What is the story behind this semla then?
Well, it comes from christianity and always occurs 47 days before Easter, meaning the last day before the Easter fast. In the early 20th century schools used to be closed this day, but that isn't the case anymore, - Shame on you, society! -. I very much doubt many participate in Easter fast, especially in Sweden, which is one of the least religious countries in the world but we still love our semla. The average Swede eats five each year, according to the exceptionally trustworthy source Wikipedia. I actually find that quite believeable. Especially as there is a thing this year in Sweden called Semlogram, basicly you can send a free semla to your Facebook friends that they can collect at a café nearby. It feels like quite a large loss for the café, even if people do learn the name of said café pretty fast due to this. But I wont complain or ask why they do it, that's for sure.
While doing some research on the semla Wikipedia told me that the tradition in many English-speaking countries is eating pancakes today. You should try a real semla, you can eat pancakes all year long.
I know that this wasn't the longest post I've written but I really don't have any more time before school starts. If you wonder why I'm not writing about my studies like the last two weeks it's because it isn't really that much fun. We're just digging through some documents that we collected from the commune and trying to find something interesting in them. I'm pretty sure this isn't what I want to work with but of course I learn from it.
The wonderful semla that I'm writing about.