I’m always happy when surströmming articles happen. There is a new one in today’s Wall Street Journal, though I am very disappointed with its complete failure to accurately convey the true horror that eating surströmming entails. Or watching someone eat it. Or being anywhere near an open can. People have been known to spontaneously projectile vomit at the sight of one of the bloated cans squirting out its disgusting brine and stench as it is opened.
I wish I had my scanner here so I could scan proof of my own surströmming horror tale. It began innocently enough when Joachim and I were shopping for food to take on his boat a few days before his wedding in Stockholm in 2000. I expressed an interest in surströmming so Joachim said he’d buy some if I promised to try it. I said yes, stupidly, and this moment of weakness was seized upon by him and John Uppington with glee. They bought a can then and there.
Later, when we moored the boat on an uninhabited island in the Stockholm archipelago, downwind from the city, it was time to open the can. Joachim had boiled some potatoes, added some sour cream, gave me the can opener and a can that had already doubled in size from the gases that had been escaping from the fermenting dead fish inside. Then they fled. They watched from upwind as I began to open the can. Horror! It exploded as I punctured it, with milky-white goo getting on my hands and clothes. But that was nothing compared to the stench; the assault on the senses was physical, like being hit by a bus. I recoiled instinctively before I was able to force myself to confront the surströmming with the intent of eating it.
I don’t remember the rest. My mind must have blacked out the experience. But according to Joachim and John, I did eat some bits of the surströmming. I still get flashes of memory of one particular fish’s bloated translucent bladder wiggling in a Swedish late summer sunset.
[Tue, Aug 13 2002 – 12:34] upPINGton (email) this was one of the best moments of my life.
[Tue, Aug 13 2002 – 12:35] upPINGton (email) when the rotten fish juice squirted out of the can all over your face ha ha ha!