Talk:Filmjölk

Article name
Viili is definitely NOT the same as yogurt or the same as the Swedish variety. They all use different yeasts, molds, fungus, or bacteria as starter for the culture.

Villi is specific to Finland and, although Filmjölk is similar, and many Swedes do eat viili, it is definitely not the same thing and does not belong in the category of Swedish foods. I does belong to the cultured milk products category (it does seem that there is a wide enough variety of products in this category to warrant that topic, particularly from a scientific standpoint) and also to the Finnish foods category since it is, in Finnish communities both inside and outside of Finland, seen as an important food reflecting Finnish tradition and heritage. My own ancestors soaked slips in viili, dried them, and packed them in their luggage to bring with them across the ocean to America. There the dried starter was then used to continue daily viili-making in this country.

Read an article on viili here

There is a chart showing starters on this page:

Here is a link to purchase starter cultures:

Crowdesign (talk) 19:08, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

If 'Filmjölk' is a form of 'Fil' then should the name of the article (that is mainly about Fil and it's variants) not be Fil? Ciraric 20:40, 22 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't know if there's an answer in the (confused) text below, but 'Fil' is just shorthand for 'Filmjölk'. JöG 16:51, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
 * ... Or maybe not, since the article claims the opposite. JöG 16:59, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

filmjölk is also often eaten with crushed knäckebröd (still large chunks) in especially the northen part of sweden.


 * Ah yes, good comment. I missed that even thought that is how I usually eat it too. And I live in south Sweden. I of course added it to the text. With link to crisp bread. :))
 * --Davidgothberg 23:55, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

This comment cut and pasted from the talk page of sour milk:

Avoid non-English titles, especially those with characters not found on the keyboards of English-speaking countries; this is the English Wikipedia, after all. Do not claim a general Nordic food as exclusively Swedish. --Vuo 22:08, 10 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Vuo, it seams you moved the page to sour milk and "vandalised" it in an attempt to make it more international. But you should know that in english "sour milk" mainly means milk gone bad. And if you spell it "soured milk" it means any kind of fermented milk including yoghurt, kephir and so on. (Note the difference between sour and soured!)


 * This page is about the products sold under the different "fil" names and how we eat them in Sweden and so on. The page was started out due to a red link in the page Cuisine of Sweden and for instance hopefully can be of aid to foreigners travelling to Sweden. (And any one else curious about the Cuisine of Sweden.) I think it would be silly to only write informative articles about Swedish food directed to foreigners in Swedish and place them on the Swedish wikipeda. I don't demand that tourists study Swedish before they travel to Sweden. (Something which seems to be a common demand in Finland. Damn you if you try to buy a tram/trolley ticket in Helsinki and don't speak Finnish.) It was not and is not my intention to claim it to be a Swedish "invention". Filmjölk probably was invented/discovered many thousands of years ago, long before Sweden became Sweden, and perhaps even before any humans moved to Sweden!


 * There is no such thing as an "international" filmjölk. If you want to write an article about soured milk in general, then you should remember that it includes yoghurt and kephir etc. And note that in many other countries soured milks such as yoghurt and kephir are sold pasteurised which means your internationalisation of the paragraphs about bacterias sold alive is plain wrong.


 * If you want to write an article about the similar product you have in Finland and how you prefer to eat it there, then do so and put under it's proper name (which I guess would be piimä / piima). And of course link to it from Cuisine of Finland.


 * Regarding use of "non english" characters: For the convenience of people who don't know how to make an ö on their keyboard I allready had a redirect from Filmjolk. Just like is the case with the article on the finnish malt porridge Mämmi / Mammi.


 * Regarding the bacterias used in filmjölk: I intentially avoided mentioning which bacterias are used since in Sweden fil is sold with MANY different kinds of bacterias, not all even being of the same family as the original filmjölk bacterias. And new types of bacterias are being added all the time. For instance right now genetically modified bacterias that produces medicines are going through the tests for being allowed to be sold as medicin. And that medicin is intended to be sold under some kind of "fil" name and eaten just like we are used to eat fil...


