The spruce shoot syrup simmers on the stove while Eva Gunnare arranges some of her collected herbs, flavorings, ointments, and tinctures in her new premises in the village of Lassbyn.
Eva operates with Boden municipality as her base but the entire Swedish Lapland as her workplace.
“I felt that a lot is happening here and I have many collaborations with facilities in both river valleys of Boden municipality. It’s easy to get into the villages here and become part of a village community.”
This is now the heart of her company Essence of Lapland, which draws strength and ingredients from nature’s pantry. Eva’s path to a life of proximity in Boden municipality has gone through the mountain world. She came as a 20-year-old from Stockholm to Kvikkjokk mountain station.
“It was an enormous infatuation, with everything! There were such strong forces, the foot of Sarek, the roar of rapids. I felt that this is where I come into my own,” she says with eyes shining at the memory of her first summer in the north.
Little did she know then that today she would have an adult son to a reindeer-herding Sami, have built up a business where old Sami knowledge is combined with her innovative recipes, found a new, own life as a food ambassador for Swedish Lapland, and met love anew. The new love brought her to the forest land, which like the mountain world has taken her by storm.
NATURE AS a BASE
Eva sees many values in the area she has moved to with her company.
“Nature is the basis of all my activities such as taste guidings, workshops, lectures, and herb courses. Nature around my home and at all the facilities I visit. Over the years, I have come to see, appreciate, and understand nature in a completely different way than I did before. There are fantastic lands here with birch, pine, flowers, and all the autumn berries. We don’t need to have our own large garden to cultivate, I’m terrible at that. Here we have Europe’s cleanest nature, beautiful forests, and public places that we all can use.”
HIGH NUTRITIONAL CONTENT
“It has been researched and shown that it’s not just something we imagine, but the nutritional content and flavors are greater here. With a short summer and cold winter, the plants must have strength,” Eva explains.
The combination of proximity to the Gulf Stream, which provides warm summers, together with the light creates a unique growth. When it’s light around the clock, the plants have no rest period but grow continuously.
“Right here we are at the same latitude as northern Alaska and north of Iceland, but we have a completely different diversity, nature, and greenery.”
THE COLLECTOR’S YEAR
Eva speaks of the collector’s year, which for her is shaped by nature’s seasonal pantry. In Eva’s collection baskets and taste samples, the delicacies of the mountains and forests meet. Here follows a selection of Eva’s tips on what you can collect in your own life of proximity here in Boden municipality:
WINTER
Use spruce needles as rosemary, chopped in for example herb butter for game meat. Chop juniper and pine needles and mix with oil for a warming circulation-promoting oil for sore muscles and joints.
SPRING
At the end of April, the birches start to produce sap that can be collected for a very nutritious refreshing drink or cooked into sap syrup. The very first small birch leaves, as big as mouse ears, can be collected and mixed with salt for both body and food.
AUTUMN
Now our forests are filled with berries and mushrooms. First out are cloudberries, also called forest gold. Closely followed by blueberries, bog bilberries, and lingonberries. In the forest land, you can also find the exclusive arctic bramble which has a very intensely sweet taste. But even bird cherries, rowan berries, and juniper berries, which grow wild on bushes and trees, are usable and filled with nutrients and flavors. Our forests are also rich in good edible mushrooms.
EARLY SUMMER AND SUMMER
Now everything comes! The small plant summer savory can be used as broccoli or cress. Lady’s mantle and yarrow are old known medicinal plants that grow wild in meadows and ditches.
The unfurled birch leaves can be used for many things. In sauna culture, it’s no coincidence that bundles of birch leaves are traditionally used for washing in the hot steam. Birch contains substances with shampoo/soap effect and is also antiseptic.
Good tea plants outside the door are raspberry leaves and fireweed (both flower and leaf), red clover, wild chamomile, and meadowsweet. Meadowsweet contains the same substance as the old known headache tablet aspirin and can, according to old healing arts, have both pain-relieving and fever-reducing effects.
KEEP IN MIND
Touch but don’t destroy, never take more than 10-20 percent of a stand. The Right of Public Access gives us the opportunity to pick berries and mushrooms. But pine shoots, sap, and seeds from trees are not included in the Right of Public Access. There you should always ask the landowner for permission if you don’t own the land yourself. Warning: Some edible plants can be confused with poisonous ones by an untrained eye. If you’re unsure, ask someone who knows or consult a flora.
You can read more about the Right of Public Access on the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency’s website.
TEXT: ANNA BERGSTRÖM
