A pot of birch sap cooked in Eva Gunnare’s stove. In the small Arctic town of Jokkmokk in Sweden, it was early May and the snow was beginning to melt outside. On the table was a plate of cookies made from dried bilberries, a native fruit that Gunnarre had collected the previous season.
“Most Swedes eat blueberries imported from abroad,” she said, pouring the sap into a small shot glass. “They don’t know we have such delicious bilberries in our backyard.”
For more than a decade, Gunnarre, a 56-year-old Swedish woman, has tried to restore people’s relationship with nature by teaching them how to forage. Through her lessons on picking wild herbs, identifying edible plants, and making dandelion honey, she aims to give locals and foreign tourists alike a deeper understanding of nature. .
Her approach differs from other tourism operators in the region, which often focus on outdoor expeditions such as trekking and skimobiling. Gunnarre believes that these do not necessarily help people better understand or respect their environment.
“I don’t want people running in nature,” she says. “I want them to crawl.”
With a population of about 3,000, Yokumoku attracts tourists from all over the world all year round. Tens of thousands of tourists visit in winter. winter market, a 400-year-old event celebrating the Sami people, an indigenous people of northern Scandinavia, Finland and western Russia. Others are drawn to the promise of seeing the Northern Lights or going skiing or dog sledding. In summer, many tourists flock to the national park for trekking and canoeing.
Part of the area’s charm is its pristine nature. Known as ‘Europe’s Last Wilderness’, this region is home to some of the continent’s last remaining untouched primeval forests.
“People come here to experience something wild and remote, but many just rush through,” Gunnarre says. “They don’t stop to look at the flora and fauna. They don’t always notice that some of them are not doing well.”
forest covers approx. 70% of Swedish land. However, the primary forest, which consists of native tree species that have not been destroyed by human activity, i.e. primary forest, has been largely deforested. Today most of the country’s forests consist of plantations used for logging, Catastrophic environmental impact. These plantations are typically monocultures and are much more vulnerable to disease and natural disasters than primary forests. Also, less carbon is stored.
And the problem only gets worse. Between 2003 and 2019, Sweden’s remaining primary forest was cleared at the following rates: 1.4% per annum. Some estimates suggest that at such rates of logging, the last remaining primary forests will be gone in about 50 years.
However, many tourists traveling in the region are unable to distinguish between primary forests and plantations. “A few years ago, we brought journalists here to ask what they had seen,” said local Sami reindeer herder Nila Yanok. “Where he saw the forest, I saw destruction.”
This is exactly the knowledge gap Gunnarre is trying to address. Many of the edible plants she gathers can only grow in primeval forests, where more species live and where plants such as mushrooms and fungi can thrive. By showing visitors the abundance of plants that grow in primeval forests, she teaches why biodiversity is necessary to maintain a healthy environment.
Originally from Stockholm, Gunnare moved north to the village of Kvikkjok, about 120 miles from Jokkmokk, in 1987 to work in a hiking lodge. She married a Sami pastoralist and raised her children together in Jokkmokk. Over the years, Gunnare has held various jobs in the tourism industry. But in 2009, she felt she needed to engage with tourists and nature in a different way.
“It’s great to hike and ski this land,” she said. “But to really know it, you have to understand the flora and fauna and how they are all connected.”
In 2009 Gunnare enrolled in a cooking class at the Sámi Education Center in Jokkmokk. She says the course was one of the biggest turning points in her life. In the summer, when the Arctic skies were bright, she would be outside foraging until midnight and come home with mosquito bites and debris on her fingers and toes. “I really felt like this was my way of getting people interested in nature,” she said.
Two years later she started her own company. The essence of LaplandShe has been doing foraging tours ever since.
Foraging has long been an important culinary and cultural practice in Sweden. For the Sami, foraged foods such as herbs, root vegetables, and lingonberries are a staple of their diet. Elsewhere in the country, non-Indigenous Swedes have been searching for food since at least 1867, when famine forced many to find food. Make bark bread using lichen.
Over the past two decades, however, there has been a growing interest in foraging around the world. grown big. In the mid-2000s, foraging was revived with the rise of Nordic cuisine at New He, inspired by the famous Danish restaurant Noma, which places local, seasonal and foraged ingredients at the heart of its cuisine.In recent years, the wave looking for influencers appeared. In TikTok hashtag, #foragingtiktok It has been played over 160 million times. Foraging Educators a burst of interest in their work.
But even with renewed interest in foraging, many people remain disconnected from food production. 1 survey We found that 41% of Americans want little or no information about where and how their food is grown. As people become more urbanized and eat more imported foods that are out of season, Losing connection with nature.
“Many of us are estranged from our flora and fauna,” Gunnarre said. “We’ve grown to fear it.”
Reconnecting people with nature, and thus raising people’s awareness of the forces that threaten nature, is what drives Gunnarre’s work. “I’m not trying to make everyone a gatherer like me,” she explained. “I try to get them to understand that and build a relationship with it.”
“It’s a simple but powerful idea,” she said, adding, “The more people know about their environment, the more willing they are to protect it.”
Follow The New York Times Travel upon Instagram and Sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter Get expert tips and inspiration for your next vacation to travel smarter.Dreaming of a future vacation or just an armchair trip? Check us out 52 places to visit in 2023.