 * So I reinstated the original article about filmjölk and I suggest you keep away from it. How would you feel if I as a Swede went berserk on the pages about Cuisine of Finland?
 * --Davidgothberg 23:55, 23 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I think the Finnish name is viili, not piimä. Piimä ("surmjölk" in Swedish) is thinner fermented milk, which is typically drunk as a beverage. In contrast, viili is thicker, and is eaten like yoghurt. I'm a native Finnish speaker so I should know these things, but can a native Swedish speaker also confirm this?   &mdash; J I P | Talk 09:25, 24 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Sour milk and sour whole milk are valid English terms. What we would need is a native English speaker, not nationalistic bickering. Davidgothberg isn't certainly helping. It's similar to writing an article like this: "Hampurilainen is a kind of Finnish hamburger. It was invented by Hesburger, and ... etc." Wikipedia isn't a travel guide. --Vuo 18:16, 24 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I'd say neither of you are helping. David, your criticism is not altogether constructive, and I have point out that you need to stay civil and refrain from personal attacks. Even if you are right about some things, you have no excuse for escalating such a minor dispute in this way. Try to reason calmly and rationally instead.
 * Vuo, you're making claims that are completely unsupported and could have been easily checked with just a simple Google search. Your "hampurilainen"-example is not valid, since it's merely a corporate name for a slight variation of a basic hamburger. Filmjölk has a much longer history, is quite distinct from similar fermented dairy products and deserves its own article just like kefir. It's no more strange than keeping haggis and pölsa seperate. Considering that Swedish and Finnish cuisine have intermingled due to cultural influence, I suggest that viili be mentioned in this article alongside filmjölk, since they seem very similar.
 * Peter Isotalo 23:18, May 24, 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm an American, a native English speaker who has spent some time in Sweden. When I was there, and was offered Filmjolk, it was never presented in English as "Hey, want some sour milk on your muslix?"  It was always presented as Filmjolk.  I remember it as Filmjolk.  "Sour milk" means something different to me in English.  It just makes me think of milk gone bad.  Just my two cents.  --Holdek (talk)  23:50, May 24, 2005 (UTC)


 * I think the reason for my confusion is differences between Finland and Sweden. In Finland, piimä is called surmjölk in Swedish, and viili is called fil. I have never seen "filmjölk" used anywhere in Finland. Maybe in Sweden filmjölk is piimä, the same as surmjölk, and fil is the same fil in Finland, i.e. viili? Could someone who lives in Sweden confirm this?   &mdash; J I P | Talk 07:59, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Also, it could be pitkäviili, which was sold in the 90's, but haven't seen that since then. It's more fluid than viili, sold in cartons, but ropy like viili. --Vuo 20:02, 27 May 2005 (UTC)


 * JIP: In Sweden "fil" and "filmjölk" is exactly synonymous. "fil" is simply short for "filmjölk". Nothing else. I find it confusing that the Finland-Swedish makes a difference between fil and filmjölk...


