I suspect the 1860s famine has had an impact on a lot of Swedish food attitudes; how we eat, how we view vegetables, and how we cook. But the eery thing is that we can't reflect on it. It's not taught in school, is rarely talked about, and I only know due to my grain hoarding relative. I sometimes tell the story online, so those who died won't just vanish in thin air, erased for a second time.

12/12
#GenerationalTrauma #TheSwedishFamine1860s

My father used to tell the story about my relative with a bit of a smirk. To him it was a story of futile work ending in a welp. At the same time he's the one who never ever can pass a Special Offer in a store. Megapacks of anything is his bane. I didn't think I was affected, until Mother Earth New ran an article about birch bark "bacon" and I screamed "NO! Not eating that!!!" at the magazine fold.

11/n
#GenerationalTrauma #TheSwedishFamine1860s

My relative, however, obviously survived. Who can blame him for saving grains for two consecutive famine years plus one? He kept at it until 1914. That's when world war one broke out. Sweden wasn't involved, but had an active military (just in case, I suspect). So the authorities confiscated my relative's grains as food for the troups.

10/n
#GenerationalTrauma #TheSwedishFamine1860s

So people was denied help since they had the wrong trees growing around their villages. One of the more absurd 'You're on your own' I know. As a result people desperately tried to eat anything, even boiling their own shoes. And died like flies while the grain export to the UK kept on.

9/n

#GeneretionalTrauma #TheSwedishFamine1860s

The birch is a common tree in Sweden, and you can find it even in the northernmost parts. Unfortunately that doesn't mean there are a lot everywhere. At some places there wasn't enough and local officials sent pleas to Stockholm. Could people perhaps exchange bark for pine or fir springtips? The answer was a stiff no. It's birch bark or nothing.

8/n
#GenerationalTrauma #TheSwedishFamine1860s

During famines Swedes have turned to birch bark for meager eating. It's not a straightforward harvest; you have to pick the (right) inner layer and process it heavily to get a kind a flour you can use for bread. Authorities in the south decided that anyone who wanted grain would have to pick an equal amount of birch bark to recieve it.

7/n
#GenerationalTrauma #TheSwedishFamine1860s

But what really made it worse was the attitude of the authorites. First the officials up north were reluctant to report a famine had broken out. They didn't want to look like they Couldn't Handle Things. Then, when the news eventually broke, officials in the south put restrictions on who could recieve help. God forbid someone leeched!

6/n
#GenerationalTrauma #TheSwedishFamine1860s

Unfortunately the help got clogged. Some was due to bad administration. Some due to bad infrastructure; there was only one train line - a single track - connecting the northern and southern parts together. Due to the cold the sea was frozen and grain couldn't be transported by steamship. Cars were barely invented, so trucking it by road was not an option.

5/n
#GenerationalTrauma #TheSwedishFamine1860s

For two consecutive years people in northern Sweden had nothing, and I mean _nothing_, to eat. Meanwhile, southern Sweden were exporting grain to the UK. Telegraphs, newspapers, and trains made sure people in the south knew about the famine, and there was a will to help. Jenny Lind, for example, starred in a huge charity gala to collect funds for the starving.

4/n
#GenerationalTrauma #TheSwedishFamine1860s

Due to the previous bad year most people had very little to sow. And if they - for security's sake - kept some seeds and grains to sow the year after, they were now forced to eat that. Things got dire. Then the worst thing happened; the year after the same coldspell returned. Lakes were literally frozen in the middle of summer.

3/n
#GenerationalTrauma #TheSwedishFamine1860s

Why did he do that? Well, either he personally or his parents had lived through the 1860s famine - the latest great one in Northern Europe. Like so many famines the lightening spark had environmental causes, and the catastrophy was man-made.

In the early 1860s, after a year of bad harvests, spring had such a cold spell everything that had been sown died completely.

2/n

#GenerationalTrauma #TheSwedishFamine1860s

I sometimes wonder how long generational trauma runs. Where does it stop? Does it ever? In my family we have a story of a relative who stored three years' worth of grain in a silo, just to be prepared if anything happened. Apparently it wasn't perfect conditions; the quality of the flour he got from 3yr old wheat was meager. _But he had his grains!_

1/n

#GenerationalTrauma #TheSwedishFamine1860s