The Day Surstromming Gave American Students a Culture Shock in Their Own Country

In my recent post called “Culture Shock Sweden USA” I included a photo of myself opening and smelling a can of north Swedish fermented herring, or as it is properly called “surströmming”. It is a specialty from the north Swedish Highcoast where I grew up. Underneath the photo I wrote “Unfortunately, all the Americans experienced a culture shock from the fermented herring.” See the excerpt below. What I should maybe have mentioned in my post is that even though it was a joke, it was still true. People were not ready for what was coming.

I am standing in the middle holding a can of surströmming. I am surrounded by other Swedes.
Four Swedes inviting Americans to a fermented herring party. Fermented herring is a north Swedish specialty. Unfortunately, all the Americans experienced a culture shock from the fermented herring. I am the guy smelling the fermented herring can.

After I had posted “Culture Shock Sweden USA”, I posted a link to my blog on my Facebook and I received a few comments including comments from two people who actually were there at the fermented herring party in 1987. I’ve included the comments below.

Surströmming first-timer videos are getting pretty common these days, but I still always end up laughing until I can barely breathe when they start the uncontrollable retching! Always reminds of the Surströmming party and that nasty prank we pulled on the residents of Glaser House! 🤣 — Lee

Delicious memories….NOT!!! 🤢🤮 — Alyce

What happened was that as soon as I opened the can, all Americans dashed for the windows or doors trying to escape the smell. In the party invitation we had left out one or two details, like that surströmming is often said to be the worst smelling food in the world. The “nasty prank” Lee was referring to was me and him going around the dorm and placing left over surströmming in the ventilation drums of the dorm. I admit that was immature. Luckily, it did not work as well as we had hoped, or we probably would have both been expelled.

A dozen herrings and a fish called simpa.
Herrings that we caught in northern Sweden. Plus, a fish called Simpa.

This is an excerpt from Wikipedia on the topic:

Since gaining notoriety as one of the world’s smelliest foods, surströmming has become the focus of a number of “challenge” videos on YouTube and other platforms where people uninitiated to the food show themselves opening a can for the first time, usually to visceral reaction, and then try to eat the fish without additional preparation. Often the videos show the participants gagging, swearing, holding their nose, or vomiting.

To read more about surströmming on the disgusting food museum’s webpage click here.

In the end we had a good time. The smell dissipated and people ate and drank other things we offered. We swedes ate the surströmming but a few others tasted a little bit as well. We knew what the reaction would be, and we did not offer the fermented herring in the hopes that people would love it. It became a good source of conversation and jokes, and that’s what we hoped for. I should say that you normally open the cans outside and let the smell dissipate before you eat them. The surströmming taste mostly like pickled herring with lemon and lots of salt and you typically eat with onion and potato or rolled in soft and thin bread (tunnbröd).

My niece Alma holding a herring. My dad in the background.

Have you eaten any weird foods?

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Author: thomasstigwikman

My name is Thomas Wikman. I am a software/robotics engineer with a background in physics. I am currently retired. I took early retirement. I am a dog lover, and especially a Leonberger lover, a home brewer, craft beer enthusiast, I’m learning French, and I am an avid reader. I live in Dallas, Texas, but I am originally from Sweden. I am married to Claudia, and we have three children. I have two blogs. The first feature the crazy adventures of our Leonberger Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle as well as information on Leonbergers. The second blog, superfactful, feature information and facts I think are very interesting. With this blog I would like to create a list of facts that are accepted as true among the experts of the field and yet disputed amongst the public or highly surprising. These facts are special and in lieu of a better word I call them super-facts.

41 thoughts on “The Day Surstromming Gave American Students a Culture Shock in Their Own Country”

    1. Hello Sara, it is the smell that is off-putting and prevents people from trying. However, if you let it sit outside until most of the smell is gone then it is not too far from pickled herring. I like freshly cooked fish too.

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  2. Ha love it! I actually developed a real taste for herring during my Amsterdam years. I have not tried the fermented Swedish variety, but I’d be game if the opportunity ever arose. Great shot from the party all those years ago.

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  3. I’d probably like it. Fish was the last thing I gave up before going vegan. Sometimes I miss it, but most of the time I don’t because there are so many other foods. The weirdest food I probably at (in the opinion of others, not mine) is durian. It’s so delicious, it’s like a vanilla custard, but most people hate the smell. I love durian so much I got a durian tattoo on my inner calf.

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    1. My niece Greta, she is 19 years old, became vegan just a few months ago and she is insistent on keeping it. When she came for my oldest son’s wedding, we made sure to accommodate her at every meal. Most restaurants and caterers have vegan alternatives now, which made it easy. I’ve heard of durian but I have never tried it. That’s quite interesting.

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  4. I didn’t realize fermented herring had such a strong smell. Weird foods… well, I’ve eaten century eggs which are preserved rather than cooked. The whites turn into a green gel and the yolks turn black. They have a strong sulfur smell, and they are very salty. They taste a lot better than they look!

