Last night we went out to Olof’s parents’ cabin for a family surströmming party. To those of you who know of this “northern delicacy” but haven’t seen it firsthand, yes, it is as bad as you’ve heard. Those of you who do not know of it, pause right now to thank the powers that be for your state of blissful ignorance. Those who have experienced it and lived to tell the tale, I assume I have your sympathy.

Surströmming is rotten herring (Olof will tell you it’s “fermented,” not “rotten,” but let’s not quibble over semantics), and apparently the more rotten the better. Surströmming is packed in metal cans, and the fermentation process causes the contents to expand, creating little powder kegs of putrefaction. A well-known sign of surströmming “readiness” is the bulging of the cans as the pressure inside them builds. When at last the time has come to open them, the smell is so powerful, so overwhelming, that the opening must be done outdoors — preferably in a bucket of water. When three-year-old Alex got a whiff of it on his plate, he started crying, saying that it didn’t smell good and begging to go home (a tactic I might have tried myself if I’d thought I could get away with it).

You’d think the smell would be the worst part (and believe me, it’s quite bad enough, thank you), but the worst is yet to come. Almost the worst is seeing your family–your husband, your sweet six-year-old niece, the prototypical hot Swedish babes who are your husband’s cousins–pull slimy, headless herring from the open cans and dig into them with obvious relish.

The absolute worst, however, is the gutting and deboning of said slimy fish. Fermentation has turned the fish innards into a pink goo, a revolting strawberry-yogurt-like ooze that sits coagulated on the edge of the plate under a pile of small bones as the Swedes in your life build sandwiches on buttered crisp flatbread, layering boiled potatoes, fermented fish, onion, dill, chives, tomato, and sour cream. One of the low points of your marriage is when your husband pauses in the middle of whatever it is he is saying to you (blame your forgetfulness on post-traumatic memory loss) to pluck a fishbone from his teeth and toss it carelessly onto the gut pile on his plate.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is merely a ritual for them, a rite of passage or some such. It’s a treat. They love it, going back for seconds, thirds, fourths. Many of them will go to three or four surströmming parties in the space of a few weeks.

As I sat in the midst of twenty or so norrlänningar devouring this meal only they could love and tried to keep my churning stomach under control, I was assured several times that “it doesn’t taste like it smells.” All I could say was, “I sure hope not.” But I’m not convinced.