Art and Culture
SWEDEN
Some special «Sweets Days» in Sweden
By Nathalie and Angelinne
Funny things about us Swedes… our
article this week will be about
Swedish cultures and art, and
because of that our heads
immediately went to culture
traditions such as all the great pastry
days we have here! In Sweden we
like sweets, even so much that we
celebrate some of them in different
days of the year. Already a few
weeks before the celebrating day the
cafés and supermarkets start to
advertise and sell the pastries. So in
this article we’re going to talk about
these days and why we’re celebrating
them.
The waffle day
The waffle day stems from a Christian
tradition, and the real name is “Virgin
Mary’s annunciation”. In Swedish it’s
called “Vårfrudagen” and then it turned
into “Våffeldagen” (=the waffle day). The
Christian tradition started in the 25th of
March 1684, and since we Swedes like
our pastries we made it into a tradition to
eat waffles with jam and whipped cream.
The day of the “semla”
This day has an old Christian ring to it too
and the tradition established in 1594. The
date can vary from 3rd of February to 9th
of March, and that’s because the day
should occur 47 days before Easter. The
day of the “semla” is more commonly
called “fettisdagen” translated to the fat
Tuesday. The name of the celebration
may help you to understand it’s meaning
to our ancestors, this Tuesday is in fact
the day before our Christians date of
fasting. So we prepared ourselves by
eating a lot of fat food! The “semla”
consists of almond icing and whipped
cream in a big wheat bun, with icing
sugar on the top as you can see in the
picture below.