Midsummer will be celebrated all over Sweden this coming Friday (the Friday closest to the summer solstice) - here is a picture story of how my family celebrates - taken last summer... We are lucky as this happens in a small community where we have our forest house on the same land where my husband's parents live - there are meadows, there is the forest, there is the lake and there are enough people (when guests are invited) to make a great celebration... it really reminds me of something from Astrid Lindgren's Bullerby (Noisy Village)
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| the day starts with picking flowers to decorate the midsummer pole - but of course that is not the only thing that is picked |
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| finding wild strawberries takes priority! |
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| we make crowns of flowers - using both wild flowers and bought flowers |
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| there is dancing around the midsummer pole - many different songs |
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| and a lot of laughter |
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| a detail of the midsummer pole - it is a pole with a bar across with two circles hanging from either side of the bar. |
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| lots of opportunities to find insects and frogs and toads - and to show off finds (although not mixing frogs and insects...) |
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| after the singing and cake eating it is time to play games - a series of challenges - this one for example - how many strikes to get the nail all the way in...? |
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| can you stack the rocks to the specified height - one for children and one for adults - there was a piece os wood to help measure... |
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| always fun when you totally challenge how high you can go and it eventually falls down... |
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| counting how many blocks are inside the box |
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| And of course there is midsummer food - sill (pickled herring and other flavoured herring and a whole variety of them, new potatoes, prawn mix and salmon mix... but salmon usually features somewhere... |
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| playing in the water as the evening comes |
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| taking it easy in the dipping sun with some food grilled at the water's edge |
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| watching the sun dip, but not go down... it never gets truly dark - for 24 hour daylight you have to go further north than Stockholm |
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