Charles XII in the Ottoman Empire
I was initially writing about food in Turkey, but I got highly side tracked and realized that this would make a good cultural post as well. In May the Swedish government stated that Swedish meatballs are in fact Turkish in origin. It’s called köfte in Turkish and was brought back to Sweden by King Charles XII. But why was Charles XII there in the first place? During the early 1700s Sweden, under Charles XII, was involved in the Great Northern War against Russia, Poland-Lithuania, and Denmark-Norway. The war is completely unrelated to Turkey, so to make a long story short, Charles XII lost a decisive battle at Poltova in 1709 and ended up fleeing into the Ottoman Empire with about 1000-1500 men. He spent several years camped near a city called Bender in present day Moldova. Eventually, he ran out his hospitality and an Ottoman army came to arrest him. The name of this incident in Swedish is Kalabaliken i Bender, meaning the Kalabalik of Bender. The word Kalabalik means a confusion, disorder, or disturbance in Swedish and Finnish, but it comes from a native Turkish word kalabalık, which means just a crowd.
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