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    1. Yes, unlike pickled herring, fermented herring has a very strong smell, which is what stands out about it. I have to admit I’ve never heard of century eggs. I probably would have a hard time trying that. The thing is, it is easy to stomach weird food from your own culture. It is a lot harder to try to eat weird food from someone else’s culture. In Sweden we have something called lutfisk, which is jellied whitefish (using lye to jelly it), and I like it. Then one day I tasted the Russian version, almost exactly the same, but I could not eat it.

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  5. When I worked in the pharmacy, most of the people were Asian. One person brought me cuttlefish once. It wasn’t smelly—nothing like the Swedish delicacy you describe—but it was just too fishy for me. When I said this, I got a lot of puzzled looks. Really? My coworkers didn’t think it was fishy at all. I guess it’s an acquired taste.

    I’ve heard about, but never eaten, a Chinese delicacy that a couple people were trying to find the right words to translate. I’m not going to attempt the Chinese name. It was funny because one girl just said, “Bird… spit?” Apparently, there is high-end food that involves the saliva of a particular bird. I doubt it’s readily available in the United States.

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    1. Denise, that’s quite interesting. Yes, as I mention to Priscilla/Vera above, if it isn’t your own culture weird food is much harder to deal with. I think your coworkers should have figured that out. I haven’t tasted cuttlefish either. I’ve had octopus and kalamari.

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  6. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to try the fermented herring. lol I usually do try to give unfamiliar foods a try because I normally like the adventure. I just don’t think I could in this case. LOL Ilove the photo from the party!

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    1. Thank you, Kymber. Yes, most people won’t try it, especially if you do it the way we did it, opening the can inside. Back in northern Sweden you let it sit outside to waft out for 15-30 minutes before taking it inside to serve.

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  8. When I was in college, a professor invited some students over for a traditional Mexican dish, turkey molé (pronounced like molay). It’s turkey served in a chocolate chile sauce. The combination of chocolate and red chile seemed very strange at the time, but it’s become one of my favorite dishes since then. It’s a little more savory than the “chili chocolate” you might find on supermarket shelves today, just lightly sweetened with ground-up dried fruit, like raisins. It dates from early European settlement in America when nuns were trying to find a way to make cocoa palatable!

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    1. There’s probably a hundred ways to make molé. My sister-in-law made it from scratch some years ago. My tongue still burns when I think about it. Done well, it’s absolutely delicious.

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      2. Yes you are right Denise. I was just telling TheBurningHeart over at his website that I am pretty sure I had it. I didn’t realize it but I’ve had Chicken con Mole, and it was very good. He said there are at least 50 different Mole.

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    2. About the Mexican dish called Mole, I wrote an article about the surprise of taking to a Thanksgiving party, when Mole was little known in the United States, if you enter my blog the date is November 29, 2020 and titled:
      LIFE IS WORTH LIVING DESPITE IT’S HARDSHIPS, AND MEMORIES FROM AN OLD THANKSGIVING MEAL.
      The account of my experience is at the end of the article. You may enjoy it.

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    3. That’s interesting information. Yes, I agree the molé dish seems strange. It’s amazing that it became one of your favorite dishes despite you not growing up with it. Weird food from other cultures is very difficult to handle for most people, and certainly for me, but weird food from your own culture is not so difficult.

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      1. Strange as molé seemed to me at first, it wasn’t totally outside my cultural frame of reference since my mom was a native New Mexican and good chile sauces were part of my upbringing. But chocolate was a new ingredient to me and I was surprised it blended so well with the chile!

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    4. Actually, I think I remember you mentioning that you had New Mexican heritage. New Mexico is an interesting place. I’ve visited a few times for robotics conferences and now because my younger son is studying there, and his girlfriend is from there. I realized they certainly have a lot of chili sauces and the Mexican style food hasn’t been filtered through Texas yet.

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  10. When I was a child, I remember reading something about fermented fish, eaten in Southeast Asia, I never tried it, but I loved the idea of pranking my friends, telling them that it was good time to eat that delicious dish!
    The reactions on my friends’ faces were enough to make me laugh!

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    1. Yes, pranking your friends, that’s one thing that weird food is good for, like we did in the dorm. However, if you are from that culture yourself you are likely to like it. I’ll bet the Southeast Asian fermented fish is similar to the north Swedish one, yet I would be afraid to eat the South East Asian version because it is not what I grew up with.

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    1. No, I wouldn’t eat it with the head on. Some people eat it with the head on but that freaks me out. In the can they come with their heads off. I should say that the photos of Alma and the bowl of herring was right after catching them in the Baltic sea / Bay of Botnia. Herring used to be a big source of income in the Highcoast, which is the north Swedish area with lots of coastal mountains and fjords.

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    1. “I love to experience eating weird foods” LOL yes I’ve seen that in your blog posts. “fried worms”. If you told me what it was I would not try it. Maybe if you said try these local different peanuts.

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