🌍 Northern Europe
Also known as: Nordic countries, Scandinavia, Fennoscandia
Scandinavia and Iceland: skyr, fermented milk products, reindeer herding.
Northern Europe — Scandinavia, Finland and Iceland — is a land of short summers and long winters. Livestock spent most of the year in the barn and in summer were taken to distant pastures, where milkmaids made butter and cheese. The cold climate slowed the spoiling of milk, but winter supplies still had to be preserved.
Hence the region’s typical fermented milk products: Swedish filmjölk, Finnish stretchy viili and Norwegian brunost, a caramelised whey cheese. In Iceland, skyr has been made for more than a thousand years — a thick product from skimmed milk, close to a fresh cheese; its whey was used to sour and preserve other foods.
In the north of the region live the Sámi, reindeer herders for whom milking female reindeer and reindeer milk were part of traditional cuisine until the 20th century. Today Northern Europe is a region of high dairy consumption.
What it includes
How it connects to milk
🌍 Northern Europe ← milked in ← 🦌 Moose cow → gives → 🥛 Milk
Links
- Traditional products
- 🥣 Skyr, 🟫 Brunost, 🥣 Rømme, 🥣 Viili, 🥛 Filmjölk, 🧀 Leipäjuusto
- Peoples
- 🧑🤝🧑 Icelanders, 🧑🤝🧑 Sámi, 🧑🤝🧑 Norwegians, 🧑🤝🧑 Swedes, 🧑🤝🧑 Finns
- Dairy animals
- 🦌 Moose cow
- Part of
- 🌍 World regions
Frequently asked questions
What is skyr?
An Icelandic cultured product made from skimmed milk, technologically close to a fresh cheese.
What is brunost?
A Norwegian brown cheese made from boiled-down whey, with a sweetish caramel taste.
Do people milk reindeer in Northern Europe?
Historically the Sámi milked female reindeer; today the practice has almost disappeared.
What to read next
- 🥣 Rømme — Thick Norwegian sour cream made from cultured cream; the richest kind, seterrømme, goes into the festive porridge rømmegrøt.
- 🧑🤝🧑 Sámi — Indigenous people of northern Scandinavia, Finland and the Kola Peninsula; they once milked reindeer and made the rich milk into cheese for winter.
- 🦌 Moose cow — Moose milk is a rarity: moose farms; it was used in therapeutic diets.
- 🧀 Leipäjuusto — Finnish "bread cheese", traditionally made from cow's colostrum: the curd is shaped into a flat round and baked until browned in spots. It used to be dried and kept for years.
- 🧑🤝🧑 Norwegians — The main people of Norway, a mountainous country in northern Europe; their dairy symbols are whey cheese brunost and rømmegrøt porridge.
Similar
🌍 Arctic and the North · 🌍 West Africa · 🌍 Southern Africa · 🌍 Himalayas and Tibet · 🌍 Carpathians · 🌍 Central Europe
Sources
- Spoilage Potential of Contaminating Yeast Species during Cold Storage of Skyr. Foods, 2022
- Faccia et al. Milk Products from Minor Dairy Species: A Review. Animals, 2020