Once a year I feel particularly talented, and with a bit of luck I can look to the future. And it’s just here again, my talent time. So if you now feel like a city trip without (annoying) crowds, I recommend Malmö, Gothenburg or Stockholm for Friday 23 June 2023. On this day you will hardly meet locals there who can enjoy the streets empty. I feel that.
To be honest, I know that too. Because next year on June 23 Sweden celebrates – as well as this weekend – midsummer. Hardly any festival is celebrated more intensively in the largest country in Scandinavia than the summer solstice, and there is hardly any other festival that draws Swedes out into nature more often. It doesn’t matter that the longest day of the year is actually always on June 21st – the celebration is always on the nearest Friday.
On midsummer in Sweden, there is no other way to put it, there is a lot of teasing and dancing around the midsummer pole in a completely absurd way. Maybe that’s why the masses are attracted to theirs cottages – weekend houses – in the country, almost every family has one. When you’re drunk with friends, you’re a little less embarrassed.
Sweden doesn’t drink as banally as Germany does, and you’ll look in vain for roaring crowds with handcarts. There is bawling – somehow – but also. Because before every schnapps a schnapps song is intoned; so, at least officially, people don’t get drunk for no reason, instead they make music together. With a little alcohol for the vocal cords.
Swedish drinking songs: If you don’t drink a whole, you don’t get a half
The most famous schnapps song “Helan Går” means “The whole thing works” and alludes to the schnapps in the full glass. Between strawberries, herring and potatoes, they happily ask you to “Exen”, because if you don’t drink the whole thing, you don’t deserve half a glass anymore. The sung version of “Don’t talk big, keep your head down”, only in an elegant way.
Whole one drinks a lot during the Friday celebrations, by the way. Maybe also because you need a lot of courage during the day, which you sometimes can’t muster when you’re sober. When I celebrated on the west coast for the first time years ago, and friends explained some of the traditions to me, I was convinced that they had to exaggerate the “dance of the frogs” excessively.
You dance around the corn pole, hop like a frog, and sing (again) about “the little frogs”, which have no tails or ears, but are still funny to look at. The chorus of the song would make frog noises, with every little tail or little ear in the text you have to show the missing ears, the missing tail on your own body, gesticulating wildly. When, after four aquavit, I pointed to my missing tail, jumping around the corn pole, I knew on the one hand that anything can happen in Sweden on that day, and on the other hand that that’s exactly why I need a fifth one.
The heat wave from Germany is now stopping in Sweden. It will likely be the warmest midsummer weekend in more than five decades. Hardly anyone really believed in it beforehand. Traditionally, especially here on the west coast, people are more prepared for rain at the summer solstice.
Whether that’s so good for me as a German, I don’t know. When it rained, I always had at least one good, albeit obvious, excuse for the dance performances in recent years. But now the following applies: the better the weather, the more often I’m a frog without ears. I’d rather buy another bottle of Aquavit, skål!
For Sweden fans: In Berlin, the Swedish Church celebrates Midsummer on Friday, June 24, between 4:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. Swedish Church, Landhausstr. 26-28, 10717 Berlin.