Midsummer's Eve - Celebration at skansen

In the morning, Dom and I went to the bank to try and close our accounts, but it was closed, after that we proceeded to Skansen for midsummer's celebration where we would meet up with Zhiqiang and Samantha. Skansen was already very croweded when we got there and there were loads of people wearing garlands. We then joined a group of people in the garden outside one of the traditional cottages to pick flowers to make a garland with summer flowers for ourselves. You can see people, female and male, young and old, wearing garlands of varying standards. This is the time of the year where even guys wear flowers atop their heads.



Making our garlands



Our first attempt at making garlands.


Trying my luck at lottery


The skansen May pole


The musicians- fiddlers


A traditional dance




Bysons!

After that we dance all sorts of dances and sing songs.

Midsummer Day

Today is midsummers day. Yesterday was midsummer's eve, so Dom, Zhiqiang, Samantha and I went to Skansen for the big celerations. I've copied and pasted something about midsummer's from the skansen webpage.

Midsummer's Eve is, with Christmas, the most popular festival in Sweden. Just as in other parts of Europe the festival centred round an ancient agricultural ritual involving the entire village. The people dance around maypoles. Maypoles are believed to be part of an old fertility rite, the pole being a phallus that "impregnates" Mother Nature. It was hoped that properly celebrating this rite would help to give a good harvest in the autumn.

Midsummer night was also believed to be a time of powerful and secret forces. Everything was animated: the dew, the flowers, the twigs of the trees and the water in the wells. People also claimed that if a young woman placed a bouquet of seven or nine different flowers (the traditions vary) under her pillow that night she would dream of her future love. She must remain alone while picking the flowers and observe total silence. A flower from the churchyard increased the magical powers of the bouquet, as did picking flowers from the banks of three different roads at a crossroads.

Midsummer today is a national holiday in Sweden. The actual day of the celebration is also the longest day of the year (summer solstice), signifying that summer has reached the half-way point. Wherever people live they seek out a place where a maypole is raised and there is dancing and games – like the famous 'frog dance' (små grodorna) - for the children.

Midsummer is celebrated in Sweden on the weekend closest to June 24 which is officially Midsummer's Day