The Kitchen Table

COFFEE Legend has it that coffee was discovered in Ethiopia by a goat herder in the 11th century. He noticed that his goats became energetic and unable to sleep after eating the berries from a certain bush. News of the ‘magical’ coffee plant soon spread and it wasn’t long before Arab traders were bringing the plants home and cultivating them, boiling the beans and drinking the resulting liquid. By the mid-15th century, the Ottoman Turks had brought coffee to Constantinople and before long, Italian traders had introduced it to the West, with the first European coffee houses appearing around 1650.

The ritual of the coffee break is believed to have originated in the late 19th century in Stoughton, Wisconsin in the US, with the wives of Norwegian immigrants taking time away from work to check on their children, and presumably drink coffee. Today, Norway, Finland and the Netherlands are the world’s biggest coffee consumers.

Coffee is essentially the national drink in Norway, although Norwegians didn’t actually start drinking it until 1694. One theory for its popularity is that it became a substitute for alcohol during Norway’s prohibition years between 1916 and 1927. Today, Norway is renowned as a world leader in speciality coffee, and Norwegians enjoy drinking their favorite sort kaffe (black coffee) at cafés and bars as well as at home.

In Sweden, the word fika is both a verb and a noun; it’s a coffee break, where you sit down to have a cup of coffee and perhaps a sweet roll, and catch up with your friends.

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