Glad to see a cherished local delicacy featured on HN! Growing up in northern Sweden, I learned to enjoy it even before I started drinking coffee. While it is a rather mild cheese on its own, when immersed in coffee it softens up and absorbs some of the liquid, giving it a texture somewhere between Camembert and Tiramisu.
It pairs well with the traditional Swedish way of preparing coffee, which is coarsely ground coffee seeping immersed in boiling water. Similar to a french press, the unfiltered particles in the coffee give it a more rounded taste, as do the fat the kaffeost disperses into the coffee. As far as I understand from traveling the area and talking to friends, it is more common to eat it like this in the northern parts of Finland and Sweden, whereas further south (but still in the "northern parts") it is enjoyed on its own together with cloudberries.<p>The article seems a little bit confused regarding locations, though. It mainly uses the Swedish name kaffeost and claims it to be a Scandinavian delicacy (i.e. excluding Finland), but it gives several names for the cheese in Finnish without mentioning Finland. My understanding is that it is mainly a Finnish thing centered around northern Finland and Tornedalia [1], at least originally.<p>[1] - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me%C3%A4nmaa" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me%C3%A4nmaa</a>