Before the widespread use of refrigeration in northern Sweden, conservation methods were pretty simple. Throw some salt on your gutted herring (a small fish they pull out of the sea up here), clean out the extracted blood and viscera a few days later, add new salt and brine and voila! Your fish is preserved for 6 months or so.

Unfortunately for me, I married into a family who enjoy a slightly, um, how do I put it lightly, more rotten variety of preserved fish. Surstromming (fermented herring) is another archaic method of preserving fish. It’s achieved with the use of less salt than its yummier cousin. After salting, the fish is left in a barrel to ferment and voila! Rotten herring!

Surstromming’s premiere (when it is supposed to taste the best) is in the fall. We will miss it this year, but caught it last year (as shown in these photos). The proper way to eat it is with thin bread, potato, onions, dill and a boat load of snaps (vodka).

I erred on the side of the snaps at this sitting.

To give you an idea of how, well, pungent this stuff is:

1. The fish continues to ferment in the can & often you see the cans in the store looking rather pregnant.

2. You are no longer allowed to fly with a can of surstromming in your luggage, for fear of it exploding and smelling up the airplane.

3. If enjoying your surstromming indoors, you must open all the windows of your home to ensure it doesn’t smell like rotten fish for days.