Tales from the road: bait? really? Is that the correct translation? kräftskiva!

On a trip to Sweden in August, I’m at an outdoor cafe. Now, Sweden, like most of the Nordics, people in the big cities tend to speak English very well, with very easy to understand accents, and Stockholm is no exception. So when the waiter hands me the menu and its all in Swedish, I don’t panic. I ask if there’s an English menu, and he hands me the translation. I look down it, and question this one item. “Are you sure this is the correct translation?”. He thinks for a second, yes, that is correct. Ok, I’ll have that. Its ‘bait’. Normally we don’t eat bait, we eat what we catch with bait, but, well, lets see.

The bait arrives, its crayfish. I learn that its crayfish season (August), and, specifically, its crayfish day (kräftskiva)

But you can imagine the confusion in my mind, and the rationale for why this might translate as ‘bait’. As to why I ordered it after confirming that yes, it really was bait, with no other information? No particular answer, a ‘when in rome’ thing.