Berries und mushrooms

Treats from Nature

Juicy shoots, sweet berries, aromatic mushrooms – nature is full of tasty treats! If you are a traveler whose belly dictates your actions, you need to get to know the myriad delicacies nature has to offer.

Cloudberry picking

Of all berries, the cloudberry has always been above all others. This vitamin C bomb of the wetlands has a long shelf-life and it helped keep the feared scurvy away in times past. The cloudberry grows in such a wide range of different environments that you are guaranteed to find plenty of them somewhere every year. So, if the berry harvest of open marshes is unsatisfactory, try looking for some at the edges of backwoods and by brooks and creeks. Seek and ye shall find...

Berry picking

Late summer is a time of abundance in the nature of Lapland. The next berries to ripen after cloudberries are the blueberries. In mid-August, the slopes of fells can be completely blue with berries the size of a fingertip. In September it is time to pick the lingonberries and the crowberries, the latter of which were used in the past to treat overexertion and headaches – and as a love potion.

Mushrooming

The mushroom season begins as early as in spring with the emergence of the brain mushroom. Remember to boil your delicious haul two times in plenty of water, because the brain mushroom is deadly poisonous without proper pre-treatment. In mid-summer, the boletus season begins. Boletuses are safe to eat; the Tylopilus felleus is inedible due to its bad taste, however. In pine heath forests, you can look for pine boletes and matsutake, also known as the pine mushroom, which is a great delicacy among the Japanese.