Ethnological Food Conferences 1970-1998Ideas and Routes for European Collaboration

Nils- Arvid Bringéus

A Swedish point of departure

Exactly forty years ago, the first ethnological thesis on food culture in Swedenwas published. It was Alfa Olsson's doctoral dissertation Om allmogens kosthåll:Studier med utgångspunkt från västnordiska matvanor(" On the Diet of the Peasantry:Studies Based on West Nordic Food Habits"). The same year, 1958, saw the foundationof the Gastronomic Academy, with the aim of" elevating gastronomic culture inSweden". The Academy also started a year- book where studies could be published andtook the initiative for a Swedish bibliography on food.

Here we have examples both of an ethnological interest in food culture at theinternational level and of a practical, nationally oriented interest. In 1960 the ethnologistBrita Egardt presented the research area of diet in Schwedische Volkskunde underheadings such as" Regionaler und historischer Aspekt"," Sozialer Aspekt", and" Neue-rungen und Tradition". Egardt's essay was referred to in Günter Wiegelmann's inaugu-ral dissertation Alltags- und Festspeisen: Wandel und gegenwärtige Stellung, 1967. Isee this as a first example of international communication on the subject of Food andFood Habits.

Prehistory

How did European cooperation in ethnological food studies arise? In 1969 aninvitation arrived from Jan Podolák in Bratislava to something called SeminariumEthnologicum. It was a fieldwork seminar in a village in the Carpathians, LomnicaTeplica, with selected participants from various countries in Europe. Besides BranimirBratanić from Yugoslavia there was a young generation of scholars with a heartyappetite. On the train journey from Copenhagen to Bratislava, where we assembled, I

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