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Pål Karlsen
The Foragers - Custodians of Nature

Thai blueberry pickers in northern Sweden. Mushroom tourism in Spain. Gourmet restaurants that love local and wild-gathered ingredients. The Copenhagen Wild Food Festival. Romans in Bulgaria selling porcini mushrooms. Mountain tea from the Rhodope Mountains. Mushroom lovers in Poland. Norwegian foragers who combine foraging with teaching and product innovation on species nobody ever thought of as edible. Join us on a visit into the world of foragers. Who are they? What do they have in common? What drives them? How will they be able to work in the future, when ever more forests and green patches are degraded to roads and rural development?

The aim of this book is to contribute to the understanding of foraging as a valuable activity for society. Foraging is the opposite of a threat to what we like to call "unspoiled nature". The foraged produce contributes to a general food security by collecting new and traditional knowledge about the rich world of foods far beyond the few commercial monocultures we currently trust our lives with. Foraging counteracts the modern alienation around the origin of the food we eat. Collecting will not replace shopping in grocery stores but will increase respect for what we put in the shopping cart.Those who forage from nature are also the first to take care of it. That is why foragers are the custodians of nature.

"The author has met foragers all over Europe. They have in common a drive to existential freedom and proudness of their knowledge of foraging". - Liz Buer, D2 8.12.22

'Are the foragers a threat to nature, or are they agents for building respect of nature? This readable book deals with topics worth considering and motivates me to learn more about the edible nature.'

Pål Karlsen

Pål Karlsen

Pål Karlsen (1960) is educated in and has had a long career in film production. But gradually his passion for mushrooms and foraging took over and he is now educated as both mushroom controller and wild edible greens expert, doing tours and courses for the general public as well as gourmet chefs. He is from 2018 CEO of The Norwegian Association for Mycology and Foraging, which has soon 7000 members, 40 local societies and in charge of the public mushroom control in Norway.

Other titles

In addition to educational books in film production, Pål has published three foraging titles:

Steinsoppen - vill av natur (2014) - a cultural history on Boletus edulis (porcini, cep, penny bun). Translated to Finnish and Polish.
SpiŚopp - 200 sopper du må smake før du dør (2021) - an educational cooking book on edible mushrooms you probably never ever have tried before.

Foreign rights

Pål Karlsen
[email protected]

Edited March 06, 2023 by Pål Karlsen