Welcome

Following the crowning of my NHS experience with a stint at a PCT and the resulting redundancy (traumatic, though much wanted and worked for), my husband and I are going back to my roots near a small village in Smaland, Sweden. These are our experiences.

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Can't reply to comments!

Sorry chaps.

Not sure if I should reply to someone called Troll Paladin or whether it would be giving my head for washing, but hey

Yes, elks drive..

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Midsummer

As you may have gathered, Sweden is a country that values its' traditions, of which there are many more than the UK.  It is actually very nice to have so many things to celebrate.  Graham grew up with birthdays and Christmas and a smattering of Easter, that his non-Christian family didn't really know what to do with. (Mind you, neither do many Christian families, so no problem there then) and Bonfire Night.  

Today is Midsummer's Day.  It is traditional, on the longest day of the year, to spend most of it in bed nursing your hangover from Midsummer's Eve. As it traditionally rains, this isn't too much of a problem.
It's traditional here to celebrate the eve of something rather than the actual day.  So when people went off early on the day before Midsummer's Eve, it was an Eve Eve,  Would that be called a Lilith? humm.

So, back to Midsummer.

You dash off to the supermarket on the Lilith and load up with pickled herring, potatoes, sausages, fillet, creme fraiche, dill, strawberries and cream, having a blazingly polite row with the old granny who has just taken the last of the Swedish strawberries to add to her 500kg.  You have to make do with Dutch ones.

Then you and everyone in the entire country packs up in a synchronised traffic jam and head to the summer cottage or a relative's summer cottage or a random summer cottage that you've always fancied, with the sill, etc and the beer/schnapps/wood alcohol. This involves more blazingly polite rows, usually with the Police, who can't understand that you need to read the paper whilst driving amongst so many other cars.  (yes this is so common they actually list this together with not talking on the mobile phone.  It explains why I have no fear of meeting elks on the way home, but of meeting other cars).

The main event on Midsummer's Eve is the raising of the midsummer pole, that has an uncanny resemblence to the May Pole of rural England.   There are other similaries....  You can do this in a family, but most go to the nearest Local Historical Society who dress up in traditional clothes, dress the pole in flowers and greenery and inflict folk songs on law-abiding people.  We all (ha ha ha) dance around the pole to the lilting '3 small frogs' 'I'm getting the washing in' etc etc, in our flowery crowns. Absolutely nothing is about sex or fertility or blood, at all, in any way.    As we weren't allowed to go to these innocuous festivities when we were young, I feel the LHSs are failing somewhat, somehow...

You then move on the real party, when you all eat the stuff everyone has bought, slap a load of mosquitoes, slap the first person who has had too much to drink and then just give up and join in with whatever fertility paganism is going.

There are, of course, local (or soberer) variations of these traditions, but not many.

I actually feel it's a shame that the maypole dancing has been relegated to the children and their respective parents/strike that, their respective mothers.  It would benefit the rest of the adults to not be so much up their own arses.  However that is a fine Swedish Tradition and not to be messed with!  The wood alcohol could problem be dispensed with though...