Coffee arrived in Sweden in 1674. Plus, minus, a year or two. Great fans of fairy tales and legends, because of the length of the Scandinavian nights, I suppose, but the Swedes insist, hardly necessary, on the fact that the Vikings knew very well the effects of caffeine. Long before her official appearance in the peninsula. Not of coffee, let's be clear, but of caffeine. About which, of course, they had no idea that it would be called that once, someday. And then, what are we talking about, you will ask me, and I will try to explain...
About the state of vivacity induced by coffee beans, it was known from the vast antiquity, from the time when the pharaohs built their pyramids in order to leave their descendants, descendants, descendants, a tourist dowry of all the beauty. The Egyptian priests, all with doctorates in medicine, astrology and pharmacology, knew the virtues of this shrub on the coast of the Red Sea and used what they knew to prepare various potions designed to short-circuit their nerve synapses or increase their power of resistance to sleep. This last effect being then successfully experienced, especially on the palace guards and exceptionally on the army, during some military expeditions, you wonder why. The red drupes, freshly picked, were put to ferment with honey and a drink that was only good for refreshment was obtained. A kind of coffee-wine, if you want to give it a name. This coffee-wine arrived a little later in the Greek world, right up to the beautiful Elena who, in canto IV of the Odyssey, dries the tears of those who mourned the absence of Ulysses by throwing a handful of red beans into the cup in which the wine was kept. A drug from Egypt, about which not much was known, but which had the gift of banishing sadness. From the Greeks, the recipe was passed on to the Romans and other peoples, it also reached the Middle Ages, and the Swedes claim that it also reached the Vikings. Possibly, we admit, thinking about what fabulously profitable business the tall and blond sailors did on the coasts of the Mediterranean, from Morocco to Egypt, via Byzantium and back.
Anyway, roasted, ground and boiled coffee will be consumed by Swedes with great enthusiasm only from the beginning of the 18th century, when the rest of Europe had already succumbed to this drink. Yes, only that, in austere Protestant Sweden, the king kept a watchful eye on the morals and health of his people! As a result, in 1746, Frederik I issued a royal edict against tea and coffee to limit, he said, "the abuse and excesses of drinking tea and coffee." Black and bitter days, like coffee, on the heads of traders. Huge taxes for importers, heavy taxes for merchants, huge fines for consumers, confiscation of cups and kettles... Sometime later, total ban. Terror!
Of course, any prohibition gives rise to secondary effects. First: the forbidden drink became extremely popular. Two: smuggling flourished. Three: some have become rich beyond common sense. Four: there is no point in listing them all, you know them very well!
Shortly after his accession to the throne, King Gustav III briefly decides that the cat must be torn in two. Wanting to prove how harmful coffee is to public health and wanting to prove the negative effects that coffee has on the well-being of the people, he asked his scientists for a scientific experiment, unique in the history of Sweden.
The king ordered that two identical twins be used for the experiment, both tried for some crimes committed and sentenced to death. Their sentence was to be commuted to life imprisonment if they agreed that one of the twins would drink three cups of coffee a day and the other three cups of tea for the rest of their lives. Two physicians were appointed to supervise the experiment, and their findings were periodically delivered to the king. Unfortunately, however, the two doctors died, probably of natural causes, before the completion of the experiment, and even Gustav III, who was assassinated in 1792, did not get to know its conclusions. As for the twins, the tea drinker was the one who died first, at the venerable age of 83. The date of the coffee drinker's death remained unknown.
In 1794, the Swedish government tried again to ban the import and consumption of coffee. The ban was renewed several times until 1820, but to no avail... Moreover, after 1820 coffee took its revenge, becoming a dominant drink in Sweden. And, in order for the revenge of caffeine to be total, according to the International Coffee Organization (ICO), Sweden is one of the top ten coffee importing countries, the Swedes annually consuming around 11 kilograms of coffee per capita. So, for the hell of it, and for the king to know!
M. Vaida