The Crayfish Party

Our great grandfathers never ate crayfish. They did not like it. In a letter dated 1562 King Erik XIV wrote to the bailiff of the southern Swedish town of Nyköpingshus asking him to send as many crayfish for his sister Anna’s wedding as he could possibly catch. Later, Erik became so hung up on crayfish that he started to breed them in the moats around Kalmar Castle.

In a letter dated 1562 King Erik XIV wrote to the bailiff of the southern Swedish town of Nyköpingshus asking him to send as many crayfish for his sister Anna’s wedding as he could possibly catch. Later, Erik became so hung up on crayfish that he started to breed them in the moats around Kalmar Castle.

Erik had acquired his taste for crayfish while travelling in Germany. There, the culinary attributes of crayfish had long been appreciated by the monks. In time, the monks’ appetite for crayfish was helped along by the many days of Lent in the Catholic Church, during which it was prohibited to eat meat. Indeed, there are stories about certain monasteries consuming a massive 30,000 crayfish during lent. The monks turned a blind eye to the bible, which forbade eating animals with more than four legs. Crayfish they ate.

Once royalty began to eat crayfish, the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie soon followed in their footsteps. Before long, the crayfish was a sought-after food among the well-heeled, whereas farmers and fishermen still couldn’t care less.

During the 19th century crayfish became immensely popular in the posh restaurants of Europe. Crayfish were abundant in Swedish lakes and Sweden rapidly became the largest exporter of crayfish in the world. But, alas, happiness is often short-lived. In the second part of the 19th century a lethal crayfish plague was introduced to Sweden and soon the shellfish was hard to come by.

Within the bourgeois classes the crayfish had by this time become established as a symbol of late summer. Crayfish parties had become something of an institution and had also started to spread among the less affluent classes. Because Swedish crayfish was becoming increasingly hard to come by, Sweden soon turned from being the largest exporter of crayfish to be the largest importer of crayfish in the world.

The crayfish plague was a catastrophe for the Swedish crayfish. To repair the damage, the fishing authorities decided in 1969 to introduce the American crayfish to Swedish waters. The American crayfish is immune to the plague, but is nevertheless a bearer of the plague. The American crayfish is thus helping to speed up the spreading of the crayfish plague -- and sadly, nothing can help the Swedish crayfish to survive in the long run.

Even if most Swedes like to think of the Crayfish Party as an age-old tradition passed on from their forefathers and originating in the distant past -- that is far from the truth. The truth is rather that their great-grandfather viewed the crayfish as some sort of repulsive creature crawling on the bottom of lakes. Probably -- he never even thought of eating it.