If you’re shopping Swedish candy in the US, half the words on the bag aren’t English. Most aren’t complicated — once you know them, the candy aisle gets a lot easier. Here’s the short list.
- godis
- "Candy", in the broad sense. The default Swedish word for sweets.
- lösgodis
- Literally "loose candy". The pick-and-mix wall in a Swedish supermarket — bins of individual candy pieces you scoop into a paper bag. The dominant Swedish candy retail format.
- lördagsgodis
- "Saturday candy". The Swedish tradition of compressing the week’s candy into a single Saturday session. Full background here.
- plockmix / blandgodis
- "Pick-and-mix" / "mixed candy". You’ll see both on bag labels and at retail.
- skum
- "Foam". A category of light, mallow-like Swedish candy pieces — strawberry foam, banana foam, foam frogs ("skumgrodor"), foam sticks. Different from American marshmallow: less sweet, denser, more flavoured.
- lakrits
- "Licorice". Includes both sweet licorice and salty licorice; the bag will normally specify.
- saltlakrits
- "Salty licorice". Licorice with sodium chloride added. Recognisable and divisive. Try one piece, not a bag, the first time.
- salmiak / salmiakki
- A specific kind of salty licorice flavoured with ammonium chloride (NH₄Cl). Sharper, more chemical, more polarising than regular saltlakrits. The Finnish word salmiakki is sometimes used in Sweden too.
- djungelvrål
- "Jungle scream". The legendary Malaco salty-licorice piece coated in a powerful salmiak powder. The piece most non-Swedes are dared into eating.
- karamell / hårda karameller
- "Caramel" / "hard caramels". In Swedish this means hard candy, not soft toffee — confusing for English speakers. A bag labelled karameller is closer to a butterscotch / hard-boiled sweet.
- kola
- "Toffee" or "fudge" — the soft chewy kind. Mjuk kola = soft toffee; chokladkola = chocolate toffee.
- seg / mjuk
- "Chewy" / "soft". You’ll see these as size or texture descriptors on the bag.
- sur
- "Sour". Surt godis = sour candy. Extremt sur = "extremely sour" and means it.
- smågodis / småplock
- "Small candies" / "small picks". Bite-size pieces, often used for pick-and-mix bags or party portions.
- fika
- Not strictly a candy word, but worth knowing — fika is the Swedish coffee-and-something-sweet break. Candy is fika’s casual cousin.
TheSweetsTruck launches in May 2026. If you want a bag built around the words above — including a saltlakrits piece, a skum piece, a lakrits piece, and a sur piece — sign up for launch and we’ll send you one.