Smörgås, literally meaning '
butter-
goose', is a
Swedish word denoting
Sweden's national savoury snack, and often translated as '
sandwiches'. This is not strictly correct - especially not if you tend (as I do) to think of sandwiches as two hunks of
bread with butter and stuff between them. Smörgås consists mainly of hard-breads (
Ryvita is a brand often avbailable here in the
UK - in
Sweden you'll find
Wasa and various others). On these are placed butter - look for a variety like
Bregott in Sweden - some fairly yucky
margarines are marketed as butters - and various toppings. Common toppings include cheese (
Edammer or similar), ham, sausage (such as
falukorv, Sweden's favourite sausage), and 'hamburger meat' which is actually a kind of cooked sausage made from
horseflesh. Smörgås is often eaten as breakfast, and I have known Swedish friends dip their open sandwiches in their (black) tea.
The
buffet known as
smörgåsbord shares its etymology with this dish, but tends to contain a different selection of foods, including some hot dishes.
LX says:
smörgås , it's not "gås" as in "goose", but rather in the old meaning of butter lumps floating on top of the milk as it is being churned (according to Nationalencyklopedins ordbok).