When I first met Kajsa Lönn at the World Lifesaving Championships in Germany 2008, I would never have guessed that two summers later, I would still be travelling in Europe, finding my way to a small village in the heart of Sweden to celebrate a traditional Swedish Midsommar. One thing I can definitely tell you right now is how glad I am to have been able to experience this amazing event.
For the dummies, Midsommar comes once a year, held on the weekend of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. The Swedish celebrate Midsommar like Australians do Christmas, and it’s possibly the only time you will ever see the normally reserved Swedish folk showing any kind of patriotism for their country. Steeped in tradition, the Midsommar weekend I spent in the Lönn family holiday house by Lake Mäloren, on the outskirts of Eskilstuna (140km west of Stockholm) was one of the most authentic experiences I’ve had since departing on my long trip!
I arrived in Eskilstuna a day earlier than planned, not expecting Kajsa or anyone to arrive until the next day, but delighted to discover that they were indeed in town and I was most welcome to head out to the lake to join them. I was saved from wild camping for another night, you beauty 🙂
Getting there was not as easy as it first seemed, as the holiday house doesn’t really have a proper, fixed address that my GPS unit could navigate to, so I was guided out in a car by Kajsa and Stina (her sister) who were in town picking up some other friends from the train station that evening anyway.
My first impression of the village of Mora, and the holiday house, was that it was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever had the privilege to visit. The property was located right on the shore of the lake, with it’s own jetty where you could walk out and sit in the sun with a beer or a book, go for a swim, or head out in the small boat that was moored nearby. The main holiday house was perched on a small hill overlooking this tranquil setting, with 3-4 smaller buildings surrounding it with extra beds, a tool shed and so forth. The forest surrounded the entire property and a dirt road led back to the centre of Mora village, where the Midsommar festivities would take place the next day. The whole scene reminded me of a cross between a NSW south-coast holiday home, and a bush shack setting that one might find down in the Royal National Park in southern Sydney. It was amazing.
Naturally, all the Swedish people there were most accommodating and certainly all spoke a very good level of English, with the exception of Kajsa’s grandmother, but that only added to the fun of trying to converse with her. Interestingly enough I wasn’t the only Australian there; Stina, the younger sister of Kajsa had been dating a bloke from the northern beaches of Sydney, a guy named Kerry. They’d met in London a couple of years ago and then dated when the two sisters took 6 months to visit Australia last year. I took an instant liking to Kerry (the Swedes called him Kes) and together, us two Aussies began to make a lasting impression on the Midsommar festivities. In all, there were about 25 people gathered at the Lönn family holiday house, and the party was shaping up brilliantly with near perfect weather.
The very next day (Friday) the festivities began. And we began with a series of organised games, of the style that reminded me of some of the games that I used to play as a kid at my family Christmas picnics, which we had out at Picnic Point in south-west Sydney. The crowd was divided up into 4-5 teams and what followed were the likes of egg and spoon races, three-legged races and a few more hilarious events. I’ll never forget the ‘walk like a pirate’ game where you had to put a coathanger between your legs and hold a big, silver, Swedish 5 kronor coin in your eye, and walk up and back around a bucket. You really did look and feel like you were walking with a pegged-leg and an eye patch. Another favourite was when we had to bite a chunk of apple that was submersed in a bucket of water, then stick our faces into a bowl of flower and retrieve a gummy lolly. Then there was the game where you had to feed your team mate spoonfuls of chocolate fudge – as they tried to do the same to you – whilst you are both blindfolded with your hands tied behind your back! There were plenty of flour and chocolate-coated bodies by the end of the games…
Lunch began, and we were guided to sing several traditional songs. They had even distributed some song sheets, and we had fun translating the meaning of the lyrics, of which were along the lines of “Thanks for beer and schnapps, the sun is out, now let’s get drunk”. Seriously, all of these ancient songs were variations of that theme. Naturally many glasses of Schnapps were handed around, and everyone – both young and old – gladly knocked back as many as were necessary. The lunch was a delicious mix of traditional salads and meats, including pickled herring and a lovely potato salad. And the fisk (fish) covered with herbs and spices was to die for!
By this stage, people were starting to get on fairly well in the drinking stakes. I’d brought along a dozen cans of Heineken, though it was clearly not enough. Especially since I’d been ‘stung by the System’. Yes, the System Bolaget – the state owned bottle shop chain which is the Swedish socialist government’s attempt to control the binge drinking culture of the Swedish people. In my opinion it does this with only limited success, and it is clear that one day, the monopoly that the System Bolaget has on selling ALL alcohol in Sweden that is over 3.5% will soon come to an end. But as it stood, I’d arrived the day before the public holiday and had missed my narrow window of opportunity to buy full strength beer, so I was drinking the ‘mid-strength’ variety that they allow to be sold in supermarkets. Nonetheless, I drank it quickly, plus the schnapps, and a few generous offerings from other people’s beer supplies were topping me up well.
