt\u201d (a dish called \u201ckorv \u00e5 palt \u00e5 kr\u00f6samos\u201d), it was often eaten during slaughter\u2010time and with pickled herring and potatoes. For the poor in Sm\u00e5land 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 kr\u00f6samos in the cakes at the \u00d6land celebrations.
Contributing to the berry\u2019s 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\u2010life.<\/p>\n

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\n The Lingonberry region <\/h3>\n
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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 \u201cLingonberry region\u201d, as a result of the Medicinal Plant Association in Gothenburg in 1904 starting a lingonberry processing company right here. AB Lingon became the area\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\n Picking berries today <\/h2>\n
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According to estimates, 95 per cent of the berries remain in the forests, and only a tiny few percent are collected by commercial berry\u2010pickers and others with patience. In a normal berry year the …