This is your Thursday Pea-soup talking

I’ve learned a lot from food here in Sweden. I don’t mean that I’ve discovered anything about Swedish national characteristics by analyzing traditional foods. What with fermented herring, pickled pig’s feet, and blood pudding (though, to be fair, it’s more of a moist, dense loaf) on the menu, I think I’d be better off not making any rash generalizations. Nor has a simplistic you-are-what-you-eat type notion proved edifying: considering that taking a fika is a nationwide past-time, one would risk calculating average waist-sizes to be elephantine—which they clearly are not. I mean that I’ve often found food served up with a healthy garnishing of How One Behaves.
First there were the Cinnamon Buns of Straightforwardness. I was in a group, enjoying my first home-baked kanelbulle and already eyeing-up my second. My host lifted the basket and offered me another one. My culture (Canadian with weighty British overtones) dictates that I perform at least one, preferably two, meek refusals before I am allowed, at the host’s ardent insistence, to take another goody. But when I refused a second bun, my host took me at my word, and moved on to the next person at the table. I worried my tea cup between my hands in self-pity and debated my position. But there was really no way to get another bun without appearing hopelessly wishy-washy. My host didn’t re-offer of course: I’d said plainly that I didn’t want another. What do you know: in Sweden, words mean what they...mean.
Then came the Mandarins of Lagom. While the small, bright citrus fruit is not native to Sweden, the notion of lagom(roughly, just enough) is routinely passed off as hard core, Viking-age mindset. The story goes that it was the tradition of warriors to drink laget om, as a team, from one bowl. So, if cheeky Ingullbjörn took too greedy a gulp mid-table, poor Thorfinn might be gazing into an empty mead bowl by the end. (The truth of the term’s etymology is less romantic: it’s actually just a relic form of the verb laga left over from when the dative case still roamed the Swedish language. It means, again roughly, in the right way ).
In any case, I was in a cafeteria with classmates, collecting a free lunch onto my tray. An abundance of mandarins graced the end-table. I took two. The stares directed at my tray signaled that something was amiss. You’re only supposed to take one, a classmate said finally. I craned my neck around to read the sign stating this rule. There wasn’t one; I felt vindicated. But it seems cultural rules are the least likely to be written down: a staff member came up behind me and, without a word, snatched the extra fruit from my tray.

Finally, the Saffron Buns of Seasonal Routine. While Swedes often seem honestly oblivious to the fact, the greater part have a strong (one might almost say ruthless) sense of tradition, and the rules governing the enjoyment—eating, drinking—of said tradition. Once, a dear friend said that she would like to make me a treat to celebrate my birthday in May.
I’ll make you anything you want, she said. Anything.
I knew exactly what I wanted: some more of those vibrant saffron buns I’d delighted in all winter—which had mysteriously disappeared some months back. My friend laughed incredulously at the suggestion.
But really, she said, wiping the tears from her eyes. What can I make you?
So, on reflection, it’s through the withholding of food (albeit unintentionally) that insight has come. How profane: behavior modification through food deprivation. But seriously—it does seem that etiquette concerning food reflects greater trends in social behavior: when it comes to our cultural identities, we are not so much what we eat, but how we eat.

Gwendolyn Haevens, originally from Canada, is a Graduate Student studying North American Literature at the Uppsala University English Department.