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Scandinavian Eel

dailyscandi

November 2, 2016

Anguilla anguilla. Eels are mythic creatures, spending their youth in the sea but their adult life in fresh water.

As tiny fry (elvers) they take the grand tour of their life, spending three years swimming from the Saragossa Sea off the American coast thousands of miles across the Atlantic, bound for the streams and rivers of Europe and North Africa.

They then live their very long adult life in fresh water, before going on the long pilgrimage back to the warm sea of their youth to spawn and die.

These days, wild eel is a threatened creature. This is partly due to overfishing – including in rather mean ways, using flares to illuminate the water at night, when the eels are most active. However, the most serious threat is the damage to the eels’ habitat caused by pollution and intensive drainage.

Nowadays, eel farming is big business, and the farmed eels are actually good to eat.

In Scandinavia, eating eel is a male initiation rite, a contest, the proof of manhood being the number of times the bones can reach around the plate, and there is schnapps to go with most of the pieces of eel.

Appearing and taste
Eels have small heads and very tough, black skin. They wiggle like a snake and they even taste very much like snake. They are more popular dead than alive – as living creatures, most women find eels nasty, slimy beasts. Wild eels can reach 1.5 meters in length, although specimens this big are rarely seen. Most eels for frying are 30-40cm long. Those for smoking need more fat, which comes with age.

Buying and storing
Smoked eel must be shiny, firm and with absolutely no wrinkles. Eel will not keep more than a day, so cook it on the day it is bought; once cooked, eel will keep for several days in the fridge.

Culinary uses
Eel flesh is rich and robust enough to cope with strong flavorings, including serious spices, vinegar, lemon, beer, horseradish and/or garlic.

Eel has a great, rough taste and the flesh is fine, very firm and very, very fatty. When it is smoked the fattiness is a virtue, but if you are boiling or frying it, eel needs special care to get rid of some of the fat, and be as wonderful as it really can be. Grilling is the perfect way to cook fresh eel with the skin on; the fat has time to drip away, leaving succulent meat.

If you are pan-frying it, the eel should be skinned. Fry it once until the fat and juices run, then transfer it to a colander and wash it in cold water. Dry the eel, dip it in seasoned flour, then fry again in browned butter.

The traditional trimmings are creamed potatoes, though honestly this combination is not very easy to survive as the fat content is alarmingly high. It’s tasty but devastating. You have to stay in bed for a day to digest, like a snake that has swallowed a whole goat.

There are other delicious ways to eat eel without the health alert: I suggest new potatoes and a vinegary cucumber salad with dill. Or, as the recipe below, braised in dark beer. Leftovers are beautiful if soused.

Eel braised in beer
The interesting flavor if this dish comes from the dark beer, lots of herbs and a touch of vinegar, contrasting with the delicious fatty fish. The strange thing about cooking with beer is that the bitterness from the hops diminishes during cooking, leaving an arousing, pleasant complexity. Eat simply with new potatoes.

800g eel, cut into large chunks
2 tablespoons salted butter
4 tablespoons cider vinegar
A sprig each of fresh tarragon and sage
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
250ml dark, strong beer
200ml sweet cider
Coarse sea salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
150ml whipping cream
500g chopped mixed fresh herbs: parsley, dill, chives, chervil and sorrel
(Serves 4)

Fry the eel in butter in a deep, thick-based pan, browning it lightly all over. Add the vinegar and fry it until the liquid has evaporated. Add the sage and tarragon sprigs, bay leaf, rhyme leaves, beer, cider, salt and pepper. Leave to braise slowly for 15 minutes until tender. Remove the eel from the pan. Pour in the cream and reduce to a thick sauce over a high heat. Add the chopped fresh herbs, and salt and pepper to taste. Return the eel to the pan and then serve.

Feature image (on top) Smoked eel

Written by Tor Kjolberg

14 Funny Facts about Scandinavia

dailyscandi

November 2, 2016

Usually Scandinavia is associated with winter sports and fjords; countries inhabited by tall, statuesque blondes and Vikings. Yet there is so much more to these Northern countries. We’ve compiled a list of strange, silly and superb Scandinavian facts. Read on!

1) Norway
During Norway’s Polar Nights, the sun is up for only 3 hours a day in some parts (and not at all in others).

2) Denmark
Denmark doesn’t do mountains. Their tallest ‘hill’ is a mere 170 meters high. It’s called Møllehøj.

Denmark's highest mountain, Möllehöj — Denmark’s highest mountain, Möllehöj

3) Sweden
The most popular souvenir in Sweden is the commonly seen “moose-crossing” warning sign. Many are stolen from the roadside every year.

