Everything That Makes Zara Larsson Proud to Be Swedish

Hi, I'm Zara Larsson, and today I'm gonna be showing you

some of my favorite things from Sweden

and what makes me proud to be a Swede.

I'm gonna show you some snacks, some foods,

talk to you about places you can visit,

and show you how to celebrate midsummer like a true Swede.

Let's go!

[upbeat music]

So first off, we have a classic fika,

which is basically the time where you don't eat

like the real meals, no breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

It's all that you snack on between those meals.

And usually, it's some sort of pastry,

or, you know, like this is a kanelbullar.

And the Swedish cinnamon buns, which this is,

are quite different than the American ones

because we have this [foreign language]

which is these big sugar things instead of that frosting.

I've never had an American cinnamon bun.

I think they look so scary.

Okay. Okay.

Mm-hmm.

[Zara laughs]

What I like is the cardamom bun.

They're very yummy.

And then this is the semla, which is very seasonal.

You would only have this in the month of February.

Mm.

I'm not a huge fan of it because inside of it, you see,

this is all cream, and that's all very nice and that,

and a bun.

So this is kind of like marzipan.

But it's weird because I really like marzipan,

but I don't like this.

But they're like cousins, but this is the cousin

that I don't like very much.

So I'm gonna do this.

You can put this in a bowl with warm milk.

Like, you would eat it as a soup.

You would put it in the bowl with the warm milk.

Then we're over to this little very exciting thing.

When I grew up, I was only allowed to have it on Saturdays

because Saturdays is the candy day.

Every Saturday, I got to pick 10 pieces of candy,

and it's like a pick and mix,

and it's in every single store in Sweden.

And I am such a big licorice fan,

so I'm so happy to see one of my absolute favorites ever,

which is a salta patroner.

Oh, sorry, I'm gonna pick it up.

Oh. Whoo!

Okay.

[Zara laughs]

Salta patroner.

This one is just, oh, it's so good!

This one's so good.

Also, this one is amazing, kryptoniter.

This one's my favorite.

It's like raspberry and licorice.

Also, this one's really good.

[Zara speaking in Sweden]

Salty.

These ones are absolutely the worst candy

you could ever have.

This is some old people candy.

But you know what? That's the beauty of it.

You can pick and mix whatever you like.

This one, I haven't seen this in so long.

This is gum, and I'm gonna save that.

I'm actually gonna bring this home.

Thank you.

[Zara speaking in Swedish]

Thank you so much.

This one, you could also have for fika.

You would have this on some bread with a lot of butter,

maybe some of this, which is knykkebrod, the hard bread.

It's like a creamed, smoked fish roe.

And I would understand that you might not love this

if you didn't grow up on it.

But to me, this is just like the most amazing flavor.

It's giving like umami to me.

I am way more of a salty, savory type of person

than I am with the sweet stuff.

Like even the sweets, I would like enjoy a licorice.

Nice, nice.

A lot of people know Swedish food

from the food court at Ikea, and that is pretty accurate.

As you know, we got the Swedish meatballs here,

but we also have some other things to try.

And let's start with that.

So on this little plate, this actually would look like

a typical midsummer, I don't know what it is about

the Swedish holidays.

Maybe it's the same for you guys,

but we do the exact same menu on every single holiday.

Midsummer, Christmas, Easter.

Like it does not matter what kind of holiday,

we have the same menu, period.

On this one right here, I see we got the pickled herring.

I would have it with some sour cream, chives, perhaps.

It's like being at home.

This is my favorite.

I would have it just like this.

This one is also very easy to make at home.

Just shrimp, some mayo, dill, onion.

Mm-hmm.

It's like the Swedes, we love a good pickled something.

Pickled fish, it doesn't sound very nice.

We don't have a lot of seasoning.

So you do let the ingredients or the fish or,

you know, whatever kind of be the star of the show.

Staple.

Staple in Swedish culture.

Swedish cuisine.

Swedish survival, honestly.

The star.

The queen.

The Swedish dish, if you will.

She's simple, she's elegant, she's classy.

Four things.

Meatball, mashed potato, pickled cucumber,

and lingonberries.

And with a yummy, yummy brown sauce for the meatballs.

This combination, I don't know who came up with it,

I would say a genius.

It's just like, it just hits.

It just hits. Oh my God.