At 6pm we headed into Mora village where the local children had already spent the entire morning collecting flowers and helping to decorate the ‘may pole’ which would be erected in the village square. Now let me tell you that the Midsommar celebration surprisingly does not have its roots in some ancient religion. Many Swedes proudly pointed out to me that the may pole, with it’s traditional two rings hanging off a cross beam (that stands a little bit like a crucifix) actually represents a penis and two testicles. And the act of ‘raising the pole’ for midsommar is the tradition of ‘fertilising the earth’ for the summer harvest! How’s that for the meaning behind a naiton’s most celebrated holiday! Brilliant.
Both Aussie Kerry and I got right behind the Swedes and helped them to raise the pole. The local village master went back and forth up and down the pole (edit: in hindsight that sounds a bit suss!), barking instructions in Swedish, as we both stood there among dozens of other Swedish men (only the males are allowed to raise the pole) pretending that we understood what he wanted. Though it was pretty clear; we would raise the pole using a series of longer poles that were lashed together like a long pair of wooden tongs. Slowly, bit by bit, the pole would be raised to vertical and locked in place.
Afterwards, I was told that the villagers were very pleased with how the ceremony had gone this year. Apparently it is quite unusual these days for the pole to be raised without proper ‘precautions’ (edit: strewth I just can’t stop with the sexual puns!) in that they would attach a safety cable to the pole in case the erection process didn’t go as planned and the pole collapsed (flacid, haha). I should point out that the pole is very long and very heavy, and if it fell on you, it would be like being crushed by a falling fir tree in a forest, and quite probably it would have killed several people.
In addition, where normally the older, more experienced villagers were allowed to raise the pole, this year, they allowed many of the younger folk to help out for the first time (including the two Australians!). So here we were, Kerry and I, slowly and carefully raising the pole, and without the ‘OH&S’ safety cable system that most villages now have adopted. It was as traditional as it gets and it was awesome fun being involved in such an important part of the festivities.
Once the pole was raised, we all gathered around it in circles, holding hands, as a live band played traditional music as we danced around to about 10 different folk songs. At this point I looked at Kerry, the 28 year old surfer from Manly, and told him how lucky I thought we were to be able to experience this as Australians. How jealous our friends would be if they could see us now, doing something so originally different and having the time of our lives! He agreed, which makes what happened later on a whole lot more interesting, but I’ll get to that in a moment…
We returned to the party, continued to drink and then soon it was time to head to the village barn, where a disco had been setup. And for hours we danced away with everyone and anyone. I recall having a very lovely dance with Kajsa’s mother, among other people. I think I had just about hit the peak of my night when all of a sudden the entire place went dark and silent. Fearing a power failure had affected the entire barn, I returned to our group and we headed on back to the holiday house. It was still only about 10pm, and the sky was still aglow with a wonderful twilight. “What happened back there to the power?” I asked one of the girls. It wasn’t a power failure at all, but apparently there has been a lot of tension in the village in recent years, where the village ‘elders’ or masters are happy for the dance to be held, though they prefer to have more traditional music playing. But the younger crowds have pushed for much more modern music (rock ‘n roll, AC/DC, top 40 dance hits, etc). The DJ was supposed to stop at 8pm (yes 8pm!) though the elders have on occasion been a bit lenient with the time depending on what type of music they were playing. But with the music becoming much heavier and the atmosphere building towards that of an awesome ‘clubbing scene’, the village masters had had enough, and just pulled the plug out, sending a very strong message to everyone that they’d had enough, andeveryone should now go home!
It was still light when we returned to party on even more at the house. It never did get completely dark; though the sun would set at about 10:30pm, there was constant twilight and a sunny glow over the horizon, which slowly grew not darker, but moved from west to east across the horizon until around 2:30am, when the sun rose once again for the new day. It was a VERY surreal experience. Guitars were brought out and handed around, and I played Aussie rock songs to the party until the early hours of the morning, without a pick, literally until my fingers bled.
