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Swedish town makes art of the potato

Alingsås in western Sweden has commissioned an offbeat work of art made entirely of potatoes to commemorate Potato Day, hoping to 'strike a blow' for the humble spud.

Published: 26 October 2010 11:27 CEST

Swedish town makes art of the potato

”We want to promote the potato in all its forms – culinary, cultural and now artistic,” Margareta Frost-Johansson at the Alingsås potato academy told The Local.

The potato academy – Academia Solanum Tuberosum – was founded in 2008, designated as international year of the potato by the United Nations, and aims to unite representatives from the industry to work to spread knowledge about the potato.

The academy is behind the Potato Day initiative and as part of the celebrations turned to the artist Emma Karp Lundström to repeat her fruit and veg artwork made famous at the Kivik apple market in south-eastern Sweden.

”We have recruited Emma Karp Lundström to strike a blow for the potato on potato day,” said Frost-Johansson.

The 5 by 2.5 metre collage has been created with the help of eight varieties of potato – Asterix, Amandine, Ballerina, Blue Congo, Cherie, Fontane, King Edward och Roaster – and will be unveiled at 1pm on Lilla Torg in central Alingsås.

Karp Lundström has for the past decade been the artist responsible for creating a collage of apple harvest varieties as a centre piece to the annual Kivik apple market which helps to attract some of the hordes of visitors that find their way to Sweden’s Apple Kingdom in the Österlen region of Sweden’s far south each year.

The market was launched in the 1998 in a bid to defend and promote Swedish-grown apples from international competition. Whether Potato Day can have the same effect on the humble Swedish spud remains to be seen, but Margareta Frost-Johansson told The Local that the event is here to stay.

”This is the first year and is something of a pilot. We plan to turn the occasion into an annual event,” she said.

After the 1pm unveiling, which will be accompanied by the music of the local King Edward Orchestra, Karp Lundström’s piece will then be left to the elements for spectators to enjoy.

”It is the type of artwork which will change with time. The birds will no doubt find it attractive at some point,” Frost-Johansson said.

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OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

The Local’s guide to tipping in Sweden is clear: tip for good service if you want to, but don’t feel the pressure: where servers in the US, for instance, rely on tips to live, waiters in Sweden have collectively bargained salaries with long vacations and generous benefits.

SEE ALSO: What’s the tipping etiquette in Sweden?

But there are signs that this is changing, and the change is being accelerated by card machines. Now, many machines offer three preset gratuity percentages, usually starting with five percent and going up to fifteen or twenty. Previously they just asked the customer to fill in the total amount they wanted to pay.

This subtle change to a user interface sends a not-so-subtle message to customers: that tipping is expected and that most people are probably doing it. The button for not tipping is either a large-lettered ‘No Tip’ or a more subtle ‘Fortsätt’ or ‘Continue’ (it turns out you can continue without selecting a tip amount, but it’s not immediately clear to the user).

I’ll confess, when I was first presented with this I was mildly irked: I usually tip if I’ve had table service, but waiting staff are treated as professionals and paid properly, guaranteed by deals with unions; menu prices are correspondingly high. The tip was a genuine token of appreciation.

But when I tweeted something to this effect (a tweet that went strangely viral), the responses I got made me think. Many people pointed out that the restaurant trade in Sweden is under enormous pressure, with rising costs, the after-effects of Covid and difficulties recruiting. And as Sweden has become more cosmopolitain, adding ten percent to the bill comes naturally to many.

Boulebar, a restaurant and bar chain with branches around Sweden and Denmark, had a longstanding policy of not accepting tips at all, reasoning that they were outdated and put diners in an uncomfortable position. But in 2021 CEO Henrik Kruse decided to change tack:

“It was a purely financial decision. We were under pressure due to Covid, and we had to keep wages down, so bringing back tips was the solution,” he said, adding that he has a collective agreement and staff also get a union bargained salary, before tips.

Yet for Kruse the new machines, with their pre-set tipping percentages, take things too far:

“We don’t use it, because it makes it even clearer that you’re asking for money. The guest should feel free not to tip. It’s more important for us that the guest feels free to tell people they’re satisfied.”

But for those restaurants that have adopted the new interfaces, the effect has been dramatic. Card processing company Kassacentralen, which was one of the first to launch this feature in Sweden, told Svenska Dagbladet this week that the feature had led to tips for the average establishment doubling, with some places seeing them rise six-fold.

Even unions are relaxed about tipping these days, perhaps understanding that they’re a significant extra income for their members. Union representatives have often in the past spoken out against tipping, arguing that the practice is demeaning to staff and that tips were spread unevenly, with staff in cafés or fast food joints getting nothing at all. But when I called the Swedish Hotel and Restaurant Union (HRF), a spokesman said that the union had no view on the practice, and it was a matter for staff, business owners and customers to decide.

So is tipping now expected in Sweden? The old advice probably still stands; waiters are still not as reliant on tips as staff in many other countries, so a lavish tip is not necessary. But as Swedes start to tip more generously, you might stick out if you leave nothing at all.

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