4) Denmark
In Denmark, if you’re not married by the age of 30 you get a pepper shaker as a gift. Men are called Pepperman (“pebersvend”) and females Peppermaid (“pebermø”). We don’t know why…

5) Sweden
Sweden is a trailblazer when it comes to inventions and innovations. The zipper, the fridge, the pacemaker and the computer mouse are Swedish. Not forgetting IKEA and H&M. The stylish lot.

Did you know that the zipper is a Swedish invention?

6) Denmark
The inventors of LEGO® got things started in Billund, Denmark in 1932 manufacturing not toy bricks, but stepladders! Naturally, Billund is now the home of Legoland Theme Park.

7) Norway
You herd it here first. The world’s largest population of arctic reindeer herders can be found in Norway!

Sami people noth of the Arctic circle in Norway

8) Norway
Norway is just a little bit larger than the US state New Mexico and two thirds of Norway are mountain regions.

Just have a look at the map above.

9) Sweden
During Easter in Sweden, which is a well-known holiday here, children dress up and go from home to home asking for candy, similar to Halloween!

10) Sweden
During Midsummer, the Swedes dance around a maypole and sing songs where they pretend to be frogs, pigs, horses… ridiculously catchy too, if you’re lucky enough to get to experience this, you’ll be humming the songs for the rest of your holiday.

11) Denmark
The Danes were recently crowned as the happiest people in the world

12) Sweden
The Swedes recycle so much of their waste, so they have to import it from Norway so they can fuel their energy programs.

13) Norway
In 2008, Norway knighted a penguin! The penguin in question is called Nils Olav and prior to his knighthood, was promoted to Colonel in Chief of the Norwegian Army.

Nils Olav the Penguin inspects the Kings Guard of Norway after being bestowed with a knighthood at Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland. The King's Guard adopted the penguin as their mascot in 1972 during a visit to Edinburgh for the annual Military Tattoo. — Nils Olav the Penguin inspects the Kings Guard of Norway after being bestowed with a knighthood at Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland.
The King’s Guard adopted the penguin as their mascot in 1972 during a visit to Edinburgh for the annual Military Tattoo.

14) Denmark
The Danes eat more pasta than any other country in the world.

14 Funny Facts about Scandinavia, compiled by Admin

Danish Researchers on Music and Memory

dailyscandi

October 22, 2016

Does music affect memory? Danish researchers are testing a hypothesis that children with musical skills such as rhythm and melody also develop stronger memories.

School children aged 6-19 are guinea pigs for research assessing the effect good rhythm and melody skills can have

The project involves 30,000 school children at public school and gymnasium and is being conducted by the Centre for Music in the Brain at the University of Aarhus in conjunction with the Royal Academy of Music. Professor and neuroscientist Peter Vuust is the lead researcher.

“We developed this hypothesis following studies of very small groups of adults that showed that the ability to maintain and manage information was better among musicians than non-musicians,” Vuust told Videnskab.

There’s an app for that
The children in the study will train their musical abilities using an app. Pupils from 450 schools across Denmark are included in the mass experiment that started on Monday. It is one of the largest studies ever undertaken in Denmark.

“First, students will take a test that looks at the two most basic parts of musicality: rhythm and melody,” said Vuust. “Then there is a memory game that features combinations of numbers. We will see how many they can remember.”

The children will train their musical chops for two weeks, after which test number two will examine whether two weeks of musical training has changed anything.

From Green Day to calculus
Vuust said the experiment should not be viewed as an absolute guarantee that if a student is good at music they will also excel at maths, but that previous results did suggest that musical ability did correlate with a good working memory.

Along with the memory test, the experiment on the 30,000 children and adolescents will also collect data on their ages, gender, language abilities, musical habits and whether they play or sing.

“What I find most interesting is chatting about the musical landscapes to the different age groups for the first time ever,” said Vuust.

In December last year Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced that neuroscientists at the university were able to identify a neural population highly selective for music … for the first time ever!

“The brain is a highly organized and complex organ that functions as the coordinating center of sensation and intellectual and nervous activity. Each area of the brain directly corresponds to a very specific function (emotions, movement, visual processing, memory, etc.), but, up until two days ago December 14), scientists were unable to decipher exactly which area of the brain corresponded to music perception.

Peter Vuust, jazz basist and Professor at Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus and associate Professor at Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Aarhus University

Peter is a unique combination of a world class musician and a top-level scientist. He plays and records with international jazz stars such as Lars Jansson, Tim Hagans, John Abercrombie and Jukkis Uotila, and appears on more than 85 records, 6 of these as band leader. Based on his distinguished music and research career, he was appointed Professor at RAMA in 2012. After graduating from AU in Mathematics, French and Music, he devoted ten years to playing music, before resuming an academic career in 2000. He wrote a book on polyrhythms in Miles Davis’ quintet that laid out the musicological framework for his PhD in neuroscience in 2006 concerning the neural processing of polyrhythms.

