The big supermarkets in Sweden like Ica, Coop and Willys rarely have dedicated fresh fish counters, which can be a big disappointment to readers used to the seafood available at supermarkets elsewhere. 

“A decent variety of fish in the supermarket is something we really miss,” one reader wrote in a comment to a recent article on our sister site in Denmark, where the situation is very similar. “I regularly return to my old stamping ground on the Franco-Swiss border, hundreds of kilometres from the sea, and the fresh fish in the local Carrefour supermarket is invariably excellent.” 

But why is the situation so different in Sweden?

“The Swedish market is traditionally a frozen market: the main volume traded in white fish is frozen,” explained Krishan Kent, chairman of the Sweden Seafood Association (Fiskbranschens Riksförbund). “Why, we can only speculate, but one of the reasons is that it’s a big country with quite a small population, but the UK is a small country with a large population, so the traffic in store is much higher, which is why I’d say England is a fresh market.” 

Ulf Jonseth, vice chairman of the Swedish fish traders’ association, added that the high price of fresh fish in Sweden also played a role. 

“Fresh fish, or at least good fresh fish, is really expensive in Sweden,” he said. “There are tight quotas and what does come into the harbour has a lot of people wanting to buy it.” 

This means that the good fresh fish tends to go to restaurants where it can get a higher markup, while supermarkets tend to sell frozen fish caught far from Sweden’s coasts. 

Kent speculated that the structure of the Swedish supermarket industry perhaps also played a role, leaving the choice of whether to have a fresh fish counter down to the individual franchise owner. 

“In Sweden, ICA is 50 percent of the market and all the stores have individual owners who decide the assortment themselves, and Hemköp is a similar situation with half the stores owned by individuals, but stores like Tesco and Asda [in the UK] are all centrally owned,” he said. 

There were, he stressed, some supermarkets in Sweden with good fresh fish counters, particularly on the West coast around Gothenburg where fish traditionally plays an important role in the diet.  

“There absolutely are supermarkets that have an in-store fish counter, but they are not as frequent. So if you’re in Gothenburg and go to Hemköp in centre, you might find a fantastic fish counter, but if you go to a Hemköp 3km away, then that store might not have one.”

Another reason for the lack of fresh fish in supermarkets, he added, was that historically, supermarkets tended to allow independent fishmongers to set up trucks outside in their car parks. 

Sweden has a tradition of fish specialists that are generally outside the supermarket and the fishmongers owned their own trucks, which reduces the complexity for the supermarket, so they think that because you can buy fish outside from a specialist, they don’t have to have fresh fish in store.” 

He said these trucks were an efficient way of distributing fresh fish as the owners could pick up fish at auction and then drive to several different shopping areas, reaching a wider spread of customers. 

He advised readers looking to get hold of fresh fish to find out when and where these trucks are in their area, as some remain active.  

“Instead of looking for fresh fish in the supermarket,” he said, “your readers should look for a fishmonger outside.”