Hökeriet in Lund

Attraction Hökeriet
Opening hours
Sat-Sun 12:00-16:00 Hökeriet (the name of the store) at Sankt Annegatan 9 in Lund is one of Lund's cosiest stores. When you enter the door, it's like traveling more than a hundred years back in time, to the beginning of the 1900s. In fact, the store is more like a living museum, and is kept open by the non-profit association Hökeriets Friends. Behind the shop there is a room used as a café where you can drink coffee and eat freshly baked waffles with jam and cream. The first store started in this house in 1855, and this visitor guide tell about what a Hökeri is and the history of this one in particular.

What a Hökeri store is

Still today, there is a barrel with real salted herring in the store. The word hökare comes from the German word "höker", which means retailer, especially for food. A regulation from 1635 for the trade in Stockholm specified what a hökare could sell, then it was exclusively food like herring, salmon, cod, and other fish, meat, pork, cheese, butter, peas, semolina, tallow, salt and hops.

During the 18th century, the range of goods was expanded so in addition to groceries, the hökeri stores were also allowed to sell tar, rope, clogs, oil, tobacco and pipes. Later, the rules for what the stores were allowed to sell were abolished, and then they began to look more like small general stores. In Hökeri at the turn of the century 1900, almost everything was sold.

Due to tradition, food was still the primary thing. Herring, sausages, smoked pork, cheese, butter, salt, bread, beer and potatoes were characteristic goods in Hökerier, as well as common groceries, cheap preserves and the most common spices.

Snuff and kerosene were important goods that every Hökeri needed to sell. Commonly, they also sold sewing thread, buttons, lamp glasses for the kerosene lamps, small firewood, soft soap, soap and scrub brushes, these were the kinds of goods a housewife used to ask for. Other goods the stores use to sell was Hungarian country wine, cigars and pipe tobacco, that were things that a man wanted to buy.

Hökeriet was early having a telephone, so many people went there when they needed to call someone. Many Hökeri stores also sold ready-made food, such as meatballs, mashed roots and boiled potatoes. This was sold mainly at noon to the neighborhood's unmarried workmen and young craftsmen. On the counter, there were often clay pots with herring, cucumber and beetroot homemade by the owner of the store. Homemade toffee and other sweets could also be bought in Hökeriet. The daily newspaper was cheaper to fetch at Hökeriet than having it sent home. People also went to the store when they needed to make a phone call, as there were very few who could afford to have their own phone at that time.

A Hökeri store was able to be maintained on eight families, and with the number of stores in Lund at the turn of the 1900s century, each Hökeri could not have had a large customer base. The customers consisted of families in the immediate neighborhoods. The stores were often located on the outskirts of the city, where poor working-class families lived. There could be three to four small stores at a crossroad. Although there was not much competition, each store had specific families who always shopped at that Hökeri.

Hökeri stores were extremely small, located in cramped facilities with low ceilings, small display windows, and primitive interior. Usually, one of the living rooms served as the store, and in most cases, it was the wife who administrated the store, while the husband worked elsewhere. Also, many unmarried women and widows supported themselves by running a Hökeri. At the turn of 1900, more than three-quarters of all Hökerier in Lund were operated by women.

The history of this Hökeri store

Marna Nilsdotter's daughter Elna Hansson. The house was built around 1815 and the same year the maid Marna Nilsdotter bought it for SEK 200. Originally, the house had a porch just inside the current entrance, a living room to the left, and a small chamber to the right. The entrance was in the same place as today. Further in there was another living room and to the right a kitchen.

Marna was a healer from Södra Sandby, who healed both cows and humans. She was unmarried but had two daughters. Since an unmarried woman could not buy real estate, she bought the house with assistance of a proxy. She moved there with her children. Her daughter Elna Hansson also became a healer, and both she and Marna were prosecuted for quackery, but both were acquitted. Later, they moved to Malmö where Elna was called the "Lund Woman".

