As a Finn I can vouch for this. We used to have these at school for lunch every now and then. There are different versions of these pancakes, for example with spinach instead of blood. There's also stuff like black sausage, which is a Finnish version of blood sausage. Also similar is Veripalttu. Blood is such a common ingredient I can just basically walk to any grocery store and find fresh pig blood next to the frozen veggies/foods.

Now why do we have all these foods with blood? Well the northern parts of Europe are pretty much the worst place to life if you want to have anything to eat. In here it's dark and freezing for 8 months of the year. People used every part of an animal which could be eaten, because the food was scarce. And blood is a really good source of iron.

It's pretty obvious that anaemia used to be a big problem especially for children. My dad told me that when he was a little kid in the 50's his mom made him drink iron wine which was an alcoholic drink with added iron. He told me it tasted like crap and you can still see how drinking it ruined his teeth. My dad didn't even have anaemia he was just skinny boy, so it was just to be sure.

I love it how every piece of food I pasted just looks like some shit with berries on it. Obviously we don't put berries on all of our shit.

God damn I love this country.