Like Christmas, Midsummer comes once a year and is celebrated at the end of June or if you like at the opposite end of the calender year from Christmas´s winter solstice. Unlike Christmas, Midsummer has not been adapted to Christianity but is splendid in maintaining the more mundane joys of our existance. Whereas Christmas has lost most of its pagan origins albeit still going by its pre-christian name ”Jul,” Sweden´s Midsummer has all the handed down attributes of a Viking festival fortified by its very raison d´étre namely the summer solstice when the country is at its most beautiful.
Tomorrow Gunilla and I will be off to Stockholm´s archipelago to partake in, unbelievably so, our 48th Midsummer together. The countryside will still be greener than at any other time of the year, the sky as blue as ever with the smell of pine mixed with the scent of at least the seven varities of flowers which according to tradition are to be placed under a young girl´s pillow for her future betrothed to come to her in her dreams. The Midsummer pole will not be as well prepared nor as tall as in younger days as will coffee and cake be more predominant without entirely banishing the ”snaps” accompanying the pickled herring. The conversation may turn to those early Midsummers in Värmland where the brief period of semi darkness replaced by a rising sun went unnoticed as the ”fest” went on for hours more.
Stenåsen 1983