When Marna moved to her daughter, she auctioned off the house. It was bought by the lathe operator Lars Peter Landgren in 1855. His wife Carolina Ohlgren installed a primitive store, Hökeri, in a small room where she sold groceries, usually to poor students living in Tomegap. The store was located to the left inside the entrance. In 1876, Lars Peter Landgren's son, the tannery worker Johannes Landgren, took over the house for SEK 1,660. He and his wife Hanna Månsson, who was a midwife, continued the business.

In 1891, the house was bought by the postman Nils Olson. The house was rebuilt and received its current high windows and double door. In addition, a room was fixed up in the attic and extended with a wing in brick whith a brewhouse, warehouse and entrance to the main building. Nils chose to continue to deliver mail, but he realized that a Hökeri was profitable, so he modernized it, and his wife Anna Glans operated it.

From 1898 to 1929 the house was owned by Jöns Larsson and his wife Elisabet. In 1906 they made a new renovation and extension. The wing building was adding a floor and the current frontispiece at the courtyard side. The interior was also changed by merging the entrance hall and the rooms to the left and right into one large room, which gave the store twice the size. They also decorated the store with an elegant counter and new shelves. That gave the store a character of a store, stepping directly into the store without walking through the narrow hallway.

Previously, there were mirror doors, but they were replaced with glass. Inside the store, an office was furnished with a desk and telephone. Today, the café is in that room. The store was mentioned among other Hökerier in the professional register in the City of Lund's address calendar from 1901 to 1908 and Jöns Larsson was generally referred to as a Hökare. In 1909, the house got its current frontispiece towards Tomegapsgatan.

From 1929 and until 1961–1962, the house was owned by the merchant Ove Allan Olsson. In 1962, the house was reconstructed as how a Hökeri could be looking like in the turn of the 1900s. The shelves with the twisted balusters were put in during the rebuilding in 1906 and are still there today. Otherwise, most of the interior design comes from a Hökeri store located on Bredgatan 34, which was owned by Anna Persson.

Early 1900s packaging

What probably contributes the most to the cosy atmosphere in Hökeriet is all the beautiful old packaging there.

In a wooden box on the counter, there were sweets, which were sold in paper cones and in a glass jar the homemade crackers were found. Snuff was also sold in cones. Sugar, coffee and flour were stored in boxes behind the counter and weighed in white bags.

In a glass bowl on the counter, eggs were kept, and in a wooden box there was soap with a colorful label. The grease fat was stored in a small keg and had to be weighed up on the brass scale. Beer bottles stood on the floor, but soft drinks were sold by the liter from a wooden keg. Soda and soap were in barrels, and coffee, peas and beans in jute sacks under or in front of the counter. A lot of coffee was sold also in those times, and it was grinded in the coffee grinder. In the courtyard behind the house, the kerosene barrel was kept.

The coffee grinder in Hökeriet. Consumer packaging of flour was introduced by the mills in turn of the 1900s century, and around 1905 Mazetti's eye cocoa was launched in one hectogram parchment bags: the bags were sealed at the top and decorated with a cartoon realistic pair of eyes and a string around the packaging. They were sold for 40 Swedish öre.

More expensive soaps could be bought in elegant paper boxes with shimmering labels. Scouring soap, washing powder and various types of metal polishes could also be purchased in standard packaging. The cheapest and most common cleanser, soap and soda, were sold only in bulk from large wooden barrels.

Tin cans became more common after 1875 when they could be manufactured by machine. In a Hökeri store at the turn of the 1900s century, the most commonly preserved product was anchovy, but if you had plenty of money, you could also find canned foie gras pâté and smoked salmon in oil.

Beer, wine, acetic acid, vinegar, mouth rinse, liquid toothpaste, Salubrin (a kind of disinfectant), and ink are some of the products you could buy in bottles, often with imaginative, lavish caps and beautiful labels.