How I survived this year’s Midsummer

Midsummer is the second biggest holiday in Sweden. After Christmas feast, people are eager to get to Midsummer day. Stores are packed with Swedes queuing to get strawberries, sill in a jar, meatballs, potatoes and dill.

I celebrated Midsummer before, but this was my first traditional experience. It all starts with serving food, a little booklet with Swedish traditional songs and snaps to make singing a bit easier. Basically the rule is to drink after every song. I participated with a polite humming and drinking in the end. I figured it's the best to go with it, since dancing around a maypole was still on the schedule for that day.

To create a perfect environment, guys were making a maypole covered in vines and other flowers and girls were working on a rosary which is a necessary head accessory for dancing part of the celebration. From what I learned this fertility rite comes from Viking times and its purpose is to fertilize the soil, in hope that the harvest would be good that year. This custom sounds much more magical in theory than it actually is. It lost its magical power once we started dancing around the maypole and singing the "Små grodorna" (little frogs)song...

The little frogs, the little frogs are funny to observe.

The little frogs, the little frogs are funny to observe.

No ears, no ears no tails do they possess.

No ears, no ears no tails do they possess.

Kou ack ack ack, kou ack ack ack,

kou ack ack ack ack kaa.

Kou ack ack ack, kou ack ack ack,

kou ack ack ack ack kaa.

There is a cute dance that goes with it and to be honest we all had a fair share of snaps in our system at this point so I'm sure our dancing will make flowers blossom early and apples extra red this year.