Welcome to another monthly round-up! You may have noticed that we have a new URL – I ended up buying a domain name and email server, so there’s now an option to sign up to a mailing list if you want updates when new round-ups are published (see bottom of page).
This month is more photo heavy than last, so I hope you enjoy some Swedish winter shots. There’s also an article about the hallowed Danish rye bread O.o
Winter holiday in Sweden
Matilda had the great idea of going for a winter holiday, and I’d also been very eager to explore more of Scandinavia while living in Copenhagen. So we packed our bags and escaped the grey clouds of Copenhagen and took a ~6-hour train to Sweden’s capital, Stockholm. Stockholm (circa 1 million people) definitely has a bigger city feel compared to Copenhagen (circa 600,000). IMO Copenhagen feels a bit cosier, and easier to get around with amazing cycling infrastructure. Still we had a really nice time walking around, thrift-shopping, and tasting baked Swedish delicacies. We also visited a cool photography museum (Fotografiska) that was quite inspiring!
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0
The next leg of the journey took us circa 600 kilometres north, to a latitude of ~64°N! Adelaide by comparison is ~35°S (Wellington ~41°S) – so much closer to a pole than we’ve ever been before. We took a sleeper cabin in a night train (see photo), which was a really fun experience, before arriving at our destination at around 9 AM. Granö is a small rural town of roughy 200 inhabitants, and home to Granö Beckasin, a cosy hotel and destination. Here we stayed in a hyggelig cabin, went for hikes in the snow, cross-country skied, and did mushing (dog sledding)! They also had a sauna and hole in the ice for winter bathing. We did plan to go for a northern lights tour, but alas it was cloudy on the night (good excuse to go back up north again!). Overall it was a really nice stay, and Granö Beckasin definitely seems to be accomplishing what they set out to do – making Granö a holiday destination and in doing so keeping the town alive.
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0
A definite highlight for me was the mushing (dog sledding). We got to drive a two-person sled, with one person sitting and the other driving. The dogs take care of most of it (they follow the guide’s sled), but you have two brakes that you need to apply on downhills or when you want to stop. On the uphills, you also hop off and run to help push the sled up. The guides were super nice, and we learned a lot about what it takes to look after and manage mushing dogs. They know each of the ~40 dogs by name, experience, and personality. They have to account for which dogs get along with each other and their relative experience when picking the sled team. The lead (front) dogs also receive special training such that they can make turns on verbal command. It was a fantastic experience, and really made me appreciate how special these animals are.
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0
After three beautiful days in the snow it was time to head home, so we took an hour’s bus ride to Umeå, where we had a few hours to kill before our train back to Stockholm. We took a nice walk along the waterfront (ice-front??), and came across a really cool sculpture made by Jaume Plensa. I only took one photo, but it’s designed to look similar from different angles, see here for examples. We then went to a really nice contemporary art museum, Bildmuseet, which as it turns out was designed by the acclaimed Danish Henning Larsen Architects.
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0
The home leg of our journey took us on a six-hour train from Umeå to Stockholm, followed by another night train to Copenhagen, where we arrived around 8 AM. Overall, it’s one of the best holidays I’ve had – it was magical being so far north and seeing so much snow! Train travel is also so much more relaxing than flying, and night trains (if you have a bed) are a really comfortable and efficient way to travel.
Rugbrød (rye bread)
Let’s go back to Denmark, and cover a topic that’s particularly Danish, namely rugbrød (rye bread). Most Danes consume rugbrød every day – typically for lunch – and I reckon it’s the secret to their height and overall health :-) It’s high in fibre and extremely nutritious. Danes and rye (Secale cereale) go back at least 1,000 years, and my understanding is that it was more cold-tolerant than wheat, hence its popularity up here. A classic Danish food is smørrebrød (translates to butter bread), an open-faced rugbrød sandwich. This can be as simple as rugbrød with whatever toppings/leftovers you happen to have in the fridge, or a fancy version offered by one of the many smørrebrød establishments in the city (see photos).
In Feb I tried making rugbrød for the first time – mostly to practice for when I head back to Aus/NZ one day (it’s really hard to find there). My undertanding is that all rugbrød is made with sourdough due to the special characteristics of rye flour. Rye has a much lower quantity of gluten than wheat, relying instead on pentosans (polymers of 5-carbon sugar) for texture. Rye also typically has a much higher (and more active) amylase content (enzyme that splits amylose into simple sugars). This is where the sourdough comes in, as the acidity lowers the amylase activity – preventing all the amylose from being chewed up, which would result in a gummy texture. I honestly found it much easier than my usual wheat sourdough loaf, though maybe I got lucky with the fermentation timing!
Sådan laver du rugbrød (this is how you make rye bread). Once again, I followed a recipe from the excellent Simpel Sourdough. Seeds and cracked rye kernels are soaked overnight to soften, then the next morning this mixture is added to rye flour, sourdough starter, water, salt, and optionally malt syrup/molasses. Let the microbes do their magic (they were super active with this mixture!), then bake. Really nice as toast in the morning with butter and Vegemite/Cenovis or honey. It’s definitely a loaf I’ll now be making regularly, and a nice recipe to bring back to Aus/NZ one day.
Spring is slowly making itself known
The days are getting longer (finally!) Presently, the days are 4 hours and 22 minutes longer than at the winter solstice, which makes a huge difference! Sunrise is at roughly 6:40, and sunset is at roughly 18:00, so we’re over the worst of the darkness. We’ve even got some brave plants that are bringing some colour to the landscape (despite the fact that it’s 2 degrees C as I’m writing this!):
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0
Photo of the month
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0
Beer of the month
Thought I’d be cheeky and include a new ‘Beer of the month’ section! This month we have To Øl Natur’s Omnipresent. Really nice balance of sweetness from local honey, funkiness from the wild microbes, and fruitiness from local cherries. To Øl is a great Danish craft brewery located on Zealand (easternmost island of Denmark, where Copenhagen is also found). They have a project, To Øl Natur, which is all about barrel-aged mixed-fermentation saisons and wild ales. Wild here refers to not inoculating your brew with a specific strain of microbe (e.g. Saccharomyces cerevisiae AKA brewer’s yeast), but opening the door to other microbes. This usually results in super interesting flavours – but I’ll cover this in a future post :)
Interesting things I’ve read/watched
Story about why blue LEDs were so hard to make – and why cracking this was so important for more efficient lighting + most screens that we now use. Veritasium is an amazing science communicator, and I recommend checking out his other stuff if you haven’t already.
Richard Dennis’ speech to the National Press Club. Richard (from the Australia Institute) is a national treasure, and I love how he calls out bullshit in simple terms.
In Norway they tax the fossil fuel industry and they give university education to their kids for free. In Australia we subsidise the fossil fuel industry and we charge our kids a fortune to go to uni. The Australian government collects more money from HECS [student loan system] than it does from the petroleum resource rent tax.
I can highly recommend his book, Econobabble.
Why facts don’t change minds: Insights from cognitive science for the improved communication of conservation research. Really eye-opening paper about how people process information for decision making. The focus is on conservation information, but the underlying ideas apply universally IMO.
According to Yanis Varoufakis, capitalism has been killed by technofeudalism – which is much worse. The thesis is that we are now serfs to big tech overlords (Amazon, Google, Apple, Meta), and that the traditional capitalist market is no more. I’ll definitely be adding his book on this to my reading list.
