Owing to our large readership outside Sweden, we are including a summary in English of the more comprehensive guides in the magazine. We hope this can be of help to those of you who don’t speak Swedish but still want to follow us!
PAGE 16 GLÖGG CUPS AND SERVICES
● An issue of American Vogue from 1946 featured an article about glögg, a famous and highly intoxicating Swedish beverage that, according to the writer, is always served on New Year’s Eve. The magazine also writes that “so-called limpa” with butter, cheese and finely chopped dill is usually served with glögg. The publication goes on to describe crayfish adorned with parsley and dill, peeled by the guests themselves at the table.
As glögg’s journey to becoming Sweden’s most popular Christmas drink is both long and winding, we forgive the American confusion around this tradition. Spiced wine has been around since ancient times, serving as a medicinal drink based on the belief that spices possess the ability to balance the body’s four fluids and protect against disease.
During the Middle Ages, spiced wine spread to Europe and Sweden, where spices and wine was sold by pharmacies in the 16th century. According to meal researcher and ethnologist Richard Tellström, this is also why we still find glögg essence in our modern pharmacies.
The name glögg originates from the 17th century and comes from the word glödga, meaning to heat or warm up. However, glögg as we know it today was born in the 19th century. It was during this time that the popular drink brûlot, a kind of cognac glögg where molten sugar is dripped into a pot of cognac and the spiced warm wine. This is also when people began serving it from a punch bowl and drinking it from mugs with handles, which is still the typical way to serve glögg today. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, production of glögg exploded in Sweden. Sugar became cheaper and wine merchants began developing their own glögg, including non-alcoholic versions.
– In the national romanticism era of the late 19th century, glögg became a staple of Christmas celebrations. Previously, it was a warming beverage for the entire winter season, although only in the social circles of the middle or upper classes, says Richard Tellström.
During the same period, we saw the launch of specific glögg accessories.
– This was when glögg sets, glögg cups and all the bits and bobs around glögg came out, says Richard Tellström.
PAGE 50 THE FOUR SILVERSMITHS IN GOTH
