Today it's Midsummer's Eve! If you're in Sweden that means a lot of eating, drinking, dancing and singing. Midsummer's Eve is a BIG partyday for us. The other holidays ,like Christmas, are more of family holidays. Midsummer is the holiday that you spend with your friends. The traditional Midsummer food is pickled herring with potatoes and sourcream. The drinks are beer and snaps, which is another word for a shot of vodka. You probably need to be Swedish to get exited about food like that. For dessert we have strawberries. Most people eat this for lunch, and then have a barbeque in the evening. An important part of the meal in singing! Every time you drink some snaps you have to sing first. The songs are called snapsvisor and are common tunes that everyone knows but with different words. I found one in english for you.
Melody: A spoonful of sugar from Mary Poppins
Just a mouthful of vodka
will make anything go down,
anything go down,
anything go down.
Just a mouthful of vodka
will make anything go down
in a most delightful way!
This is a picture of some Swedish folkdancers in traditional outfits. They dance around something called a Maypole (picture on top). Here you can read some more about how we celebrate Midsummer.Skål! =Cheers!
7 comments:
The festivities sound like great fun!I particularly like the sound of the vodka and singing :-)
Whish I were there Annica---don't know about the vodka but I would sure show those strawberries a good time.
What lovely post Annica. It sounds like a great celebration.
Hugs, Alis
enjoy midsummer`s eve! I hope you have fun!
Wish you a wonderful Midsummer eve!
Sounds like fun! One of the primary schools I went to had a maypole - well, they called it that. It was a tall pole with ropes off the top that we swung around on.
Hi!
I've been meaning to write to you since I received your message. First, I don't have a place on my blog (or elsewhere) that includes the images of my altered book/art based on the Swedish botanist Lindman. In fact, I never took a single digital image of the work until the day I snapped a shot in order to send to you. I do thank you, however, for being willing to link to these images. Yet, the important thing never was my work...it was always your fine stitching for a juried show. Again, congratulations!
Now, about Maypoles and celebrations...your images reminded me of my youth. My parents had a summer study program (my younger sister runs it now) to Salzburg, Austria. As a family, we lived outside of town in a tiny village called Glanegg, just at the foot of the Untersberg Mountain. One summer, neighbors contracted to enlarge their house/business. Once the roof beams were in place, a tiny tree/Maypole was erected on the top and there was a fantastic party in celebration of the upcoming completion of the building. Your images brought back all these happy memories. Thank you so much!
Susan
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