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NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS. MORAL AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS. 155
The food in the country districts of Sweden is decidedly better and more
substantial in the fertile level tracts, than in the less productive forest and hill
districts. Rye has hitherto been, in the greatest part of the country, the kind
of grain most used for bread, but of låte years, wheaten bread has come more
and more into use, a circumstance which is partly explained by the fact that
rye-meal and wheaten-flour are, nowadays, often enough, equally dear. In
Norrland and in Dalarne a mixture of rye and barley is used for bread; in the
districts producing chiefly oats, a mixture of rye and oats is employed. The hard
rye bread, called »knäckebröd», is well known to visitors in Sweden; it can be
kept for any length of time without losing its flavour. Nowadays, the use of
this bread has spread as far as to the most southern provinces of our country,
where the people formerly used soft bread exclusively. While speaking of
»knäcke-brödi, we may also mention the Swedish ^smörgåsbord», a custom that our country
shares with Russia, and which consists in beginning the meal with bread and
butter (and spirits), together with which are eaten small quantities of a great
many kinds of dishes served cold, or sometimes even warm. This custom is,
however, on the decline at present.
The interior of Oktorp Farm-yard, preserved in the Skansen Open-air Museum
in Stockholm.
In Table 29 a comparison is made between Sweden and other countries, in
respect to the consumption of some more important articles of food, while Table
30 gives a view of the increase or decrease in this consumption in our country
during the last generation. On the diagram, page 154, the view of the
consumption of wheat and rye goes back as far as to the beginning of the century.
The great increase in the consumption of the finer kinds of grain, especially of
wheat, is very prominent. The use of coffee has also very greatly increased,
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