 * No, Finland-Swedish doesn't make a difference between fil and filmjölk. Finland-Swedish doesn't use "filmjölk". This Wikipedia article was the first time I had heard of the word. Finland-Swedish makes a difference between surmjölk (drink) and fil (food). I was asking if Sweden-Swedish makes a difference between fil and filmjölk.   &mdash; J I P | Talk 04:15, 30 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Most of the time when people say fil, they mean filmjölk. However, there are other types of fil. Långfil is hardly sold in the southern part of Sweden, and in the north it is getting less popular... it is a kind of fil with harder consistency than filmjölk, almost elastic (yuck!) I ate it as a kid, I almost can't understand that. I guess most other kinds of fil can be referred to as filmjölk, but långfil can not. /Habj 03:13, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Oh, I see it is mentioned in the article... but in a wrong way. Långfil is not long filmjölk. It is never referred to as filmjölk. I'll correct that.
 * I think we should realise that there is no possibility to draw lines and say what names on products from different countries are the same, and what are different - too many variants along the axis, and unfortunately not just one axis. Maybe it is better then to have a page on all soured milk products that can not be defined clearly enough to have a page on their own, like yoghurt. /Habj 12:33, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Clarification: I suggest a redirect to soured milk, and description of the concepts fil, filmjölk and långfil plus other - from an international perspective - minor variants of fermented milk products there. /Habj 12:41, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * I am thinking since we don't know which of the Finnish ones is the most similar to the standard filmjölk in Sweden we should change the text in the article to "In Finland it is known as "viili" or "piimä"." Until someone with experience from both countries soured milk variants can tell which is most similar. But actually, I don't find it that important since there now are so many different variants of fil sold in Sweden that it wouldn't surprise me if both viili and piimä similar variants are available here. I mean, if you really want to know the exact details of it come to Sweden and taste the 20 or so variants of it sold here! You know, I find the difference between some of those variants to be almost as big as the difference between standard/traditional filmjölk and yoghurt. So it is really hard or even impossible to define exactly what filmjölk is. --Davidgothberg 23:41, 28 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, I could of course travel to Sweden and buy some of your filmjölk, but the only problem is, I don't like fermented milk products. I stopped eating fil when I was a child, and I have never liked surmjölk. So your idea of referring to both terms until the confusion is resolved sounds fine.   &mdash; J I P | Talk 04:15, 30 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Ah, after carefully rereading what you wrote JIP I realise that fil/viili in Finland seems to be refering to the thicker kind. So most likely viili = filmjölk/fil in Sweden. Your surmjölk/piimä then probably is more similar to the German sauermilch which is much thinner (and thus more suitable to drink then eat with a spoon). So I'll leave viili for now in the text. I have to remember to try the different ones next time I go to Finland. (I love to go dance in Finland, best dancers and dance places in the world it seems!:))
 * --Davidgothberg 20:49, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

After a little googling, checking of interwiki links and the help of a nice Finland-Swede describing the content of fi:Piimä, it is obvious that piimä is not fil or filmjölk. Piimä is buttermilk, in Swedish kärnmjölk. Most probably, viili is a very similar product to filmjölk - at least for sure it is a kind of fil. The best way to find out the precise relationship would be to check the species of bacteria - in case you come across Streptococcus lactis it is the same as Lactococcus. I am sure they eat fil also in Norway and Denmark, by the way. If I could move this page to fil I would do it, since filmjölk is a kind of fil, but that space is occupied - and really I think this should be included in a more general page on soured milk products. Or maybe this page should be transformed into Soured milk products of Sweden, to include gräddfil (a bit like smetana) etc. I guess it would be possible to create a page on Nordic fil/viili, also, if someome is interested in doing that. Naming it would be an interesting task, though. / Habj 20:46, 9 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I suggest moving the page to Fil (yoghurt) and changing Fil from a redirect into a disambig. Ciraric 19:35, 16 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Moved to fil (milk product). Fil already was a disambig. // habj 06:44, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I propose moving this page back to Filmjölk and making Fil (milk product) a redirect to Filmjölk. Rationale:


 * fil (milk product) has different meanings depending on if you're a Swede or a Finland Swede. For a Finland Swede, fil (which is viili in Finnish) is the same as filbunke in Sweden.  (See the text below the table in the subsection Milk products in Swedish in Finland for why viili and filmjölk should remain as separate articles.)  For a Swede, fil is the short name for filmjölk, a product which doesn't exist in Finland Swedish or Finland.
 * This article is about the Swedish product filmjölk and not primarily about filbunke; filbunke is a type of filmjölk according to the Swedish dairies.
 * Using the term filmjölk will avoid confusing Finland Swedes about the article's topic.
 * Although some have claimed otherwise, according to all of the Swedish dairies and Swedish dictionaries, långfil is a variant of filmjölk.
 * There is no reason why gräddfil, a product similar to but not the same as sour cream, couldn't be covered in this article since it is also made with fil culture, even though it is not normally classified as a type of filmjölk (people don't normally eat gräddfil for breakfast or between meals). The Swedish dairies classify it is a type of cream or a cooking product.
 * Even though filmjölk is also the name for the original form of filmjölk – 3% milk that has been treated with fil culture – that doesn't mean that mellanfil and lättfil are not forms of filmjölk simply because they are made from 1.5% and 0.5% milk. The same goes with the rest of the products that are called *fil or fil*.
 * fil culture is a word I made up for syrningskultur (used by Arla), which literally translates to souring culture, so that shouldn't be an excuse for keeping fil as the article's name.

