My Little Pony Steak

So, the other evening we were on the sofa enjoying another nice, calm, civilized Swedish reality television show called Halv åtta hos mig (Seven-thirty with me), where four people have a competition to see who can cook the nicest and best meal for the other three people.  Swedish reality TV is nothing like the trashy, shocking, guilty pleasure goodness of American reality TV...you'll rarely see drunken bar fights, skanky hookups in hot tubs, or rock stars showing off their bling.  Instead, there's a show where neighbors who aren't getting along learn how to solve their problems with the help of nice, calm mediators; a show where people who have gotten too far into debt learn how to solve their problems with the help of nice, calm financial experts; and (one of my favorites) a show where nice, calm, lonely farmers out in the countryside try to find true love.

Did I mention that the television shows here are nice?  And calm.

Anyway, we're watching a show where a man was preparing a lovely home-cooked meal, and he pulls a large steak out of the oven and slices it up for his guests.  My Swedish has gotten capable enough to follow along with these shows for the most part, but I usually end up bugging M to translate something for me at least several times per show.

I hear the narrator say, "Ponny kött."

Pony meat???

Surely I've heard incorrectly.  They interview a nice, polite young lady who was a guest at the man's dinner table and she distinctly says, "Ponny köttet var väldigt gott."  The pony steak was really good.

I turned to M and said, "HORSE MEAT??"  He looked at me like I was an idiot.  "Yes, horse meat is one of the best meats you can eat.  How is it different from eating cows?"  I just sat there in shock, trying to let the idea of eating horses sink in.  Then I started bombarding M with questions: "Do they raise horses specifically for meat here?  Do they eat people's pet horses when they get old??"  And most importantly:  "Have I been served horse meat since I've lived here???"

The answer was no, but it turns out they do sell horse meat under the name hamburgerkött, which makes me a little nervous about shopping in the deli section of the store from now on.  I'm still having a hard time wrapping my brain around it, even though I've happily chowed down on pigeon breasts, wild boar pâté, moose hearts, duck stomachs, and sheep livers since I moved here.

Then I started thinking about it and realized how many important icons of my childhood involved beautiful, majestic horses:

Swedes love their horses too...there are riding stables everywhere and horses seem to be loved and taken care of better than most places in the US.  But according to Wikipedia:

In ancient Scandinavia, the horse was very important, as a living, working creature, as a sign of the owner's status, and symbolically within the old Norse religion. Horses were slaughtered as a sacrifice to the gods and the meat was eaten by the people taking part in the religious feasts.

Hmm.  As nice and civilized as Swedes have become, it's still a bit of a shock to see hints of their savage Viking roots throughout the culture here (not that we Americans even come close to winning any peace-and-love competitions, but this blog is about Sweden).  And as much as I realize I'm a product of my own horse-worshiping culture and eating them really shouldn't be much different from eating cows, moose, or deer...I'm still not sure I'm ready to sink my teeth into this: