A “Swedish Torch” is a great little trick for anyone with a chainsaw in their camping kit to quickly make a modest size fire for warmth, and a convenient platform for cooking. They’re particularly useful if you’re short on wood or cookware that’s suitable for a larger fire.
(The Torches are also called Canadian Candles, but I believe the original credit goes to the Swedes. Apologies Canada, if I have that wrong.)
Simple steps to make a Torch:
- You need a log/trunk about 30cm / 12″ wide or more, to be stable standing when up.
- A dry, hardwood log is best, as using wet logs will make it difficult to get a fire started (they’ll also steam and flood the place with smoke, annoying everyone at your camp).
- Cut off a 50cm / 20″, or slightly longer length.
- Stand it upright, and make 3 saw cuts into the log in a snowflake pattern, as shown above, and cut to a depth a bit less than halfway down.
- Fill your ‘snowflake’ with small kindling. Dry leaves, small twigs, etc. Paper isn’t necessarily the best for this as it can burn too quickly to ignite the log depending on what wood is available to you, and end up flooding it with Ash. Stick to the smallest wooden/grass kindling you can find, it works better.
- You can light your kindling from the outside edges of each cut, and the center, and your fire should be going strong in no time. If you add a splash of lighter fluid or 2-stroke from your chainsaw it can make life that much easier.
- Give it 15 minutes or so for the log itself to really start burning, and voilà, your Swedish Torch is ready to pop a pot on and start cooking.
Of course, you can build and cook on a regular old campfire, but the Swedish Torch method does add a few handy practical benefits.
- Economical use of wood; great if your log supplies are low.
- A flat surface for cooking. Getting a pot or pan positioned on a regular campfire can be a bit problematic at times; it’s either too far and not hot enough, too deep in the fire and everything burns, or one side of the pan is furiously hot while the other is lukewarm. A torch setup is much more akin to cooking on a gas cooktop at home.
- Get cooking faster. With the Swedish Torch approach, you don’t have to wait for your campfire to burn down to embers, you can start cooking as soon as the fire is going.
- Stability. Logs piled up in a fire will suddenly shift as one burns away and no longer provides support to those above. A Swedish Torch will burn from the inside out, while the outer ring remains intact, retaining the stable flat surface until the flame reaches the outer ring.
- If the surrounding ground is wet, the fire is kept away from the source of water, preventing steam from slowing down your campfire from getting started.
- Ventilation. Fires, of course, need oxygen to burn. Haphazardly piled logs often don’t do a great job of providing this. Once your Torch is lit, it will continue to draw in oxygen from the sides and burn without the need for any intervention on your part.
In a pinch, you can achieve a similar result by bundling together split log fragments of equal length with bale wire, but a single-piece log cut as pictured above is ideal.
Give it a try on your next trip away. Happy cooking.
# Campfire cooking, woodfire cooking, cooking on a log fire, Swedish tradition, Nordic camping.
