3rd December 2025
cheese culture
From Fermentation to Monastic Cheese: The Early History of Swedish Cheesemaking.
Sitting in his apartment in Stockholm during our phone call about the very early Swedish cheese culture: author and historian Martin Ragnar.
The highlight of my four-day cheese journey through Götaland was visiting Thomas Berglund at Almnäs Bruk on Lake Vättern. It wasn’t the famous Wrångebäck that drew me there, but Thomas’s historically inspired cheeses such as Anno 1225 and Tegel—and above all the estate’s unique cultural and holistic approach. As I sat on the train from Gothenburg, I had no idea that this crisp, cold autumn day would etch itself so deeply into my memory.
I arrived with a handful of questions: Why is Sweden’s cheese culture less vibrant than France’s? How can we explain its long hibernation during industrialisation? And are Anno 1225 and Tegel truly more than clever marketing stories?
Over lunch, Thomas’s wife Birgit spoiled us with pumpkin from the estate’s vast “garden,” while their daughter Maria joined us to talk about Swedish politics and her own future at Almnäs. We talked and talked—and only on the train back did I remember the most important question. So I wrote to Thomas: Which factors have shaped Sweden’s milk and cheese culture since Christianisation, the late Middle Ages, and the early modern era?
Thomas Berglund found Martin Ragnar's book immediatly after our day together during döstädning in the attic on Almäs Bruk.
That evening he called and asked, “Do you know döstädning?” He explained the Swedish term for the practical, forward-looking decluttering older people do for the next generation. And while he was in the midst of this “tidying for death,” he had found, up in the attic, exactly the book that answered my question: Martin Ragnar’s history of Swedish cheese. He knew Martin well, he said—and immediately sent me his contact details.
The next day, I was already speaking with the Stockholm-based historian about the medieval intricacies that make cheese lovers’ hearts beat faster.
So, Martin—what factors have shaped Swedish milk and cheese culture from Christianisation through the late Middle Ages to the early modern period?
In his book Svensk Ostkultur, Martin Ragnar traces the earliest chapters of Swedish dairy and cheesemaking history.
"The oldest evidence of cheesemaking in this region comes from present-day Poland, dating back some 6,000 years. Archaeologists have found traces of curd on pottery fragments, indicating that early farmers were already experimenting with milk processing. Around the same time, cattle arrived in what is now Sweden with the first agricultural settlers. Although no Swedish cheesemaking traces have been found from that early period, it is reasonable to assume that the story of Swedish cheese began then as well.
For roughly the next 5,000 years, cheese in Sweden was made through natural, fermentation-based coagulation. Because salt was historically scarce, these cheeses were likely low in salt—yet this posed little problem. Their acidity protected them, and they were probably consumed fresh or at least not intended for storage beyond a few months, just long enough to help people through the long winters. It is also likely that from early on, milk from cows, goats, sheep, and even reindeer was used for cheesemaking.
A more definitive Christian influence reached Sweden in the 12th century, with the country’s first monastery founded in the year 1100. It is widely believed that the monks brought not only Christianity but also the knowledge of making yellow, rennet-coagulated cheese. If so, Sweden’s first hard cheese would have been produced near the monastery of Nydala, founded in 1143 near today’s Vrigstad in the historical province of Småland. Written records from the period are scarce, and when cheese is mentioned, it is rarely described in detail. The Catholic Church was enormously powerful, and monasteries proliferated. Meanwhile, the tradition of making naturally coagulated white cheese continued in ordinary households.
left: an old Swedish cheese mould; right: Two women leaving cheese and fried cheese at the food altar in the Angered church in 1799.
How cheesemaking intersected with the Church is difficult to determine. What is known is that the Church required substantial tithes from the population, often in the form of food and raw materials. Two scenarios seem plausible: either farmers delivered milk to the monasteries for monastic cheesemaking, or the monks taught farmers how to use rennet so they could make cheese themselves as part of their tax obligations. The latter seems the more likely, at least from around 1250 onward.
The last Catholic bishop of Sweden, Olaus Magnus, emigrated to Rome in the 1530s and there wrote his monumental History of the Nordic Peoples, published in Latin in 1555. In it, he claims that Europe’s finest cheese came from Västergötland and argues—rather creatively—that this made sense because the ancient homeland of the Germanic tribes who settled in northern Italy, including the Lombards, lay in Scandinavia. His claims might be dismissed were it not for the fact that he also described cheeses from other Swedish regions far less flatteringly. Had he merely been nostalgic, he would likely have ignored them. Of Hälsingland, for instance, he writes of a cheese full of worms—resembling today’s Casu Marzu from Sicily.
He also describes enormous cheeses that could weigh 100 kilograms, requiring about 1,000 kilograms of milk. At a time when a cow might yield only a few hundred liters per year, such a cheese could not have been the work of a single farm; it demanded the collective efforts of an entire village. These giant cheeses were made from fresh curd as well as from small intermediate cheeses—plockor, or “pickings”—that farmers produced whenever they had surplus milk and then left to dry. At the communal cheesemaking event, these plockor were soaked in fresh milk and used like bricks to build the new large cheese. This collective tradition appears in written records from the 1730s as “Smålands Prästost,” though it likely dates back to at least the 13th century.
Kaffeost gave energy to Sámi reindeer herders and forest workers. Because of the harsh climate, the cheese often froze and required warming before eating.
A major shift occurred around 1530, when King Gustav Vasa consolidated power and Sweden broke with the Catholic Church, adopting Protestantism as the state religion. This was not only a religious transformation but also a political one, transferring authority from the Church to the crown. The monasteries were dissolved, and the monks disappeared. The king then established large model farms to demonstrate modern agricultural methods, often staffed by specialists from the Netherlands. These estates were known as Holländerier—literally “Dutch dairies.”
After a turbulent 17th century marked by nearly 75 years of warfare, Sweden began to rebuild in the early 1700s. By this time, the Småland Prästost traditions are clearly described in records. Alongside them, farmhouse cheese production continued for everyday needs. In the south, fresh cheeses provided energy during demanding fieldwork—such as Stekost (fried cheese) and Aptitost, made from sour milk collected over several days, sometimes enriched with eggs and occasionally with rennet. Aptitost was pressed, crumbled, and reshaped into a cone or pyramid, enabling rapid maturation and a robust flavor within a week or two.
In the far north, a similar product—Kaffeost—gave energy to Sámi reindeer herders and forest workers. Because of the harsh climate, the cheese often froze and required warming before eating. Initially heated in broth, it was later (perhaps from the 18th century onward) served in boiling coffee, giving rise to the tradition that survives today. During the second half of the 19th century, Aptitost evolved into the characteristically sour Hemost, then around 1900 into the milder Hushållsost, and from the 1950s into the richer Gräddost. All three remained small cheeses, typically weighing around one kilogram.
Marsvinsholm's castle outside Ystad.
A further development took place on the large estates with their advanced Holländerier. In 1786, Pierre Nicolas Du Bath from the Swiss Gruyère region was hired as cheesemaker at the Marsvinsholm estate near Ystad in Scania. With abundant milk at his disposal, he attempted to make Gruyère; but differing local microflora made this impossible. Instead, a new cheese variety emerged—later known as Herrgårdsost. Its recipe spread northward during the early 19th century to Östergötland."
The Swedish word for dairy, mejeri, is a loanword from German (Meyer, the overseer of the cows in the barn), adopted in 1848. Its introduction marks the beginning of industrial cheesemaking in Sweden."
Martin Ragnar
Svensk Ostkultur
contact: martin@sockerslottet.de