A Swedish tradition that I have tried once before is ‘snuss’. It is basically a tobacco pouch that you put between your lip and your teeth, and it has the relaxing effect of having a cigarette, but without the harmful smoking bit. One of the blokes threw me a snuss and I put it in, thinking that it felt a bit bigger than normal, and just remembering that I needed to take it out after about 20 minutes (last time I’d had snuss, they forgot to tell me that and I ended up nearly throwing up from the tobacco hit which I wasn’t used to!). Five minutes later, the familiar headspins started and I thought, what on earth have I got here? This can’t be from a single snuss? Well, there was not one, but three snuss pouches stuck together and in my inebriated state, I hadn’t noticed. So I’d just managed to give myself a triple hit of nicotine, and now it was ‘night-night’. Oops! Well it was 3am and I was one of the last people up, so it was probably time I did hit the sack.
After a good chunder and a swim the next morning, I stumbled to breakfast, feeling surprisingly good and clear headed. We cracked open the first tinnies of the new day, and were up to number three when somebody asked me if Kerry was still asleep in my room. “But he was never in my room, I don’t know where he is” I replied. And so the story unravelled. Kerry and Stina had had a fight earlier on in the night, and nobody thought anything of it because apparently this is not unusual when they’ve had a few drinks. And Kerry had managed to consume about as much Øl (Swedish word for beer) as I had, as well as demolishing an additional 3/4 of a bottle of Captain Morgan’s. As various people woke up and we began to idly chat about the previous day, it emerged that Kerry had told several people – including myself – that it was over with Stina. He was going back to Australia, homesick and missing his mates!
He walked 14km into town at 2am on a public holiday, to get a taxi to Stockholm – which cost his an astonishing 2000kr (about $450 AUD). Among the things he’d left at the house, his passport was one of them, but none-the-less he was headed to the airport to book a flight home. The next day he would head to the Australian Embassy in Stockholm to arrange a temporary passport. And as far as I know now, Kerry is on a plane back to Australia as I type this. Absolutely unbelievable! I mean I can understand getting cold feet, or homesickness definitely because I get it myself chronically all the time. But to pull out on your relationship with a stonkingly gorgeous, blonde Swedish bird, during the height of a Midsommar celebration with her and her whole family, then to travel home half-way across the world like that, well it blew my mind. Apparently there are always dramas like this at Midsommar, I guess naturally given the amount of alcohol consumed it’s not surprising. Being the only Aussie left on the Saturday, I did kind of feel a bit of shame brought on me by my fellow countryman, and honestly didn’t know what to say to the family after all this happened. I mean what could I say, or do? “Yeah, sorry, not all Australians are like that!?”
So the drinking and celebrations kind of wound up for the day earlier than expected, as nobody was really in the mood to party. I was reading my book, Shantaram, out on the jetty in the sunlight, when Yuko, Kajsa’s boyfriend came out and we had a chat. He invited me into the home as they were about to watch a DVD and have pizza for dinner. No worries. I sit down and Baz Luhrman’s Australia starts playing on the TV. I look over at Stina only to say, “that’s a bit of an ironic choice, isn’t it?”. Well, at least it got a laugh, I don’t think they actually had seen the irony of it until that point. They simply loved the movie, and loved Australia, and despite what had happened, this opinion hadn’t changed at all.
Well the rest of the weekend was just a relaxing chill out session. I headed out early the next morning to swim and shower in the beautiful lake. In fact it’s worth noting that I had not actually been for a proper swim for some 9 months until this point (unless you count having a dip in the Regent’s Canal in London!?). I can’t wait to get down to the Mediterranean for a swim in some salt water!
And so that’s the general story of my Swedish Midsommar, courtesy of the Lönn family. I left with some fantastic photos and memories and experiences, and apparently I did also leave a great impression on the whole family, so Kajsa told me afterwards. I’ve promised to send Kajsa’s grandmother a postcard from Australia once I make it back to Oz. Well, it was my pleasure to be there, and my privilege. It’s definitely something I’d like to go back for one day, and who knows, sooner rather than later I could be showing any number of Swedish people around the beaches of Australia when I return home. Or any of the other wonderful people from many other nations that I’ve come across so far, not the least the UK.
Next stop… Finland! Finland! Finland!
Word of the Day
Knulla: I was wearing my Cronulla SLSC shirt during the Midsommar party, and it was amazing how many of the Swedes noticed this. One of the boys from the army finally let me in on the secret. “You know the word Cronulla is very similar to the Swedish word for ‘f*ck'”. Well, I didn’t know if he was just taking the piss, but I have actually Google translated it, and he was right!
One thought on “A magical Mora Midsommar”
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Nulla Nulla Nulla Oi Oi Oi – oh dear, the club cheer….I suppose it suits the boys club of Cronulla.