American blueberries are the only ones I know. How would I, as resident of middle America, obtain these "bilberries"?
Frozen berries are exported from Europe though and can probably be found in specialist shops, the French in particular are fond of them (myrtilles). The texture is unfortunately lost but the taste does come through quite well.
I think they are picked and exported frozen from Poland and Sweden among other places.
Some people make a business out of it, gather them whole day and sell them. But I've never seen them in malls, just in street markets and people selling them along the roads in season. I think they don't keep long enough for markets - you have to eat them by the day after the gathering.
We also have the "american blueberries", they are farmed industrially, and some people have them in their gardens (my grandparents for example). They are nice, but nowhere close to the real thing.
There's also 2 different species of wild forest berries, but I'm not sure how they are officially called in English (my grandmother called them "borówki" and "łochinie", but even in Poland it's regional names, most people don't know what a "łochinia" is :) ).
Today, because of this discussion, searching for some info, I found this interesting trivia observation someone blogged about: you can use bog bilberry to clean the color off your bilberry blue fingers. The explanation likely being that they are slightly acidic (it's hard to remove with just water and soap.)
https://www.godt.no/aktuelt/i/eK1GOO/baeret-som-fjerner-blaa...
These berries have many names in scanidinavia too, but in norwegian I would know them as «skinntryte».
I think this is what she called "łochinia", but it grew in the forest so I'm not sure:
They are quite intensively harvested in countries like Finland, Sweden, Poland and Belarus. The frozen berries are then exported. For instance where I live (Austria) I can buy frozen Bilberries at a much cheaper price than regular Blueberries.
If you think this is the worst offender, compare real tiny forest strawberries with that bland stuff from grocery stores. 5% of the volume, 300% of the taste. Even good ripe homegrown ones pale in comparison. Had a hike last weekend and hit the right spot of altitude and their ripeness, got stuck for an hour just nibbling on them along forest roads.
Folks go into the forests and harvest them, selling them to the stores. Similar story with cloudberries. They go for a fairly nice price. (They sell local produce in the major grocery stores here)
The rest of the year, though, large blueberries are all that are on offer if you are buying fresh. IIRC, I can buy both smaller and larger blueberries if I buy frozen.
There was an airline that serves or at least used to serve blåbär juice in-flight in or to/from Sweden. I don't remember if it was like SAS or BRA, but one of them did. Kind of an expensive way to get a taste.
Usually I just go to the forest myself. The wikipedia article says that they grow in quite a number of places around the world. In northern Sweden, they are everywhere, and you have the absolute right to harvest them for personal use, AFAIK.