Danish Researchers on Music and Memory, compiled by Tor Kjolberg

Sweet Dreams in Scandinavian Hotels

dailyscandi

October 22, 2016

During the summer months, guests at all Clarion hotels in Norway and Sweden have had the opportunity to contribute to the environment through the hotel chain’s commitment to “Green Stay”.

The initiative allows guests to opt out of cleaning the room, and instead give money to UNICEF’s project “Sweet Dreams”. Instead of keeping loyalty points guests can choose to donate them to combat human trafficking in Cambodia.

“Combining environmental commitment and simultaneously contribute to UNICEF feels really good,” says Henrik Berghult, senior vice president of Clarion Hotels. He adds, “This is also a great tribute to our creative staff, who has received the chain’s award “This Year’s Strawberry”.

Henrik Berghult, senior vice president of Clarion Hotels

Green Stay is developed on the basis of Nordic Choice Hotels’ environmental strategy, which aims to become a climate neutral company. In its pursuit of reduced consumption of chemicals and water, Clarion Hotels promote the chain’s and the visitors’ interest to preserve the environment.

Guests staying more than one night have the choice to opt out of cleaning for a maximum of 3 nights per stay. Clarion rewards the guest for the active environmental choice, with the points in the chain’s loyalty program. Guests can keep the points or donate them to the Nordic Choice project, Sweet Dreams, in collaboration with UNICEF.

This summer, 15-20% of the guests have chosen Green Stay when they stay more than one night, a number that is likely to increase, as the program becomes more familiar. 70% of the Green Stay guests chose to donate their points to UNICEF, rather than keep them for themselves.

Table eatery at Social Clarion hotel, Stockholm

“Considering that business now replaces summer visitors, we hope that the positive trend continues,” says Berghult.

The four best Clarion Green Stay Hotels are Clarion Hotel Visby, Clarion Hotel & Congress Trondheim, Clarion Hotel Malmo Live and Clarion Hotel Amaranten, Stockholm.

Feature image (on top) Clarion Hotel Sign, Central Stockholm

Sweet Dreams in Scandinavian Hotels, source: Clarion Hotels

Life in Lappland

dailyscandi

October 22, 2016

The indigenous Sami of northern Scandinavia, a hardy semi-nomadic people, can trace their roots back thousands of years. Learn more about life in Lappland

The Sami call themselves “the people of the eight seasons”. They are indigenous people who live in Sweden, Norway and Finland’s most northerly provinces, and can trace their heritage back more than 8,000 years.

They have their own language, religious traditions and customs. While the life of the Sami has changed in modern times (snowmobiles have become ubiquitous in the last decade), the annual cycle of the reindeer – rutting, herding, separating, slaughtering, calving, marking – continues to shape the Lappland calendar.

The winter round-ups are among Europe’s most colorful events, resembling scenes from a Wild West film transposed to an Arctic setting. Visitors can enjoy this ancient culture at festivals and ceremonial occasions held throughout the year, where one can sample reindeer delicacies and marvel Sami handicrafts.

Life in Lapland — Vastenjávrre (Vastenjaure) Photo: Wikimedia Commons

A vivid way to experience the Sami lifestyle and landscape is in spring and summer, when the mountain blossom with heather, globe flowers, cloudberries and countless other species, inviting the visitor to take to the trails and woods of the many national parks in the Sami regions of Scandinavia.

Padjelante (“the higher mountain” in Sami) is the biggest national park in Sweden. It is one of Sweden’s most beautiful areas, with rolling plains, gently rounded mountain massifs, huge lakes such as Vastenjaure and Virihaure, and small streams, which the Lapps call jokk. It has always been an important pasture for their reindeer herds.

Midningt sun golfing. Photo: Visit Bodoe — Golf is the fastest growing sport in Scandinavia, and its popularity has exploded. In Scandinavia’s far north enthusiasts like to play golf under the Midnight Sun. Photo: Visit Bodoe

For golf enthusiasts, nothing can quite top the thrill of golfing under the Midnight Sun in the glorious days of summer, where (depending on latitude and cloud cover) the sun is visible for up to 70 summer days.

Anglers will find true paradise in the primeval wilderness of the north, laces by swift rivers and streams and punctuated by lakes and pools.

To enjoy the wintry wilderness in an entirely different way, try dog-sledging, which is offered by many firms in northern Scandinavia. Drive the dog-sledge yourself or sit back in the vast silence of the mountains and be driven by a team of huskies. Your guide will tell you how to take care of a sledge dog and share bits of trivia, like the fact that in the Inuit language there are 18 different words for snow.