Changing the article's name would also mean that the word fil would need to be replaced with filmjölk in most (but not all) places in the article. I'm happy to make those changes.

How about a time limit of two weeks for comments and objections?

–panda 19:34, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Just a note from a native English speaker (who had a recent conversation with a Swedish friend that brought me to this article).

Sour Milk or Soured Milk, or even the term Fermented Milk will all draw a different conclusion from the average English speaker. Sour Milk is an inherently bad description since it implies gone bad. She asked me what to call it and I told her just to say Yogurt with a different taste, as that is apparently what it's closest too.

I believe Fil or Filmjölk would be the preferred name, and perhaps more emphasis for English speakers that it is a Yogurt with apparently different bacteria used for fermentation.

- Brett Allen (Custodis)

122.148.193.244 14:24, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Since there weren't any objections to moving the page from Fil (milk product) back to Filmjölk after 2 weeks, I've made the change. panda 05:05, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Filmjölk?
If filmjölk is piimä, then its title should not be in a foreign language, because there are English terms, such as cultured buttermilk or sour milk. Maybe the article could be there for some country-specific customs, but not as a general article. Again, if it is Swedish, then it should not contain references to Finnish or German terms, because then these products are different.

See here and


 * The same discussion is being held under the section above. /Habj 12:33, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Question
Is it common to ferment filmjölk at home? FreplySpang (talk) 01:21, 24 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Not that I heard of. Perhaps they do that up in north Sweden where they by tradition eat fil in more different ways. But down here in south Sweden where I live I have not heard anyone doing it. Although I know some people that used to make their own yoghurt back in the 60's and 70's when the plain yoghurt without fruit was more expensive and only sold in very small packs! (They of course used the small expensive yoghurt packs as starter culture to set a big bowl of warm milk over night.) Of course, once upon a time when most people were farmers and most milk products were not centrally processed of course farmers made their own fil.
 * --Davidgothberg 01:31, 24 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Not common, but not completely unheard of either. My grandma did, my sister did sometimes... yes, I'm from the north. /Habj 03:13, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * My mom used to make filbunke when I was a kid, and we lived near Karlstad, not all that far up north.193.11.202.125 17:08, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Milk products in Swedish in Finland
Surmjölk in Finland is piimä in Finnish and is what I use as buttermilk when making biscuits, etc. Fil as a word in Swedish in Finland refers solely to a more goopy, glue-like consistency of viili that is sold in small tubs (it's never drunk) like yoghurt. AFAIK the term for it in Sweden is långfil. I've never come across filmjölk in Finland and it was always one of the "complaints" that Swedes had when they came to visit. To make life more interesting then, there's also gräddfil or kermaviili in Finnish, which is a sour-cream-like product. And then there's also smetana and yoghurt. And for what it's worth, viili is not disappearing from the supermarket shelves in Finland. I think this article needs to be drastically improved as it is mixing a number of different milk products into one article and does not discuss the differences between Sweden and Finland (incl. the differences in terms for them, popularity, etc.). -Yupik 16:04, 20 May 2007 (UTC)


