flaneuse

Fika

Fika is a Swedish verb that roughly means “to take a coffee break”.

Fika is a social institution in Sweden: it means taking a break from work or other activities and having a coffee with one’s colleagues, friends, or family. This practice of taking a break for a coffee and a light snack (some biscuits, cookies, or a sandwich) between more substantial meals like lunch and dinner is central to Swedish life, Swedes being among the heaviest consumers of coffee in the world.

Since the word implies drinking coffee, just having a sandwich would not really be fika, although these days tea instead of coffee is becoming more frequent. In recent years, too, fika has also come to mean simply going to a café and having a coffee with someone, though this technically deviates from the strict “taking a break” meaning.

The word itself is an example of the backslang used in the 19th century - where the syllables of a word are reversed - deriving from kaffi, an earlier variant of the Swedish word kaffe (“coffee”).

The word is also used as a noun, referring to the snacks and coffee eaten and drunk during fika, and can also be found in many combined nouns, especially in the word fikabröd (fika bread) which is a collective name for all kinds of biscuits and cookies that are traditionally eaten during fika. Note that actual bread (for example sandwiches) that are eaten during fika are not included in this usage, the word only refers to other kinds of snacks. However, in northern Sweden and also in the more rural areas, fika is synonym to coffee without any treats; Ta en kopp fika (“Have a cup of coffee”).

De la wikipedia.