The weather in Scandinavia was cool and damp but the cuisine proved to be an entirely unexpected bright spot. Against a backdrop of grey skies and goosebumps, we sat down in a classic Copenhagen café to experience our first official smørrebrød, the famous open-faced sandwich.  We were served thick slices of dense, dark bread studded with sunflower seeds and topped with an array of tasty fillings:  salmon salad with shaved cucumber, grilled pork tenderloin with sweet pickle slices, baby shrimp and egg, and a homemade chicken salad with bacon.  The helpings were enormous and the flavor combinations fantastic. We failed to conduct a proper taste test of Danish, our samples being limited to those that were served on our breakfast buffet.  Both flavors (cinnamon and cheese) were quite tasty but we couldn’t quite help feeling as though more compelling offerings were to be had.  After all, the Danes don’t claim to have invented the pastry; they credit the Viennese bakers with that.  The humble Danes simply perfected it. Once in Sweden, or more precisely the island of Gotland (the Martha’s Vineyard of the Baltic), we had our first taste of herring.  Prior to this, my notion of herring was limited to those refrigerated jars of fish floating in brine you can occasionally see in the refrigerator case at the supermarket.  This herring was nothing like that.  It was sublime.  Three small fillets were delicately fried and served atop a mound of creamy mashed potatoes which, in turn, were topped with a green onion compound butter.  The onions grow only on the island and are slightly reminiscent of dill which is found in many, many dishes.  Alongside was a small dish of lingonberry compote.  Fish, potatoes, and fruit??  Logic suggested it would be a culinary catastrophe but, lo and behold, it was an inspired combination.  The cool, tart yet sweet fruit was the perfect foil to the butter and fish oil.  I ate every last morsel and only reluctantly offered a single stingy taste to the rest of the family. While I enjoyed my herring, Russ sampled the swordfish smothered in bacon, broiled onions, and capers with fresh greens on top, and the kids worked their way through a huge basket of smoked shrimp.  Each shrimp had to be individually peeled, a gloriously gory job.  They were then eaten on a toast triangle spread with a chili aioli.  Definitely kid-approved. For dessert we sampled another island specialty, the saffron pancake.  The island Vikings were avid traders and their routes brought them as far as Istanbul and beyond.  Gotland in the early 11^th-12^th centuries was a thriving trade center with 8,000 residents; Stockholm had 1,000.  The saffron pancake, a vestige of this time, is served with sweet almond whipped cream and a salmbärssylt jam.  These berries, again, grow only on the island.  They are similar to wild blueberries but are more flavorful and turn a beautiful deep red once cooked – again a perfect foil to the richness of the cake. Our hands-on culinary experience occurred at the Viking Village (see Carter’s post), a sort of 9^th century Plymouth Plantation Viking-style.  There we baked bread from an ancient Gotland recipe.  It was a simple dough comprised of dark wheat flour, flat oats, cumin, salt, honey, oil, and water but it was a rich man’s bread because of the spices and sweetener.  We flattened the dough into rough discs and cooked them on an iron slab placed over an open fire.  It was unleavened and resembled a golden pita when baked.  While still warm, we slathered it with honey and ate it as the honey melted and dribbled down our chins.  Fantastic and filling.  We skipped lunch that day. RUSS ADDENDUM:  One pic below has blue fish candies - these were after dinner mints?  Nope after dinner salty-licorice drops.  Yuck!  Another pic shows warm blankets waiting on all the cafe seats - we saw this throughout Scandinavia.  More on the beer... we learned in the Viking Village that barley was their staple crop and that they drank plenty of beer (along with milk and meat, making them taller by a head than most medieval peoples).  However they did not use hops; they used local herbs.  Our tour guide explained you can find Belgian herb beers that are more in the style of what a Viking will drink.  In terms of wines what we have had here has been French and tasty!