Midsummer Majesty
The Summer Solstice is upon us 🌸
Hello, friends,
It’s all-of-a-sudden-summer here where I live. I was sweating buckets the other day after weeks of carrying a jacket everywhere because the wind was so chill. The contrast is hard for my post-meonpausal body to take!
Midsummer weekend approaches; a glorious time of year! The summer solstice. When the sun hardly makes it below the horizon before heading up again. The nights are so beautiful, with a glowy sky, and twittering and tweeting birds.
I’ve been admiring nature’s abundance, with flowers and plants enjoying the change in season and a chance to show off in all its colour and beauty.
Bumble bees have been busy, gambolling from flower to flower, their loud buzz hard to miss, audible even with the background sound of tractors harvesting. Wasps are hovering, looking for a place to build, but not here, thanks! Off you buzz!
I’ve seen a few snakes this year, more than my average year in Australia, if you’re wondering. Eagles are soaring, so very regal. Swans are hatching, their fluffy cygnets so very cute, and the cuckoo is going nuts all night. Summer is here. Finally.
The tradition of midsummer is strong here, on these little islands I live on. Families and communities meet to put up the midsummer pole, decorated with leaves and hung with special coloured motifs of boats and other shapes, many in the colours of the flags of the Nordic region.
Food and drink will be flowing—and by drink, I mean schnapps or vodka, or both. There are usually some songs, special schnapps visor, as they’re called in Swedish, that go together with copious amounts of alcohol. My husband’s family are well known for their singing of these songs, and it’s pretty awesome to experience multiple generations belting them out. We’ll eat pickled herring and potatoes, maybe some smoked eel, and lots of super-sweet cake and maybe ice cream with strawberries. The party will end when the last person is standing or someone cries (although that tends not to stop the party, they bring us more food instead!)
For some reason, one tradition involves dancing around the midsummer pole, singing a song called Små groderna, or Small Frogs, a Swedish translation of a little-known English song about the French! Who knows how that one started?
These kinds of traditions are such fun to be a part of, and make me realise how long they’ve been going, not having the same kind of traditions in my family in Australia, as all of us have moved around quite a bit. There’s no generational family property anymore. No grandparent’s house full of memories.
Tent life has almost begun for us, as we make the transition from town to the countryside. It’s only 32 kilometres away, but as the furthest you can drive here is 45 minutes before you have to turn around, it seems far to most. We’ll be biking it every now and then, using our nifty electric motors we’ve bought for our normal bikes. Such fun!
It’s long days, next to no nights, lush greenery everywhere, birdlife, catching up with family, sauna time and swimming. And of course, some time for writing and reading! So stay tuned for updates as I breathe life back into Northern Notes.
Thanks for being here,
Lisa x
Glad midsommar!