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Luleå hembygdsgille julfesten
Dec. 15th, 2019 08:08 pmYesterday was the julfest for the local folk music and folk dance group, and it was much fun. They had an afternoon of crafts projects, followed by the party in the evening. They had supplies and instructions for a variety of projects, or people were welcome to bring whatever project they wanted to work on. That was scheduled for 12:30-16:30, and the party was to start at 17:00. I originally thought to spend the whole day, but during the morning I felt more like curling up on the couch re-reading The Mystic Marriage, and didn't actually get out there till nearly 15:00.
When I arrived there was a small group of people happily working on projects, and another small group in the kitchen cooking for the party. I joined the crafts people, and made progress on finishing the new, improved pocket on my winter coat till it was time to clean up and set up the tables for the party. We managed to get the last of the tables up and decorated (when did they start making such cute strings of tiny battery-operated Christmas lights? they looked great twined with strings of tinsel on the tables) about the time the musicians started getting out their instruments, and I happily spent the rest of the time till it was time to sit and eat dancing to the Christmas music they were playing (many of which are Swedish song only, others exist in Swedish translation but were originally in other languages). There wasn't much room between the musicians and the tables, but since I was the only one dancing just then, it wasn't a problem.
One of my friends commented that I am always dancing, and I pointed out that I was planning to eat lots of risgrynsgröt, so it was important to dance as much as possible. There were 26 of us for the party itself, so we had four tables with three seats on each side, and at two tables there was an extra chair at the end. I took one of the extra chairs, and the only other child (a 12 year old) took the other.
The meal was traditional, but simple--thinly sliced ham and other toppings for open faced sandwichs plus the above mentioned rice porridge. I never really liked ham back when I was eating meat, and the other sandwich toppings weren't to my taste either, but that didn't worry me, as I love rice porridge. I stopped at seconds. However, when the evening was over I noticed that there was a large pot of porridge left over, so I borrowed a large soup bowl from the hall and took home some porridge. Then I went past a grocery store and bought a small thing of cream, and this morning I whipped the cream and blended it with the porridge to make risalamalta, or as I like to call it, the food of the gods. (This is good, as this means that I have only a relatively small amount of it in the house. If I had decided to make some myself, I would have made a large batch of porridge, and thus would have made a large batch of risalamalta, and I don't need to be eating lots of it, and with no one in the house to help me with it...
On every table when we sat down there were several copies of a booklet of Christmas songs (all in Swedish, but some are translations of ones that were first written in English). We sang several before eating a few more after eating the first bit, but before going back for seconds, sang even more after eating seconds and before the games begun, and yet more between the rounds of the games.
After everyone had had a chance to finish eating they turned on the overhead lights again, and divided us up into teams of three (we had no choice as to who would be in our team). Then we played games in rounds--the first round they gave us a piece of paper and asked up to provide the names of 21 different birds based on the word-play clues they provided. My team was the only team of four, the above mentioned 12 year old, his mom, and one of the musicians. Luckily both the mom and the musician was good at bird names, as neither the 12 year old or I were able to help at all with that one.
The next round the paper had a list of a bunch of English phrases, and a bunch of Korean phrases, and we were to match them up. The Korean phrases were all things that if read out loud would sound like an English phrase, so it was pretty easy to match them up with the actual English phrase with a similar meaning. The 12 year old wandered off for this one, too, but the other three of us kept grabbing the pencil and writing down answers--we were all three quite fast at it, and we all were looking at different phrases, so we were the first group done with that part, but I did go through and check all of our work to be certain we got them all before turning it in.
The final round was a musical crossword. They provided a blank crossword puzzle, then they would ask out loud a question and then sing a tune, and we needed to write down the answer from the song, which meant needing to be able to recognise the song, and know the lyrics well enough to answer the question. Needless to say, I wasn't able to help with that one, either. My teammates were able to fill in answers for most of them though, and every group in the room filled in enough of the answers that we were all able to shout in unison when asked that the phrase in the pink highlighted row (formed by alignment of the other words, which were all on a Christmas theme) was gott nytt år
After the games and coffee and desert (which was served between rounds) we packed up the tables, turned off the overhead lights again, and the musicians started playing Swedish folk music. I danced, of course, every dance. They stopped playing a bit after 21:00 and we packed up and went home. I was ok with that, as it gave me a chance to swing by the closest store to the house before they closed at 22:00 to get that cream I mentioned above.
All in all a lovely evening. I remember a time when my only social outlet was the SCA (which is still my primary social outlet), but one of the best things about living in Luleå is that there are other groups which fill a similar niche as the SCA in my life--providing me an opportunity to do crafts, sing, and dance, with good friends (we even wear costumes, but not yesterday).
