A pot of birch sap simmered on Eva Gunnare’s stove. It was a spring morning in Jokkmokk, a small Swedish town in the Arctic Circle, and the snow was melting outside. On the table was a plate of cookies made from dried bilberries, an endemic fruit that Gunnare had collected.
“Most Swedes eat blueberries imported from abroad,” he said, pouring some of the sap into a small glass. “They don’t know we have these delicious bilberries in our own backyard.”
For more than a decade, Gunnare, a 56-year-old Swedish woman, has been trying to restore people’s relationship with nature by teaching them how to forage. Through her lessons on picking wild herbs, identifying edible plants, and making dandelion honey, among many others, she seeks to help locals and visitors better understand nature.
Their approach differs from other tour operators in the region, which tend to focus on outdoor expeditions such as trekking. In Gunnare’s opinion, these do not always help people better understand or respect their environment.
“I don’t want people running through nature,” he said. “I want them to crawl.”
Jokkmokk, with a population of about 3 thousand people, attracts tourists all year round. During the winter, thousands of people flock to the Winter Market, a 400-year-old event celebrating the Sámi, the indigenous people of northern Scandinavia, Finland and western Russia.
“People come here to experience something wild and remote, but a lot of people just do it in a rush,” Gunnare said. “He doesn’t stop to observe the flora and fauna.”
Many of the edible plants you collect can only grow in primary forests, which are home to a greater number of species and where plants and fungi, such as mushrooms, can thrive. By showing tourists the abundance of what can grow in a primary forest, it teaches them why biodiversity is necessary to maintain a healthy environment.
Gunnare worked in various jobs in the tourism sector. But in 2009, she felt the calling to engage with tourists and nature in a different way.
In 2009, Gunnare enrolled in a cooking class at the Sámi Education Center in Jokkmokk. It was a turning point. In summer, when the Arctic sky was bright, she would stay outside picking until midnight and return home covered in mosquito bites and with splinters in her fingers. “I really felt like this would be my way of getting people to care about nature,” she said.
Two years later, Gunnare founded Essense of Lapland and has been offering foraging tours ever since.
In Sweden, foraging has long been an important culinary and cultural practice. For the Sámi, gathered foods—including herbs and roots—are the core of their diet.
Over the past 20 years, interest in collecting has increased significantly globally. In the mid-2000s, foraging made a resurgence with the rise of New Nordic cuisine, inspired by Danish restaurant Noma, which places local, seasonal and foraged ingredients at the center of dishes. A wave of foraging influencers has also emerged; On TikTok, the hashtag #foragingtiktok has more than 160 million views.
Reconnecting people with nature motivates their work. “I’m not trying to turn everyone into foragers like me,” she explained. “I’m trying to get them to understand it and develop a relationship with it.
“The more people know their environment, the more inclined they will feel to protect it,” he added.
By: Melissa Godin
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6908874, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-09-26 21:50:09
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