The crayfish season begins now in august and is a big tradition over here.

The tradition started already in the Medevial days, when the monks fasted, they consumed large amounts of crayfish. Because the crayfish were counted as fish, the monks could eat crayfish without feeling guilt when they were not allowed to eat meat. After a while even the Royal courts and nobility realized that the crayfishes were delicious. The fashion to eat the red claw-provided animals spread even to Sweden.

From the beginning they ate the crayfishes warm or used in different stews, it wasn’t until the end of 19th century (1800-talet in Swedish) they begin to let the crayfishes cool off and decorated them with twigs of crowned dill. The meat is found in the claws and in the tail of the animal.

During 1930 the word crayfish party showed up in the press for the first time. The word originates from the middle-class crayfish supper they had on porches and in blooming bowers to bid farewell to the summer. When the time passed it became more and more popular to arrange crayfish party’s.

To not exterminate the Swedish river crayfish, they decided that there will be a première date, which is the 8th of august. But they took it away in 1993 and now we can have a crayfish party when ever we want to (wohoooo :-), though many people still wait until today.

The access of Swedish crayfishes is limited, so they are very expensive, which is the reason for why we import crayfishes - still cooked according to Swedish recipes - from other countries as Turkey, China and USA.

There is still held these very special party’s, with special decorations, where people wear funny hats and seems to have eating habits as savages *lol*.

I, myself, am no big crayfish fan, so maybe that’s why I can see it with a little bit different point of view… But I still like to go on a crayfish party - hey, it’s a party! *lol* We’ll see if it comes any invitations this year, my brother-in-law has been talking about it.

I often wondered how forreigners experience this behaviour if they get the chance to see it. People are eating them with their hands, loudly slurping and sucking out the fluid out of the cooked crayfishs, singing very loud snaps (very strong alcohol) songs.

Usually many people are having a very bad hang-over nauseous the day after….

NOTE: They often blame it on the mixture of the crayfish and the alcohol, but I do believe that it’s most of the time is the alcohol that does it. People tend to forget how many and how fast they’re drinking these snaps! *lol*