Swedish food: The open face sandwich or Smörgås

As it says at the top of this blog, it's the little things in a new country that can be the most jarring. This little thing isn't very distracting to me, or annoying, or a major improvement, I just find it one of those little quirky differences.

Most English speakers know the word smörgås because of Smörgåsbords -crazy buffets usually associated with cruiseships or sometimes used to metaphorically describe a wide assortment of things.

The word Smörgås is the Swedish word for sandwich, but it literally translates to 'buttergoose,' which leads to embarrassing escapades where I dance around my kitchen singing a terrible rendition of Wyclef Jean's Bubblegoose (but in all seriousness, was there ever a good rendition of this song) such as 'you can be at a party cutting loose and you can be snacking on a buttergoose' as my child eats a sandwich (yay for free therapy when he gets older).

But the thing about the Swedish Smörgås is that it is eaten open faced. You take a slice of bread, put some cheese, pickles, butter on top, and eat it (I skip the deli meat since I'm vegetarian). There are advantages to this technique. I find Swedish sandwiches less dry, because the filling to bread ratio is more aligned. But on the other hand it makes for some pretty messy fingers.

That said, for me the Danes take the cake in weird Scandinavian Sandwich eating rituals. When I was at a conference with several Danes - we were all in our early twenties. I watched in amusement as the Danes all neatly ate their sandwiches with knife and fork. I could not bring myself to conform - hell I was in Sweden, not Denmark.