 * As has been extensively discussed on this page before, the scope of this article is kind of weird. The current version looks like "youghurt-like milk products in Sweden"; it pretty much includes versions usually eaten for breakfast but not those used for cooking. I am not sure an article comparing Sweden and Finland makes much sense either. I mean, what about Norway, Denmark, Netherlands... most countries have some kind of sour milk products eaten with spoon for breakfast.
 * If we begin with the international picture rather than focussing entirely on Sweden and Finland, the main article to my understanding actually is yoghurt. Neither Finns nor Swedes refer to their traditional milk products as yoghurt, we reserve that word for outlandish yoghurt types, but if I've gotten it right yoghurt in English actually is the generic term for breakfast type milk products. My first suggestion would be to merge both this article and viili into yoghurt.
 * (Btw piimä is butter milk in English, usually called kärnmjölk in Swedish - at least in Sweden. "Kärna" is the butter churn where you make butter, leaving the butter milk as a kind of rest product. "Surmjölk" is an older word, kept in dialects here and there that might refer to butter milk but equally common to yogurt-fil-products, maybe especially homemade ones. It is not commonly used in standard Swedish of today, not in Sweden at least.) // habj 07:25, 21 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Kärnmjölk refers to a specific type of surmjölk here and is called kirnupiimä in Finnish, i.e., "churn-buttermilk". It tastes different, too, although not enough that it prevents me from using it to make buttermilk recipes from the States with it. I'm not sure that combining them all into one big article under yoghurt would be the best idea since the yoghurt article will become overwhelmingly large. But mention could be made of the different kinds with links to the articles then themselves for more detailed information on the process and food itself. Perhaps it would be better to create a head article entitled Fermented milk products and put yoghurt, etc., under that with links to the respective articles. -Yupik 08:47, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Below is a summary of what various fermented milk products are called in Finnish, Finland Swedish, Swedish, and English, according to the following sources: The different words used in Finland Swedish and Sweden Swedish help explain the confusion over what a Finnish product would be called in Swedish and why a Sweden Swede and Finland Swede have different opinions about what fil and filmjölk are.
 * Research Institute for the Languages of Finland (in Finland Swedish)
 * Finfood News Service
 * a Finland Swede
 * the above comments


 * The term filmjölk does not exist in Finland Swedish. This may be because filmjölk doesn't exist in Finland according to the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland, Finfood News Service (states: piimä is a Finnish speciality not found outside Finland; thus piimä is not filmjölk), Yupik, JIP, etc.
 * Yupik's description of fil / viili appears to confirm that those terms refer to filbunke (fil in small bowls). The Research Institute for the Languages of Finland confirms that fil in Finland Swedish is filbunke in Swedish.  It would also make sense that fil / viili is filbunke since Valio, a Finnish dairy company, sells filbunke in Sweden.  Also, filbunke has been called filmjölksbunke in the past (see SAOB).
 * If someone who can read Finnish can find out what ingredients and bacteria are used to make piimä, then we can confirm if it is a watery version of filmjölk or not.
 * Calling filmjölk a type of yogurt is a misnomer. In many countries, yogurt is very well defined as milk fermented with L. bulgaricus and S. thermophilus.  It is also a thermophilic fermented milk (fermented at room temperature in Bulgaria) whereas filmjölk is a mesophilic fermented milk (fermented at room temperature in Sweden, much lower than Bulgaria).  It would be more accurate to call filmjölk a type of cultured buttermilk, if you must compare it with a known product in English, or a type of fermented milk or cultured milk.  Thus it does not make sense to merge this article with the yogurt article.
 * It doesn't make sense to merge this article with the viili article since viili is filbunke in Sweden Swedish, which is a single variant of filmjölk. The vice versa is also true.  It doesn't make sense to merge the viili article with this article since there are many variants of viili in Finland that are not found in Sweden.  Viili may have started as a Swedish product, according to Valio, but the Finns have made it into their own specialty product.

