The Effort to Promote Lichens for Human Consumption in Nineteenth-Century Europe

In 1683 a lichen long relied in Iceland as a grain substitute was detected in Sweden, where chemical analysis revealed an appreciable nutritive content. Use of the lichen as food in Lapland was reported in the following century, but its composition was not again studied until the Spanish famine of 1805/6. The results of that investigation amply demonstrated the species’ potential as an emergency food, which led to lichens being recommended for domestic use and commercial bread production during successive European famines. Amateur attempts in France and Germany to distil alcohol from lichens proved uneconomic, a problem temporarily solved when commercial distilleries began operating in the environs of Stockholm during the famine of 1867. Their intake of lichen material eventually became such that, by the 1890s, demand could no longer be economically met and production ceased. Recourse to lichens as emergency rations had also ended by then.