Smultron in Sweden!

Smultron is one of my favorite things about summer in Sweden. Today I found a patch and they are so unbelievably good! For those of you unfamiliar with smultron, these are wild strawberries. The specific plant is the alpine strawberry (Fragaria vesca), which is available in the US but relatively unknown culturally there.

These small berries are part of childhood in Sweden. Most children will have at some point wandered through the woods (with parents) and eventually stumbled on these little strawberries in the underbrush. The berries are small and delicate and the traditional way of carrying your prize of berries is with a straw, like I've done here. The berries are threaded onto the straw one by one until you have a strand of red pearl like strawberries.