Furthermore, långfil, also known as långmjölk, is a type of filmjölk (see the filmjölk talk page on the Swedish wiki). If there is interest, I can translate the relevant text to English. My hypothesis for the naming scheme: Långfiil may have been called långfilmjölk at one point in time and since that's a pretty long word, got shorted to långfil and långmjölk, with långfil being the one chosen by Arla when they started to market their product in 1965, maybe because it was the shorter name and maybe to maintain a uniform naming convention: mellanfil, lättfil, långfil. Hence, långfil became the more popular term. (Mellanfilmjölk and långfilmjölk are too long to fit on a label without having to split the name up into two lines, which I can image was the reason for using mellanfil or långfil instead. Besides långmjölk being longer than långfil, they couldn't use långmjölk if they wanted a uniform naming convention since that would mean mellanfilmjölk would be called mellanmjölk, and that name is used for 1.5% milk.)

– panda 00:58, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Canadian Dairy Commission
Just for the record, the text about filmjölk on the Canadian Dairy Commission's website Fermented Milk Products and the text in this article were identical or nearly identical before I started to make changes to it on 30 June 2007. Example:

The text on the Wikipedia site appears to predate the text on the CDC's site. I have since altered the text here quite a lot. apanda 19:45, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

"Extra healthy?"
The article's title categorizes several varieties of "extra healthy" filmjölk. It isn't clear what sort of health claims are being made in the article, or that any filmjölk is healthy and that these versions are more so. Some explanation of these health claims, with appropriate citations, might belong here. - Smerdis of Tlön 21:59, 25 August 2007 (UTC)


 * The manufacturers call those types of filmjölk healthy. So for lack of a better name, I chose "extra healthy variants" as the subsection name. The last sentence in the first paragraph is about the health benefits of filmjölk: it "has a stabilising effect on the stomach and intestines."  (ref still needed)  The description of each filmjölk variant in the extra healthy section states what is considered extra healthy about them (they contain probiotics for the most part), which is why its currently labeled "extra healthy".  All of the health claims are cited in the "Name" (or Fermentation culture) column but I can copy the citations to the "description" column if you think that would be more clear.  Also, if you have a better suggestion for what those variants should be called, I'd be interested in hearing them.  panda 22:28, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Home-made filmjölk with carnivorous plants as starter
This really is interesting. I heard that Carl von Linné first wrote about it in Flora Lapponica. If no lactic acid bacteria are on the plant (which would be a obvious explanation especially as plants are the natural habitat of those bacteria), I can only imagine that it is bacteria synthesising protease, which have the effect. I understood that the resulting fil can be used as a starter without further need of the butterwort plant.--91.96.47.80 09:54, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

First flavoured filmjölk?
The article claims Arla invented the first flavoured filmjölk in 1997. The source is Arla itself. I recall a probably earlier flavoured by NNP (I think) that was flavoured with blackcurrant. However they exploded so it was recalled. // Liftarn (talk)


 * "However they exploded so it was recalled." ???  What exploded?
 * It's possible that NNP (now Milko) made a flavoured filmjölk before Arla, probably with blackcurrant (svartvinbär) or maybe even cloudberry (hjortron). I've updated the sentence to make it clear that it is about Arla's first flavoured filmjölk and not all flavoured filmjölk.  Thanks for noticing!  –panda (talk) 17:46, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Which language was intended?
The table of "filmjölk" variants contains "fi-se: Fil[40]". The ISO code "fi-se" means "Finnish as spoken in Sweden", but the link goes to Finland Swedish (sv_fi) instead. (212.247.11.156 (talk) 08:54, 13 April 2008 (UTC))

Dickmilch?
This article includes a link to Dickmilch, and so do its counterparts on the Swedish and Finnish Wikipedias. However, the German article itself includes wikilinks to soured milk and its equivalent in other languages. Also, (I'm not propagating this as a reliable source, but) the last comment in this strongly suggests that "Dickmilch" in German is not the same thing as filmjölk, and that "filmjölk/villi" is unübersetzbar - untranslatable.

