The Seaweed Collector's Handbook

Books | Films | Training

11 July 2021 - Askøy

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The Seaweed Collector's Handbook comes up at or near the top on Amazon results when one search for books about harvesting and preparing seaweed. Amazon doea not usually lead me astray, but in this case they did. Miek Zwamborn is a Dutch artist who runs an art colony on a Scottish island. Her book reflects this and is more about the representations of seaweed in human culture and some history of our interactions with seaweed than about the collection and preparation of seaweed. Yes, there are a few recipes at the end, but they're not all for local varieties of seaweed. And there is not practical about collecting seaweed at all. The only really useful part of the book is the last 24 pages which provide illustrastions and descriptions of 12 seaweeds found on the English coast. All but one of these also appear to be endemic to the Vestland of Norway. It appears though that something was lost in translation as the original Dutch title was simply Wieren, or "seaweed". It seems that in marketing to an English speaking audience the book was framed as something it wasn't.