My First Swedish Midsomer Celebration

Today is Midsomer here in Sweden, but all of the fun and festivities took place yesterday.

The morning started off calm. I got a nice workout in at the gym, then headed off to the market with Bea to pick up a few last minute things before our guests started to arrive. The market was bursting with people getting ready for the huge celebrations to come! Flower wreaths were being sold, potatoes were being bought by the buckets, and everyone seemed to be in a great mood.

At around 12:30 our guests started to arrive. In total there were 9 adults and 5 kids – Bea’s cousin with his wife and son, Mats best friend and family, and of course MorMor and Douglas. The weather was great so while the kids ran around and played, the rest of us relaxed out on the balcony preparing for the feast too come.

Before we ate, we had to complete one import task – making our own flower wreaths!

This is very tradition Midsomer attire and all through town girls can be seen sporting their wreaths. Now that we had gotten that out of the way, it was finally time to eat!

For lunch we had a dish made with boiled potatoes, mayo, and herring, topped with fresh dill and cilantro. Herring and potatoes are the key staple foods for Midsomer. All around Sweden people were eating this exact thing, taking advantage of this once a year chance to eat as much herring as they can. While I will admit, herring defiantly is not a favorite of mine and the first time I tried it I almost puked. That being said, I have had it two more times here in Sweden and it really is growing on me! Not that I would go out and eat a whole can on my own or anything, but it really is not that bad. The dish Bea made was really tasty and pairing the herring with potatoes and herd make it a lot more bearable. We also had some good old knackbrod and cheese on the side to go with our herring dish. Doesn’t get more Swedish than that.

Throughout the lunch we sang traditional Swedish “schnapp songs”, and cheered more times than I can remember. It was all good fun and I certainly was feeling very Swedish by the end of it.

At 3 oclock we all headed down to the park to do some traditional May Pole dancing

All the girls spent an hour dancing and singing circles are the pole. While I will admit the dances were a little strange it was still goof fun.

Once we were down dancing everyone came back to the house to relax. We returned to the patio where Douglas treated us to a little mini concert.

Before dinner, the little girls and I all went out to collect 7 different wild flowers to sleep with under our pillows. This is a super old Midsomer tradition and legend has it that if you do this you will dream about the boy you are going to marry.

By the time we came back we were ready to start our first course – 10 kg of Crayfish!

Normally, people do not eat Crayfish for Midsomer and rather they save it for late August when there is an entire Day in Sweden dedicated to eating Crayfish called “Crayfish Feast”. However, Bea had really wanted me to try the crayfish before I left, so we had it as a little starter before dinner. It was so good! I had to stop from stuffing myself full so I could still have room for dinner later.

After the crayfish we digested a bit by playing “Norwegian Karaoke”. I had never heard of this before yesterday, but it is actually a lot of fun! The way it is played is everyone sits around in a circle and then one person listens to a song with headphones on so they cannot hear themselves, then they must sing the song they are listening to while everyone else tries to guess what the song is.

We started our dinner at 10pm. Midsomer celebrates the longest day of the year, and even at 10 it was still broad daylight out! For dinner most Swedes grill out which is exactly what we did. We had a feast of steak, duck, hallomi cheese, asparagus risotto, and a big salad.

After consuming all of that I never thought I could eat again, but for those who could muster up some strength there was a dessert of fresh strawberries with choklad kaka and ice cream – the traditional Midsomer dessert.

The rest of the evening was spent relaxing, chatting, and watching Narnia. It was a really late night, but it was totally worth being tired today. I truly could not have asked for a better Midsomer experience.

Swedish Word of the Day: “Misdsomer”