I’m Swedish and was very interested in Celtic countries so came here decades ago as an 18-year-old on holiday, travelling via Scotland and Wales.
I had heard from some other Swedes that Lisdoonvarna in Co Clare was a great place to go for trad music. In the Roadside Tavern there I met the son of the owners and had a chat with him.
From there I moved on to Doolin, also for the trad. I pitched my tent and went to a pub and who did I meet at the door but the same guy, who asked me if I’d like a drink. It was a defining moment in my life because we went on to get married. After I’d studied marine biology and aquaculture we decided we’d set up a business in Lisdoonvarna and travelled around Sweden and Ireland looking at smokehouses.
Fishing for eels, herring and perch is a big part of life growing up on the Swedish coast and so I would go with my dad to catch eel and then bring them to the local smokehouse.
We built our own smokehouse here and then, because we are so close to the Cliffs of Moher, one of the biggest tourist attractions in the country, we built a visitor centre too.
Today we get around 30,000 visitors a year to the centre where we explain the ancient craft of smoking which, like salt, was the primary form of preservative in times before fridges and freezers. We now also export our own products around the world by mail order and through speciality food shops and selected supermarkets. Today we employ 18 people and send our smoked goods everywhere, from Fortnum and Mason in London to Dean & DeLuca in New York. We sell to Qatar and Kuwait, and our first consignment went to Shanghai before Christmas.