As a bonus, here is an entry for my long-neglected "Learn Swedish One Song at a Time" series. One of the songs we sang last night was:
Jag såg mamma kyssa tomten
Jag såg mamma kyssa tomten ja
Tänk om våran pappa kommit då
Jag hade gömt mig i en vrå, för att titta lite på
Ett konstigt stort paket som någon av oss skulle få
Och då fick tomten mammas klapp och kyss,
sedan sa hon "Å vad du är bra
nej ingen ser att det är du",
men jag såg att det var
tomten mamma kysste igår kväll
Which literally translates to:
I saw mommy kiss Santa, yes
Think if our daddy had come then
I had hidden myself in a corner, to look a little at
a strange large packet which one of us would get
and then Santa received mommy's touch and kiss,
after which she said "Oh you are good
no, no one can see that it is you"
but I saw that it was
Santa that mommy kissed yesterday evening
When I arrived there was a small group of people happily working on projects, and another small group in the kitchen cooking for the party. I joined the crafts people, and made progress on finishing the new, improved pocket on my winter coat till it was time to clean up and set up the tables for the party. We managed to get the last of the tables up and decorated (when did they start making such cute strings of tiny battery-operated Christmas lights? they looked great twined with strings of tinsel on the tables) about the time the musicians started getting out their instruments, and I happily spent the rest of the time till it was time to sit and eat dancing to the Christmas music they were playing (many of which are Swedish song only, others exist in Swedish translation but were originally in other languages). There wasn't much room between the musicians and the tables, but since I was the only one dancing just then, it wasn't a problem.
One of my friends commented that I am always dancing, and I pointed out that I was planning to eat lots of risgrynsgröt, so it was important to dance as much as possible. There were 26 of us for the party itself, so we had four tables with three seats on each side, and at two tables there was an extra chair at the end. I took one of the extra chairs, and the only other child (a 12 year old) took the other.
The meal was traditional, but simple--thinly sliced ham and other toppings for open faced sandwichs plus the above mentioned rice porridge. I never really liked ham back when I was eating meat, and the other sandwich toppings weren't to my taste either, but that didn't worry me, as I love rice porridge. I stopped at seconds. However, when the evening was over I noticed that there was a large pot of porridge left over, so I borrowed a large soup bowl from the hall and took home some porridge. Then I went past a grocery store and bought a small thing of cream, and this morning I whipped the cream and blended it with the porridge to make risalamalta, or as I like to call it, the food of the gods. (This is good, as this means that I have only a relatively small amount of it in the house. If I had decided to make some myself, I would have made a large batch of porridge, and thus would have made a large batch of risalamalta, and I don't need to be eating lots of it, and with no one in the house to help me with it...
On every table when we sat down there were several copies of a booklet of Christmas songs (all in Swedish, but some are translations of ones that were first written in English). We sang several before eating a few more after eating the first bit, but before going back for seconds, sang even more after eating seconds and before the games begun, and yet more between the rounds of the games.
After everyone had had a chance to finish eating they turned on the overhead lights again, and divided us up into teams of three (we had no choice as to who would be in our team). Then we played games in rounds--the first round they gave us a piece of paper and asked up to provide the names of 21 different birds based on the word-play clues they provided. My team was the only team of four, the above mentioned 12 year old, his mom, and one of the musicians. Luckily both the mom and the musician was good at bird names, as neither the 12 year old or I were able to help at all with that one.
The next round the paper had a list of a bunch of English phrases, and a bunch of Korean phrases, and we were to match them up. The Korean phrases were all things that if read out loud would sound like an English phrase, so it was pretty easy to match them up with the actual English phrase with a similar meaning. The 12 year old wandered off for this one, too, but the other three of us kept grabbing the pencil and writing down answers--we were all three quite fast at it, and we all were looking at different phrases, so we were the first group done with that part, but I did go through and check all of our work to be certain we got them all before turning it in.
The final round was a musical crossword. They provided a blank crossword puzzle, then they would ask out loud a question and then sing a tune, and we needed to write down the answer from the song, which meant needing to be able to recognise the song, and know the lyrics well enough to answer the question. Needless to say, I wasn't able to help with that one, either. My teammates were able to fill in answers for most of them though, and every group in the room filled in enough of the answers that we were all able to shout in unison when asked that the phrase in the pink highlighted row (formed by alignment of the other words, which were all on a Christmas theme) was gott nytt år
After the games and coffee and desert (which was served between rounds) we packed up the tables, turned off the overhead lights again, and the musicians started playing Swedish folk music. I danced, of course, every dance. They stopped playing a bit after 21:00 and we packed up and went home. I was ok with that, as it gave me a chance to swing by the closest store to the house before they closed at 22:00 to get that cream I mentioned above.
All in all a lovely evening. I remember a time when my only social outlet was the SCA (which is still my primary social outlet), but one of the best things about living in Luleå is that there are other groups which fill a similar niche as the SCA in my life--providing me an opportunity to do crafts, sing, and dance, with good friends (we even wear costumes, but not yesterday).
As a bonus, here is an entry for my long-neglected "Learn Swedish One Song at a Time" series. One of the songs we sang last night was:
Jag såg mamma kyssa tomten
Jag såg mamma kyssa tomten ja
Tänk om våran pappa kommit då
Jag hade gömt mig i en vrå, för att titta lite på
Ett konstigt stort paket som någon av oss skulle få
Och då fick tomten mammas klapp och kyss,
sedan sa hon "Å vad du är bra
nej ingen ser att det är du",
men jag såg att det var
tomten mamma kysste igår kväll
Which literally translates to:
I saw mommy kiss Santa, yes
Think if our daddy had come then
I had hidden myself in a corner, to look a little at
a strange large packet which one of us would get
and then Santa received mommy's touch and kiss,
after which she said "Oh you are good
no, no one can see that it is you"
but I saw that it was
Santa that mommy kissed yesterday evening