This is like being out for a long time.

You're in the mountains, it's windy, it's freezing.

And then you see it. You see a cottage.

And in that cottage, this is what's waiting for you.

Also part of Swedish tradition,

we just get shit-faced on every holiday.

And this glass is very big.

But what's nice about it is that you

don't need to drink the whole thing.

It is not like a shot.

Sometimes, with the people you're around, you say,

Okay, let's just have half.

And then you would sing a song about drinking half of it,

'cause that is part of the fun.

I'm gonna sing a song for you guys.

I'm gonna do my dad's favorite.

[Zara sings in Swedish]

You know what? That was really nice.

That was really nice.

I don't know if it's because I'm grown now, I'm like 26,

I can handle the liquor.

But this was actually really nice.

So whoever wants to have a taste of Swedish akvavit.

Shout out to Ope Andersson!

It's midsummer time, can't you see?

I'm sitting here with the beautiful flower crown,

which is something that you would wear on midsummer.

My favorite holiday in Sweden,

it is celebrated in the middle of summer,

usually on the very lightest day and night of the year.

And we dance around this pole.

Which looks like this and then it's almost like a cross.

And then it hangs two round things

on the pole that lays horizontally.

And what does that look like?

That is a penis, my ladies and gents.

That is, it's what we do.

We dance around the green penis and we thank the penis

for impregnating the earth and making it green and lush.

And we dance like frogs around it.

Sometimes like [foreign language].

Which is a little guy who cries out for his mom.

Like every other holiday, there's a lot of alcohol involved.

Midsummer is probably the holiday where people would go

the most, like, they would go in for it.

It's just so beautiful.

People just look beautiful.

People are off work and can just like celebrate

the fact that at least we have hopefully

two more months of warmth and sunlight.

So, as you can see, this is Sweden.

This is Norway. This is Finland.

This is Denmark.

This is Scandinavia.

Finland is actually not a part of Scandinavia,

but a part of the Nordic.

So I would start my journey here from Stockholm.

If it's summer, down south.

Winter, up north.

So I would take my car and I would

go vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom,

vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom,

all the way down to here, Osterlen.

It's absolutely stunning.

White beaches, beautiful cliffs.

When you are down south here, you could also go

to Malmo, which is the third biggest city in Sweden.

And from Malmo, you can take a train

that takes about 20 minutes, and you can go over

to Copenhagen and just like spend the day there

or have a little beer.

Just chill in Denmark, and then you go right back

and just enjoy your evening here.

But south of Sweden, it's just absolutely gorgeous

in the summer time.

Winter time, I would do the opposite.

I would go up north to go skiing.

Here with Norway, they have the fjords

and they have a lot of mountains.

And up here, you're most likely

are going to see the northern lights.

And there's a lot of reindeers up here.

Maybe Rudolf is from here somewhere.

Last show that I did actually was here in Skelleftea.

And it's really, really fun to come here.

It's an amazing crowd.

You could go on a sled with some dogs.

It's fucking cold though.

But it's so stunning.

And up here, they have a really funny accent, I think,

just like they do down south here.

Also summer time, I like to go here to Gotland,

which is a super old island.

A lot of rich history over here.

I would say it takes about four hours with a ferry.

Limestone city, baby.

A lot of limestone over here.

And that does for beautiful places to swim.

Sweden in general, we have so many islands.

We have about 220,000 islands.

If you hear about Greece having a lot of islands,

you should come here to the Stockholm archipelago,

which is just so, so stunning.

My favorite things in Stockholm

would be, I like Djurgarden a lot.

It's in Stockholm city.

So Stockholm is small, right?

You can walk basically anywhere

and you're always close to water.

But Djurgarden, it's just so beautiful

because it's in the city, but it's like super green.

And not a lot of people live there.

I think like the king's friends live there

and like people like that.

But it's just very nice.

And we also have this thing in Sweden

called Allemannsratten, which means that you could

basically camp wherever you want.

There's no such thing as like a private owned area,

even though it is, you are still allowed to be there.

You're still allowed to exist and do your thing

unless it's on someone's like backyard.

The old town I really love.

I really, really love the Swedish archipelago.

And like I said, there's hundreds and thousands of islands.

So wherever island you go to, I bet it's lovely.

Thank you so much for watching

and I hope to see you soon in Sweden.

Bye.