Talk:Filmjölk

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This article is regarded by some Swedish wikipedians as a Sweden-related article of decent quality, or of good interest. Feel free to improve on it.

[edit] Article name

If 'Filmjölk' is a form of 'Fil' then should the name of the article (that is mainly about Fil and it's variants) not be Fil? Ciraric 20:40, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if there's an answer in the (confused) text below, but 'Fil' is just shorthand for 'Filmjölk'. JöG 16:51, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

... Or maybe not, since the article claims the opposite. JöG 16:59, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

filmjölk is also often eaten with crushed knäckebröd (still large chunks) in especially the northen part of sweden.

Ah yes, good comment. I missed that even thought that is how I usually eat it too. And I live in south Sweden. I of course added it to the text. With link to crisp bread. :))

--Davidgothberg 23:55, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

This comment cut and pasted from the talk page of sour milk:

Avoid non-English titles, especially those with characters not found on the keyboards of English-speaking countries; this is the English Wikipedia, after all. Do not claim a general Nordic food as exclusively Swedish. --Vuo 22:08, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Vuo, it seams you moved the page to sour milk and "vandalised" it in an attempt to make it more international. But you should know that in english "sour milk" mainly means milk gone bad. And if you spell it "soured milk" it means any kind of fermented milk including yoghurt, kephir and so on. (Note the difference between sour and soured!)

This page is about the products sold under the different "fil" names and how we eat them in Sweden and so on. The page was started out due to a red link in the page Cuisine of Sweden and for instance hopefully can be of aid to foreigners travelling to Sweden. (And any one else curious about the Cuisine of Sweden.) I think it would be silly to only write informative articles about Swedish food directed to foreigners in Swedish and place them on the Swedish wikipeda. I don't demand that tourists study Swedish before they travel to Sweden. (Something which seems to be a common demand in Finland. Damn you if you try to buy a tram/trolley ticket in Helsinki and don't speak Finnish.) It was not and is not my intention to claim it to be a Swedish "invention". Filmjölk probably was invented/discovered many thousands of years ago, long before Sweden became Sweden, and perhaps even before any humans moved to Sweden!

There is no such thing as an "international" filmjölk. If you want to write an article about soured milk in general, then you should remember that it includes yoghurt and kephir etc. And note that in many other countries soured milks such as yoghurt and kephir are sold pasteurised which means your internationalisation of the paragraphs about bacterias sold alive is plain wrong.

If you want to write an article about the similar product you have in Finland and how you prefer to eat it there, then do so and put under it's proper name (which I guess would be piimä / piima). And of course link to it from Cuisine of Finland.

Regarding use of "non english" characters: For the convenience of people who don't know how to make an ö on their keyboard I allready had a redirect from Filmjolk. Just like is the case with the article on the finnish malt porridge Mämmi / Mammi.

Regarding the bacterias used in filmjölk: I intentially avoided mentioning which bacterias are used since in Sweden fil is sold with MANY different kinds of bacterias, not all even being of the same family as the original filmjölk bacterias. And new types of bacterias are being added all the time. For instance right now genetically modified bacterias that produces medicines are going through the tests for being allowed to be sold as medicin. And that medicin is intended to be sold under some kind of "fil" name and eaten just like we are used to eat fil...

So I reinstated the original article about filmjölk and I suggest you keep away from it. How would you feel if I as a Swede went berserk on the pages about Cuisine of Finland?

--Davidgothberg 23:55, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

I think the Finnish name is viili, not piimä. Piimä ("surmjölk" in Swedish) is thinner fermented milk, which is typically drunk as a beverage. In contrast, viili is thicker, and is eaten like yoghurt. I'm a native Finnish speaker so I should know these things, but can a native Swedish speaker also confirm this? — JIP | Talk 09:25, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Sour milk and sour whole milk are valid English terms. What we would need is a native English speaker, not nationalistic bickering. Davidgothberg isn't certainly helping. It's similar to writing an article like this: "Hampurilainen is a kind of Finnish hamburger. It was invented by Hesburger, and ... etc." Wikipedia isn't a travel guide. --Vuo 18:16, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

I'd say neither of you are helping. David, your criticism is not altogether constructive, and I have point out that you need to stay civil and refrain from personal attacks. Even if you are right about some things, you have no excuse for escalating such a minor dispute in this way. Try to reason calmly and rationally instead.

Vuo, you're making claims that are completely unsupported and could have been easily checked with just a simple Google search. Your "hampurilainen"-example is not valid, since it's merely a corporate name for a slight variation of a basic hamburger. Filmjölk has a much longer history, is quite distinct from similar fermented dairy products and deserves its own article just like kefir. It's no more strange than keeping haggis and pölsa seperate. Considering that Swedish and Finnish cuisine have intermingled due to cultural influence, I suggest that viili be mentioned in this article alongside filmjölk, since they seem very similar.

Peter ^Isotalo 23:18, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

I'm an American, a native English speaker who has spent some time in Sweden. When I was there, and was offered Filmjolk, it was never presented in English as "Hey, want some sour milk on your muslix?" It was always presented as Filmjolk. I remember it as Filmjolk. "Sour milk" means something different to me in English. It just makes me think of milk gone bad. Just my two cents. --Holdek ^(talk) 23:50, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

I think the reason for my confusion is differences between Finland and Sweden. In Finland, piimä is called surmjölk in Swedish, and viili is called fil. I have never seen "filmjölk" used anywhere in Finland. Maybe in Sweden filmjölk is piimä, the same as surmjölk, and fil is the same fil in Finland, i.e. viili? Could someone who lives in Sweden confirm this? — JIP | Talk 07:59, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Also, it could be pitkäviili, which was sold in the 90's, but haven't seen that since then. It's more fluid than viili, sold in cartons, but ropy like viili. --Vuo 20:02, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

JIP: In Sweden "fil" and "filmjölk" is exactly synonymous. "fil" is simply short for "filmjölk". Nothing else. I find it confusing that the Finland-Swedish makes a difference between fil and filmjölk...

