Nordic and Scandinavian remedies: 186 plants and preparations, graded by evidence

Nordic folk medicine is built out of what grows at high latitude and what keeps through a long winter: birch, spruce, juniper, bilberry and lingonberry, nettle, sphagnum moss, cloudberry. Much of it is food first and remedy second, which is why so many entries here are graded on dietary and observational evidence rather than trials - sea buckthorn and bilberry are the main exceptions. A practical caution specific to this tradition: several of these are external preparations tied to the sauna and the bath rather than things taken by mouth, and each page says which it is.

Not every remedy names a tradition. Browse the full A–Z index for all 3,787 remedies, including the 255 with no recorded tradition.