Dog-sledging, common in Greenland, is now well established in Sweden and Norway and is growing in popularity. The Sami winter vistas can also be enjoyed on reindeer sleigh rides and snowshoe treks.

Ice climbing is popular, too. Fishing through the ice is common on most lakes and rivers.

To soak up the hard life of the Sami fully, the visitor can stay in the world’s largest igloo, the Jukkasjärvi Ice Hotel in Sweden. Each autumn, as the Arctic temperature plummets, Lapplanders rebuild this celebrated igloo, from thousands of tons of snow and ice.

Inside it houses a church, hotel, gallery, golf room, cinema and bar, named appropriately Absolute Ice. Guests sleep in warm sleeping bags on mattresses of spruce bough and reindeer skins. Temperature average -4 ͦC (25 ͦF).

The hearty fare served from the kitchen and the activities waiting outdoors don’t leave guests much time to feel cold. Next morning the hotel will issue a certificate of survival. It’s not quite the same as herding reindeer, but it brings you one step closer to understanding how climate, custom and sheer human persistence have made the Sami what they are today.

Life in Lappland, written by Tor Kjolberg

Feature image (on top): Sami folk costume from Jokkmokk, Arctic Sweden. Photo: Visit Sweden.

Ten Hours with the Trolls in Norway

dailyscandi

October 22, 2016

My heart sank as I looked at the itinerary. Saturday 4 June – leave hotel 7.45am, arrive at next hotel 5.45pm. In between, two train journeys and a three and a half hour bus ride. Ten hours of travelling. Transfers for ten whole hours. Experience ten hours with the trolls in Norway.

Who on earth would force people to go through that on a fam trip?

Then, of course, it turned out to be one of the most memorable days I’ve ever had. The Norway Cool Agency Challenge, organized by Visit Norway, saw more than 30 event professionals arrive in Trondheim a Thursday lst summer, before an action-packed Friday that saw us whizz out on the fjords on a RIB, taste beer in at a sun-kissed brewery, complete a GPS city exploration challenge and rock out at Rockheim, the Norwegian museum of popular music.

But it was the Saturday that proved most intriguing, as the group split up into four to go and explore four other cities, namely Oslo, Bergen, Tromso and Alesund.

I was in the Alesund group, and so it was that as the three other groups headed to the airport to their respective destinations, we found ourselves chugging across Norway on a train. With the run of the carriage, we found the trip to our first stop Dombas flew by as eight of us in the group nattered away and got to know each other a bit better, while outside the landscape slowly became ever bigger and more breathtaking.

Our next train, from Dombas to Adalsnes, known as the Rauma Railway, is one of those routes that regularly pops up in “Top 10 train journeys to take before you die” lists. And with good reason; it is an hour and a half of sheer wonder. The gradient is too steep to go directly from A to B, which means that the track winds its way slowly down the valley to its final destination, giving you ample time to take in the towering peaks, the lush valley, the raging waterfalls and the overwhelming beauty of Norway’s west coast.

Trollveggen (Troll's Wall) — Trollveggen (Troll’s Wall)

The highlight is the Trollveggen, or the Troll Wall, the tallest vertical rock face in Europe, more than a kilometer in height and capped off with vicious jagged teeth along its extensive summit ridge.

Once we’d got our breath back from that, we found ourselves on a bus heading towards the Trollstigen (also known as the Trolls’ Path – they’re really into trolls in Norway), a series of steep inclines and 11 hairpin bends that scale the almost sheer face of the mountainside.

It felt like we could be on course to recreate the end of The Italian Job at any second, but thankfully we made it up to the viewing platform at 700 meters where we were able to finally relax and take in the mind-boggling mountain scenery.

Being up so high, the tops still had a healthy covering of snow, and so it was that a little further on we stopped to make snow angels, an activity that quickly descended into a pretty vicious snowball fight. Whether by accident or design, this wore out the group and we dozed happily all the way over into the next valley as we approached our final destination, the Storfjord Hotel in Skodje.

A secluded luxury boutique hotel on a hillside overlooking a fjord and a mountain range, the Sunnmøre Alps, I can’t think of a more picturesque place to find yourself for the night. The wooden cabins, the roaring log fires, the four poster beds – and on top of all this a high-end restaurant turning out food to die for.

Over a stunning evening meal, we reminisced about the day’s activities and one thing was agreed – in most places, 10 hours of travelling would be a chore, but when your surroundings are as staggeringly beautiful as they are in Norway, 10 hours of travelling is a very rare pleasure indeed.

Written by Paul Harvey

Feature image (on top): Dombås – Åndalsnes by train

Ten Hours with the Trolls in Norway, was published in Meetpie. We thank editor Gareth Roberts for his kind permission to reprint the article.