Lingon berries (Vaccinium vitis-idaea)

When it comes to the natural harvest some years are good, others less good.  Bilberries were to be found this year but it wasn't a good year, and it took 30 minutes or so to collect enough for breakfast. Now as the bilberry season passes, lingon berries start to ripen and it seems a good year. I'm a slow picker but it only took me about 90 minutes to pick this panful and I never got further than 150 meters from home. Later in the day I picked a similar amount of blackcurrants in the garden, after a session of grass cutting.
The blackcurrants are already in the freezer and will be eaten for breakfast most days in winter. Jan has made the lingon berries into 8 jars of a sort of semi-sweet, semi-tart jam, (think cranberry sauce) which also gets eaten on muesli, or served with meatballs, reindeer meat, or mashed potatoes. While I was working in the garden Jan was producing the jam.
I'll be out picking more lingon as you have to stock up when it's a good year. Maybe next year there won't be any!
Traditionally the berries were a rich source of vitamins in winter, helped by the way the berries keep well. In the days when sugar was a luxury item you could fill a barrel with berries, top up the barrel with water and then eat them right through to the next autumn. Naturally you could also fill a bottle and top up with alcohol!
Wikipedia lists 15 different names for these berries, and that's just the English ones. The names show that it isn't just people who eat the berries - cowberry, foxberry, quailberry, beaverberry, cougarberry, and partridgeberry. They are also eaten by wolves, and in large quantites by bears. I've never seen bears or wolves in our forest but if I come across any while picking berries I won't argue over who has priority!