Glad Midsommar (Happy Midsummer)!

Yesterday was Midsommar's Eve - the second biggest event in the Swedish calender (behind Christmas). Businesses, boats, vehicles and of course the Maypoles are decorated with green branches.

We (myself, Dr M, and 3 others here for the same reason we are) joined in with many other local people from Stockholm and visited "Skansen" - an open air museum. Skansen is part zoo, part parklands and part historic site representing a complete picture of Swedish culture, history and nature. We wandered around and saw a few native animals in the zoo:

This here is a moose. He & his wife just had two baby mooses. Most of the animals looked really hot and were lying down panting - the elks, the brown bears, the moose (as illustrated right) - while the wolverine, wolf & otter were hiding out in a cave or similar (and were not visible). In general, early afternoon in midsummer is not the best time to look at arctic animals. On the plus side, just about all of them had recently calved so there were lots of babies to look at.

Tougher animals who were out moving around included the reindeer (that's him on the left), the grey seals (who look quite different to the seals down our way of the world), the European bison and the lynx.

That reindeer is big - those antlers are huge! 

We didn't bother looking at the horses and goats, but I was excited to see a wild red squirrel hopping around - it was tiny, a bit smaller than I would have expected one to be.

We looked through some of the historic buildings (but not all 150 of them) and talked to some of the people dressed up in traditional garb. The locals were all over the park, seated where ever they could put out their picnic blanket. Many people carried their eskies on little carts (which later in the afternoon could be used to transport tired toddlers).

In the early afternoon we watched (and joined in) with the Maypole dancing. I had thought that it would be just a demonstration, but instead everyone joins in - a band plays, there is singing and a few people lead the dance - and whoever wants jumps in and joins the fun. It is literally on for young and old - even young adult/old teenage men/boys join in with the kids, the grandparents, and everyone else. Many people wore wreaths on their heads. The dances are fairly short and tell a simple story.

Dr M & I joined in for a few dances - we think (it was all in Swedish) we danced about sports (kicking balls, waving ice hockey sticks and high jumping), animals (cats, dogs and roosters), and one which we had no idea but had us running in circles, clapping and laughing (actually, we laughed all the time). We then watched other dances about pigs, little frogs, elephants, the days of the week, love dances and one about candy (maybe?). We joined back in for the last dance  which is to 'send' the maypole up and away for good fortune (in the tradition of this kind of thing, we had to do this three times before the dance leader decided that we had done it properly).

After this we headed home and attempted to find somewhere to eat some dinner. This is very difficult in Midsommar - nothing was open! Eventually we found an open restaurant - Japanese. We were presented in Swedish menus, so we had to figure out what was what with a double language barrier. We managed this well and had a delicious dinner - then home to bed. I stayed awake until about 10pm which was not bad for my jetlagged state with a very active day!