Midsummer is one of the most known Swedish celebrations.
It is what we call back in Galicia, o San Juan de toda a vida. Both parties were born to commemorate the shortest night of the year and ended up in a excuse to meet your friends and family, eat good food and be outside decorating everything at home with herbs and beautiful flowers.
Lightly different, but a lot the same thing.
Well, here it is why I, an innocent poor Spanish girl with little brown eyes, short hair now, cause I cut it some months ago but I had it really long before, but you know, one gets tired of long hair sometimes... what were we talking about?
Ok... why have I become a Midsommar lover?
It is common that all the girls pick up some wild flowers and do beautiful and big chaplets for the hair. Flowers is actually the main decoration everywhere.
It is common that the people from the villages meet to prepare a nice midsommar pole that they wonderfully decorate with herbs and flowers. Most of the neighbours gather during the midday to pulled up the "pole", a symbol of the fertility, and celebrate this 24th of June. Last year I was quiet amazed of the spirit of the people, specially the youngest and the oldest ones. Some people even dress up with Swedish traditional clothes.
Then, Midsommar is generally a countryside celebration, all the cities are (almost) empty.
I have seen how easily Swedish people can enjoy of a picnic everywhere, any time of the year. In one second they have prepared a thermo full of hot Swedish coffee (they are really proud of their coffee), some delicious sandwiches with butter, fundamental in this country, and luckily egg, some Kanelbullar, cinnamon buns, and all perfectly packed up in a beautiful picnic basket.
This picnic abilities of my man impressed me so much, I still remember how he prepared a perfect picnic with hot chocolate to warm my heart after my first day skying. Sorry, I mean, after my first day falling down all the way down hill, several times, with skies in my feet, cause he brought me up hill to see the sunset. Sunset I completely forgot a minute after cause I was busy hating him. But the nice picnic we did in the little hut make me feel the day was perfect.
Coming back to Midsommar, I have to say last year we celebrated ourselves in Gothenburg with some friends, and even the city was quite dead, we had such a nice evening. It is a tradition to eat the new potatoes with herring and nice sauces, and of course, Swedish strawberries for dessert.
But the best of the traditions is to mix them up with more traditions.
And if we are talking about food, even better.
We had a super delicious midsummer dinner with Turkish meze, different sallads, new potatoes and herring, strawberries and Galician gin tonics. It could not be better. A fantastic evening with fantastic people.
And of course I can not forget the snaps, shots of strong alcohol that Swedish drink in the middle of the lunch/dinner just after singing proudly "the snaps songs". This make all the people in the table specially happy and talkative. This year I will sing the songs feeling I know what I say, not like the past year, when I felt they were singing in Japanese.
So, this is a little bit of everything I can say, if Swedish people feel I missed something really important, let me know please. But the fault is not mine. It is Ki's who hasn't teach me better ;)
I let some pics of our last "midsommar" and the link of a video who illustrates better what I am talking about,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8ZLpGOOA1Q
(Snaps time! Who knows the lyrics?)
*Sorry for all my comments no related with the topic.
With lots of love,
Tamara
It is what we call back in Galicia, o San Juan de toda a vida. Both parties were born to commemorate the shortest night of the year and ended up in a excuse to meet your friends and family, eat good food and be outside decorating everything at home with herbs and beautiful flowers.
Lightly different, but a lot the same thing.
Well, here it is why I, an innocent poor Spanish girl with little brown eyes, short hair now, cause I cut it some months ago but I had it really long before, but you know, one gets tired of long hair sometimes... what were we talking about?
Ok... why have I become a Midsommar lover?
It is common that all the girls pick up some wild flowers and do beautiful and big chaplets for the hair. Flowers is actually the main decoration everywhere.
It is common that the people from the villages meet to prepare a nice midsommar pole that they wonderfully decorate with herbs and flowers. Most of the neighbours gather during the midday to pulled up the "pole", a symbol of the fertility, and celebrate this 24th of June. Last year I was quiet amazed of the spirit of the people, specially the youngest and the oldest ones. Some people even dress up with Swedish traditional clothes.
Then, Midsommar is generally a countryside celebration, all the cities are (almost) empty.
I have seen how easily Swedish people can enjoy of a picnic everywhere, any time of the year. In one second they have prepared a thermo full of hot Swedish coffee (they are really proud of their coffee), some delicious sandwiches with butter, fundamental in this country, and luckily egg, some Kanelbullar, cinnamon buns, and all perfectly packed up in a beautiful picnic basket.
This picnic abilities of my man impressed me so much, I still remember how he prepared a perfect picnic with hot chocolate to warm my heart after my first day skying. Sorry, I mean, after my first day falling down all the way down hill, several times, with skies in my feet, cause he brought me up hill to see the sunset. Sunset I completely forgot a minute after cause I was busy hating him. But the nice picnic we did in the little hut make me feel the day was perfect.
Coming back to Midsommar, I have to say last year we celebrated ourselves in Gothenburg with some friends, and even the city was quite dead, we had such a nice evening. It is a tradition to eat the new potatoes with herring and nice sauces, and of course, Swedish strawberries for dessert.
But the best of the traditions is to mix them up with more traditions.
And if we are talking about food, even better.
We had a super delicious midsummer dinner with Turkish meze, different sallads, new potatoes and herring, strawberries and Galician gin tonics. It could not be better. A fantastic evening with fantastic people.
And of course I can not forget the snaps, shots of strong alcohol that Swedish drink in the middle of the lunch/dinner just after singing proudly "the snaps songs". This make all the people in the table specially happy and talkative. This year I will sing the songs feeling I know what I say, not like the past year, when I felt they were singing in Japanese.
So, this is a little bit of everything I can say, if Swedish people feel I missed something really important, let me know please. But the fault is not mine. It is Ki's who hasn't teach me better ;)
I let some pics of our last "midsommar" and the link of a video who illustrates better what I am talking about,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8ZLpGOOA1Q
(any expert of the topic would notice the lack of Swedish flags and Swedish napkins, but I think it looks perfect)
(Snaps time! Who knows the lyrics?)
With lots of love,
Tamara
No comments:
Post a Comment