After my successful Midsummer’s Eve supper club collaboration earlier this year with Linn Soderstrom, we are hosting a traditional Anglo-Swedish New Year’s Eve/Julbord for 2015. Expect home cured and smoked salmon, pickled herrings in sandalwood, Champagne, Kalix roe, Brussel sprouts (that’s v Swedish apparently). I will also do a vegan alternative for those that request it.
One tradition that Linn mentioned is cooking tin, something known as molybdomancy. According to wikipedia:
The shapes are often interpreted not only literally, but also symbolically: a bubbly surface refers to money, a fragile or broken shape misfortune. Ships refer to travelling, keys to career advancement, a basket to a good mushroom year, and a horse to a new car.
Linn told me:
“We have a New Year’s tradition where we melt down tin in a small saucepan over an open fire or on the stove. Then we pour it into cold water and we can see what the little figure of re-shaped tin looks like.
The shape of the tin figure says something about the coming year. If it looks like a heart there will be love, if it looks like a hammer you will have a lot of work. And so on…
My great grandmother always said: ‘Gregory Peck’ before she poured the melted tin into the cold water. And she always said that the tin figure looked like him. ‘This is the year I’m going to get him'”
They do cooking tin in Austria too. A close friend is from Saltzburg and every New Years Eve we gather together at her house for this ritual. Huddled over a flame with melted metal in a spoon over a flame, we resemble particularly convivial addicts cooking up our smack.
Last year, the shapes I recall the best were palm trees, hedgehogs, a misshapen pair of spectacles and a ball of fur (not sure there's an interpretation for the latter!).
I'd never heard of this before Linn told me. Love the idea and think it will be a lot of fun on the night. Yes like being crack addicts!
Ball of fur: I foresee you will get a new pet?