111 Cultural post 1

[malory rodriguez]

Over break Louise had us write a paper about a topic that we that we knew a lot about in the Swedish culture or something we had never heard of. I chose to write a topic about St. Martin's day. The history of this is when St. Martin tried to hide to avoid being ordained . In order to do so he hid in a goose pen. But the geese made ​​noises and people found him . He celebrates his name day in November. This is the month when the geese are ready to kill it also was an important medieval autumn party. The practice came to Sweden from France. This feeding of geese is most popular in the south of Sweden in a place called Skåne where many of them are farmers. A lot of people like to eat black soup with goose. There is no tradition to eating soup with goose but a lot of people think it tastes really good. St. Martin's Day is similar to American groundhog's day. In the sense of it's silly tradition.  If it was snowing on St. Martin's day there would be no snow for Christmas. If the holiday was on a Friday or Saturday, the winter of that year would be hard. Now more about what you do on the holiday. Some people cook goose in their homes but most people go to a restaurant. There is a lot of food on the day and all parts of the goose was used. The dinner begins with black soup, made ​​of goose blood and goose broth. It has also purees and spices. The soup is thick, red, and black. Things such as : goose liver sausage , prunes and potatoes are also eaten. The goose tends to have things like apples and prunes inside.