🇸🇪 What is Fika?

Fika is:

• both a noun and a verb!
  “Hey, do you wanna come fika?” or “Let’s take a fika break.”
• a very ubiquitous thing; it is common practice for businesses to have fika breaks built into the workday and into contracts.
• a common first date activity
• a word that derives from the old spelling of the Swedish word “kaffe”. Originally spelled “kaffi”, slang split the word into two and switched it around to say “fika”!

Coffee and Sweden: Old friends

Sweden is third in the world for coffee consumption, right behind Finland at number two and Luxembourg at number one! An average Swede will drink 58, 612 cups of coffee in their lifetime, with an average of 2.59 cups per day! But why is this number so high?

Temperance

The reason? Alcohol. In the latter half of the 19th century, heavy drinking was widespread, and considered a source of social decay by the rapidly growing temperance movement, which considered self-restraint the highest of virtues, and excess the worst of sins. Through what was called “the Gothenburg system” (named after the city it originated in), laws were passed that prohibited liquor stores to keep their profits, and instead mandated that they donate them to charity. This single-handedly cut down the heavy drinking culture. In 1877, 106 out of 193 of the Stockholm’s pubs were shut down, and by 1887, the number of cafes had grown to 800. Thus, coffee became an inseparable part of Swedish culture. That doesn’t mean that Sweden doesn’t drink anymore, but the vacuum that alcohol left back then created ripe conditions for a new culture to form, and that new culture happened to be coffee!