It’s thought that meatballs were brought to Sweden by King Charles XII. After a disastrous attempt to invade Russia in 1709, he fled in exile to the Ottoman empire. There he fell for a dish very similar to the Swedish meatballs we now know and, when he returned from exile five years later, he took those meatballs back with him. The meatballs grew in popularity and eventually became so closely associated with the country, that they took on the ‘Swedish’ name. But it would be disingenuous to write about Swedish meatballs and not mention that bastion of storage, that flatpack palace: Ikea.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Ikea brought the Swedish love for meatballs to the rest of the world.
When Ikea restaurants were opened in 1959 (a year after the stores themselves), they focused on serving classic Swedish dishes. Although meatballs didn’t join the menu until 1985, once there they quickly gained a cult following.
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