Gastronomically touring Sweden’s Jämtland
Past Xander Brett, Travel editor
The Croft Magazine // Now that Fäviken is gone, students can afford to go north and enjoy Scandinavia’s largest ski resort, which is located in Europe’s newest culinary region.
I washed up my supper, picked up my suitcase and left the apartment, walking downhill to Stockholm Central Station. I was on my way to the night train, on my way north to Östersund. The sunlight line is in Gävle and we passed before the semi-darkness reached Stockholm. That is why we “jumped overnight”. When I pulled in when the sun rises I was met by Fia Gulliksson. We met in London two years ago, during recordings for Skavlan Prat show. She was over in the UK to revive the Pantechnicon building in Belgravia and turn it into a Nordic-Japanese culinary tower, with restaurants on five floors.
Fia is Östersund’s local hero, responsible for getting his city on the UNESCO list of creative cities. When her friend Magnus Nilsson opened his Fäviken restaurant in the region, Netflix, PBS and newspaper critics flew in from all over the world. Soon it had two Michelin stars, voted Europe’s second best restaurant. As you walked through town, Fia was stopped almost every meter. She took me to a hotel for breakfast, then carried me off to work at Gomorron Östersund: a common office space for over ninety companies. When their new center opens, they will house up to a thousand companies under one roof. For a city with less than 50,000 inhabitants, the transformation is fantastic. I was taken to the outskirts of the city and recorded links to a documentary. Then, an hour or so later, we picked up from the studio, had lunch at a restaurant in the center, and we began our drive west.
Our goal was Flammans Skafferi on the Norwegian border. We stopped first at a food producer, then at a textile factory. From there it was on to the village Järpen, where Fia pointed out a vegetable roof cottage: Magnus Nilsson’s place. Half an hour later we turned past a teachers’ party and cruised into Åre, Scandinavia’s largest ski resort. This is where Zlatan Ibrahimović, Sweden’s most exported football player, hangs. We were there during the European Championships, but he was out of action with a knee injury, so there was a stream of excitement when we saw the distinct ponytail disappear behind the gates of his luxurious pad. At one of the smart hotels we had a drink and a slice of Skagentoast. Then we pushed on to the spectacular waterfall Tännforsen and ended with jazz on the stereo in Storlien.
The border was closed and Fia’s friend Lena Flaten was limited to her restaurant on the Swedish side, despite the fact that she also ran a hotel in her home country Norway. Storlien has a population of only 70 people, so she serves gourmet pizzas to those who pass by. That night it was the local workers. During the ski season, it is the Swedish king and queen. The royal family has a cottage overlooking the village, and Lena told me that they either order takeaway or come down in person to sit under blankets (Queen Silvia likes the fire). We stayed overnight next to the restaurant and drank until the early hours.
The next morning we ate breakfast outside and watched a sunrise over the snow-capped mountains. Snowmobiles were parked until the winter and after a walk up the hill we turned on the radio and headed back to Östersund. After an hour, Fia announced that we were staying for lunch at a friend’s restaurant. She picked up the turn signals in Duved, swerved past a gas station and stopped outside a red apartment building with no visible advertising. Miraculously enough, just like with Lena’s little wooden cottage, when we sat in the parking lot and looked across the road to a winter clothing store, we got a selection of clean, delicate masterpieces. This is Trägårn, and it is a result of Fäviken’s planned break-up in 2019. When Magnus Nilsson moved on, his staff in the region was disbanded. Tightly trained world chefs began to transform local cafes. Trägårn is run, for example, by a former Fäviken employee and the five-man team under her care includes a chef from Cornwall.
After the last tasting of lunch, we ended the trip via another delicatessen, refilling the salt licorice store and a moose hunt on the back roads, before we drove back through Östersund to reach Fias complex on the other side of town (it is complete with a boathouse overlooking the lake: the front windows open onto boats anchored for concerts). Here it was just time for dinner, prepared by her husband, Martin, before I was driven to the station for the night train south.
Before 2010, the only arrivals were a dribbling of skiers. That changed with Fäviken and for a while the rich stepped down. When the restaurant collapsed, along with its 3,000 SEK (£ 250) menu, the rich stopped coming. But Fäviken’s chefs remained. And with no one to serve except the locals, it meant releasing the droppings of Europe’s second best restaurant next to a back road.
Healthcare is not free in Sweden, and the state relies on private childcare. Swedes have embraced capitalism and loudly refused descriptions of a welfare state. So why then do its citizens vote for the Social Democrats every year and happily throw 60 percent of hard-earned salaries at each other? Maybe this is the answer … so that their money can be shared to such an extent that in a restaurant at the customs station, freshly made gourmet pizzas can be enjoyed by both kings and workers on the same evening, sitting around the same wooden table. This is certainly Sweden’s capitalist equality translated happily into action.
Selected image: Epigram / Xander Brett