MidSummer

[kareina]

This morning we left the house a bit before 10:00 and went to the old school house in Gammelstad where our folk music and dance group gathers. There were around 50 to 60 of us, mostly in costume, getting set up and ready for the day. After everything was ready to go we sat down to a nice lunch of too much good food, and then went over to the folk museum and commenced the official Midsummer celebration. While our musicians played Swedish folk music on the stage the rest of us got the huge pole (which, sadly, looks like a cross, but at least it has a couple of leaf-covered hoola-hoops dangling from it, to give it a festive air) stood up.

Then it was time to dance around it. Because it was a lovely sunny day the crowd was huge and densely packed. This meant that only four of us from the folk dance group danced--me and the three little girls (around 12 years old), in a tiny ring around the pole. Around us was a slightly larger ring of little children and their parents who were dancing, and tightly packed around them was an audience. We danced a series of traditional songs while others from our group stood on stage and sung the songs into a microphone and a large percentage of the audience sang the songs, too. I sang, too, even though I don't really know the songs like the others do--I have always been able to sing along to songs I don't know by reading lips, a skill that comes in handy on occasions like this one.

After the set of traditional dances around the pole for children our folk dance group put on a performance on the stage, and as soon as we were done we all returned to the cars and drove into Luleå city center, where we repeated the whole thing, setting up a new leaf & flower covered pole and dancing around it, and then doing a few more dance performances. It was much fun.

After our last dance performance I had to change out of costume to return the skirt (which is a special, hard to obtain pattern of woolen stripes) to the lady I had borrowed it from (she didn't need it this year, because we don't have enough men in our dance group, so she dressed in a man's costume and danced as a guy). After I changed I glanced at my phone to discover that I had missed a call. This was a bit of a surprise, no one ever calls me, save for lord_kjar, who was busy all day running sound for the musicians at the second park.

The call had been from one of the students in the choir we sing in--the boy from Finland. I returned the call and he explained that he was back in town for the weekend and out at the Midsummer festival in Gammelstad, and were we by any chance there? I explained that we weren't, but would be there soon as we needed to bring back the sound equipment. So we agreed to meet up when we got there.

This turned out to be a very luck thing for him. In addition to putting away the sound equipment the small group of us that were still around had an additional duty: eat left overs from lunch. So the Finnish boy and his mother joined us for the meal, and really enjoyed it. He said that he has been craving new potatoes, but there weren't any in the stores that he has checked. Therefore he was really delighted to join us for a meal that featured plenty of new potatoes. Not many tourists visiting a town's mid summer celebration get to join the meal for the behind the scenes workers.

By the time dinner was over and we finally headed home it was already 19:30, and we were quite content to come home and relax a bit in a quiet environment.

We have nothing particularly special planned this weekend, which sounds nice after so many weeks in a row with stuff on. We did hear of a garage sale being held by one of the older couples in our dance group, so we will probably stop by there--it may be a good chance to get a glass button, which is the sort that is appropriate for my folk dance underdress.

Later next week we will probably pop over to Norway to enjoy mountains, but we haven't done anything as rash as make a plan of where to go, what to do, or where to sleep while we are there...

Comments

[kareina.livejournal.com]

It is only sad to me--religious symbolism is something that doesn't appeal to me, no matter which religion.

[eliskimo.livejournal.com]

Ah. I think in that context, it would probably only appear to me as utilitarian. Forgive me for finding it somewhat interesting that you read religious symbolism into it!

[kareina.livejournal.com]

I didn't get a photo of ours, but this random one on line looks much like the ones we had at the festivals here. We had smaller flowers, all wild flowers, and I don't recall the diagonal supports holding up the arms of the cross. Does it look religious to you? Perhaps I am just reading things into it that aren't there. No idea.