Student blogs

Making flower crowns, dancing around the “midsommarstång” (the midsummer pole), enjoying a lunch of traditional swedish food (interrupted every now and then by singing,) decorating the strawberry cake, and enjoying the neverending summer day — that was my Midsommar in a nutshell.

What’s summer like in Sweden?

As soon as courses finish here at KI, most students from international courses decide to go home as soon as possible to visit family and friends. While I am also excited to go back home soon, I am so, so glad I decided to extend my stay in Sweden till the start of July. Summer here is so nice! It’s a reward for making it through the very dark and cold winter. The temperatures reach 25 degrees, and the days are so long that it takes discipline to drag down the thick dark curtians and get yourself to go to sleep. It’s still bright outside at 22:30! And it never gets fully dark- see the photo below taken at 23:43!

And naturally, if you are here during the summer- what you absolutely cannot miss out on is Midsommar.

Here’s what my Midsommar was like:

I didn’t celebrate Midsommar in Stockholm… 

I was actually in the very south of Sweden. For a week I got invited to my friend’s summer house down south, in a small village in Blekinge. That’s where I celebrated Midsommar with her extended family and a few other friends.

At a beautiful wooden summer house, with a big garden, in a neighbourhood where all the surrounding houses are designed as Swedish as you could imagine. Truly a fairytale-like landscape. And just a 5 minute walk from a picturesque beach!?…After this trip, owning a summer house in Sweden has become one of my life goals.

My Midsommar highlights

I honestly enjoyed every part about Midsommar, it was a day full of different activities. The most Midsommar-ish activities being the crafting of the flower crowns, then dancing and singing to children’s songs about frogs with no tails, and “bears” that would chase you around the feild. If you got tagged you became one of them.

The village also organized a quiz where we walked around answering very random questions. After that we decided to go for a little stroll to the beach and then slowly make our way back home to help prepare the delicious swedish Midsommar lunch. There was salmon, pickled herring, meatballs, potatoes, eggs, knackerbrod- all of which are essential components of the Midsommar lunch. What I really find unique and a wholesome tradition here in Sweden is that during meals there’s often many breaks for singing traditional songs.

Ella and I spent some time after lunch assembling the Midsommar cake made of vanilla cake layers, filled with vanilla cream and strawberriess, topped off with whipped cream and even more strawberries. As a big fan of decorating cakes, I was so happy to help out with this. It also tasted amazing. The perfect summer cake.

After the big lunch, the cake and the coffee, we chatted and rested until it was time for the music quiz…which had a decieving name. They had live music playing: 10 songs and 10 questions. At the end of each song was a random question completely unrelated to the song. For example: this song was written in 1966, how much did a specific icecream cost at that time?

After dinner, we continued to hang out, played cards till late at night until we hesitantly decided we had to go to bed at some point.

Important!!! When you go to bed on Midsommar’s eve (according to Swedish folklore) you should go to sleep with 7 different flowers under your pillow so that you will dream of your future love.

All in all, I can highly recommend staying a while longer in Sweden after the end of your course to experience Swedish summer. At the very least till Midsommar!

All photo credit: Julia Krapenc. Image of the map taken from Google maps.