Should that German wikilink be removed, perhaps? Or am I missing something? --Kuaichik (talk) 03:54, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Nobody has answered the above question in almost a month, so I think I'll just go ahead and remove the German wikilink. --Kuaichik (talk) 03:01, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, now it's been added back in, because I failed to notice that (apparently) filmjölk can also mean just "sour milk" (or at least, the article soured milk includes a wikilink to sv:Filmjölk)! Below I am posting the edit summary used for adding the German wikilink back in:
 * I belive Dickmilch is close enough to filmjölk (the word is used in both a narrow and a wider sense - i.e. including variants - in swedish). --Kuaichik (talk) 04:52, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Surmjölk is not the same as Filmjölk!
The article says "Swedish-speaking Finns usually use the word surmjölk, which is the older name for filmjölk (also in Sweden) or piimä (in Finnish)". This is not correct. Surmjölk is a different product that is drunk from a glass!

In Finland the Finland-Swedish word FIL (finnish: VIILI) is used instead of FILMJÖLK

SURMJÖLK (finnish: Piimä or Piimämaito) is a different product. It has a more sour taste than Filmjölk and the consistency is less thick. It is usually drunk from a glass (as an alternative to regular milk) and not eaten with spoon like Filmjölk. Pnnielsen (talk) 15:03, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * That depends on where you come from. I'm from Götaland, Sweden (Geatland). Before Arla started to market filmjölk nationwide, it was called surmjölk here and (I think) in the rest of West Sweden. The word fil was in West Sweden used for what is now called filbunke, the word långfil (or sometimes ostfil) was in West Sweden used for, you guessed it, the West Swedish version of långfil. I have been told that the word filmjölk is a recent invention of Arla, made up by them to be marketed over all of Sweden, since the name surmjölk meant spoiled milk (blåmjölk in Geatish) in the area around Stockholm and Uppsala (where they didn't eat or drink surmjölk before Arla introduced it, but filbunke) and the word fil couldn't be used in West Sweden since it meant filbunke. Thin "drinkable" soured milk was/is called surdricka (or rather "surdräcka") or more often (at least in writing) kvass. The word kvass was introduced by Russian prisoners of war working in West Sweden; West Swedish kvass can not only be made from milk, but also from fermented bread, grains (some versions made of grains is also called svagdricka, all over Sweden) or legumes. From the descriptions of buttermilk, I think it is the same as what was called "mys" in West Sweden, but mys haven't been part of the West Swedish diet for a very long time.
 * Side-note: As far as I know, filmjölk/surmjölk wasn't part of the traditional kitchen in Southern (until recently Danish) Sweden and therefore wasn't called anything there.--217.210.238.151 (talk) 13:56, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Whats the difference between filmjolk and buttermilk? Should this be merged into buttermilk
So, is there and difference between filmjolk and buttermilk? It seems like these articles should be merged but maybe I am missing something. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Litch (talk • contribs) 07:08, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * No, there's definitely a difference. I'll drink buttermilk, but I won't touch filmjölk for anything :D -Yupik (talk) 20:42, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Somehwat in keeping with this topic I did see fit to remove the statement declaring something to the effect that it is not the same thing as buttermilk. The entire article preceeding, and the fact that the article exists independent of buttermilk would preclude any indication that the two are identical, though they are undoubably allied. I removed the entire post semicolon text for the above reasons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.230.239.172 (talk) 03:51, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Merges?
It would seem that Viili is the same thing as Filmjoelk, and it should be merged into this article if this is the case. Súrmjólk is stated in this article as being the same as Filmjoelk, so it should definitely be merged into this article. 146.201.141.185 (talk) 15:52, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Viili is not the same thing as filmjölk. Though viili and fil are obviously related etymologically, viili is fermented with different bacteria, and tastes entirely different. Its texture is also much more gloopy than that of filmjölk, which is much more watery. Their differences are covered more extensively in the book Fermented Milks, I'll see if I can incorporate it as a source in the next couple of days. Gabbe (talk) 17:46, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

You can buy milk everywhere...
"It is often used instead of milk within the Nordic countries (and more widely available)" This sentence seems to me imply that filmjölk is more available than milk is, and that is definitely not true. You can get them at the same place, and I'd say Swedes consume more milk than filmjölk on average. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.4.129.166 (talk) 19:35, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

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