A table with a variety of food, chiefly cold cuts of fish or meat.
For many decades, the smorgasbord—or, for those too hungry to say the whole word, the smorg—has dominated the social scene of middle-class America: the success of any celebration is directly proportional to the length of the smorgasbord table and the number of hors d’oeuvres displayed upon it. Indeed, those hosts forced to make do with only a puny card table and few cold cuts often suffer acutely from “smorg envy” or, worse, “smorg shame.” The politics of the smorgasbord no doubt emerged shortly after English borrowed the word from Swedish in the late nineteenth century; the word had arisen much earlier in that language as a compound of smorgas, meaning opensandwich, and bord, meaning table. Smorgas, in turn, is a compound apparently formed from the Swedish names of two common ingredients in Scandinavian open-sandwiches: butter and goose, or what the Swedes call smor and gas.
In Sweden, a spread or “bord” featuring an assortment of appetizers, such as pickled fish, salads, cheeses, and more. In the United States, the term can also refer to a complete meal, consisting of various hot dishes and desserts, presented on a large table, from which diners serve themselves.
In Sweden, and to a lesser degree across the rest of Scandinavia, this customary method of food presentation holds sway. It mirrors the essence of a bountiful buffet or a chilled spread, capable of assuming the role of either an enticing appetizer or a complete repast.