No, Finland-Swedish doesn't make a difference between fil and filmjölk. Finland-Swedish doesn't use "filmjölk". This Wikipedia article was the first time I had heard of the word. Finland-Swedish makes a difference between surmjölk (drink) and fil (food). I was asking if Sweden-Swedish makes a difference between fil and filmjölk. — JIP | Talk 04:15, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Most of the time when people say fil, they mean filmjölk. However, there are other types of fil. Långfil is hardly sold in the southern part of Sweden, and in the north it is getting less popular... it is a kind of fil with harder consistency than filmjölk, almost elastic (yuck!) I ate it as a kid, I almost can't understand that. I guess most other kinds of fil can be referred to as filmjölk, but långfil can not. /Habj 03:13, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Oh, I see it is mentioned in the article... but in a wrong way. Långfil is not long filmjölk. It is never referred to as filmjölk. I'll correct that.

I think we should realise that there is no possibility to draw lines and say what names on products from different countries are the same, and what are different - too many variants along the axis, and unfortunately not just one axis. Maybe it is better then to have a page on all soured milk products that can not be defined clearly enough to have a page on their own, like yoghurt. /Habj 12:33, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Clarification: I suggest a redirect to soured milk, and description of the concepts fil, filmjölk and långfil plus other - from an international perspective - minor variants of fermented milk products there. /Habj 12:41, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I am thinking since we don't know which of the Finnish ones is the most similar to the standard filmjölk in Sweden we should change the text in the article to "In Finland it is known as "viili" or "piimä"." Until someone with experience from both countries soured milk variants can tell which is most similar. But actually, I don't find it that important since there now are so many different variants of fil sold in Sweden that it wouldn't surprise me if both viili and piimä similar variants are available here. I mean, if you really want to know the exact details of it come to Sweden and taste the 20 or so variants of it sold here! You know, I find the difference between some of those variants to be almost as big as the difference between standard/traditional filmjölk and yoghurt. So it is really hard or even impossible to define exactly what filmjölk is.
--Davidgothberg 23:41, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

Well, I could of course travel to Sweden and buy some of your filmjölk, but the only problem is, I don't like fermented milk products. I stopped eating fil when I was a child, and I have never liked surmjölk. So your idea of referring to both terms until the confusion is resolved sounds fine. — JIP | Talk 04:15, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Ah, after carefully rereading what you wrote JIP I realise that fil/viili in Finland seems to be refering to the thicker kind. So most likely viili = filmjölk/fil in Sweden. Your surmjölk/piimä then probably is more similar to the German sauermilch which is much thinner (and thus more suitable to drink then eat with a spoon). So I'll leave viili for now in the text. I have to remember to try the different ones next time I go to Finland. (I love to go dance in Finland, best dancers and dance places in the world it seems!:))

--Davidgothberg 20:49, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

After a little googling, checking of interwiki links and the help of a nice Finland-Swede describing the content of fi:Piimä, it is obvious that piimä is not fil or filmjölk. Piimä is buttermilk, in Swedish kärnmjölk. Most probably, viili is a very similar product to filmjölk - at least for sure it is a kind of fil. The best way to find out the precise relationship would be to check the species of bacteria - in case you come across Streptococcus lactis it is the same as Lactococcus. I am sure they eat fil also in Norway and Denmark, by the way. If I could move this page to fil I would do it, since filmjölk is a kind of fil, but that space is occupied - and really I think this should be included in a more general page on soured milk products. Or maybe this page should be transformed into Soured milk products of Sweden, to include gräddfil (a bit like smetana) etc. I guess it would be possible to create a page on Nordic fil/viili, also, if someome is interested in doing that. Naming it would be an interesting task, though. / Habj 20:46, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

I suggest moving the page to Fil (yoghurt) and changing Fil from a redirect into a disambig. Ciraric 19:35, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Filmjölk?

If filmjölk is piimä, then its title should not be in a foreign language, because there are English terms, such as cultured buttermilk or sour milk. Maybe the article could be there for some country-specific customs, but not as a general article. Again, if it is Swedish, then it should not contain references to Finnish or German terms, because then these products are different.

See here [1] and [2]

The same discussion is being held under the section above. /Habj 12:33, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Question

Is it common to ferment filmjölk at home? FreplySpang (talk) 01:21, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Not that I heard of. Perhaps they do that up in north Sweden where they by tradition eat fil in more different ways. But down here in south Sweden where I live I have not heard anyone doing it. Although I know some people that used to make their own yoghurt back in the 60's and 70's when the plain yoghurt without fruit was more expensive and only sold in very small packs! (They of course used the small expensive yoghurt packs as starter culture to set a big bowl of warm milk over night.) Of course, once upon a time when most people were farmers and most milk products were not centrally processed of course farmers made their own fil.

--Davidgothberg 01:31, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Not common, but not completely unheard of either. My grandma did, my sister did sometimes... yes, I'm from the north. /Habj 03:13, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

My mom used to make filbunke when I was a kid, and we lived near Karlstad, not all that far up north.193.11.202.125 17:08, 29 April 2006 (UTC)