History of Events
The Swedish saying for Happy Easter is GLAD PÅSK!
In Sweden long ago, Easter was thought to be the witches' time. On Maundy Thursday the witches were said to fly off to "Blåkulla" and return again on the Saturday.
Nowadays, children dress up as Easter witches on the Thursday before Easter and go from house to house and are given gifts or money- very similar to the North American Halloween.
After the long fast during Lent, eggs are eaten in celebrations, often taken from the nests of spring birds. Sometimes the children would play games with eggs- such as rolling the egg. The Easter egg has a long history. In graves from B.C. in Gotland, colored clay eggs were found. They were painted in red and yellow to represent the sunrise and sunset- and even today the Swedes, like other Europeans, paint their eggs at Easter.
As a reminder of Christ's suffering, young people would thrash each other with silver birch twigs in the morning of Good Friday. These silver birch branches, decorated with brightly coloured feathers, were the originator of both Lent and Easter decorated branches.
Semlor or Lenten buns are special buns that used to be associated with Lent but now seems to be sold earlier and earlier in the year! A Lenten is a sweet bread bun with the middle scooped out and filled with marzipan and whipped cream.Lamb is often eaten at Easter as well as many of the dishes eaten at the Christmas Smörgåsbord.
Valbord is celebrated in Sweden in different ways depending on different parts of the country. Lighting large bonfires is a popular celebration in eastern parts of Sweden like in Svealand or Uppland, where people gather material for their bonfires for months in advance.
Bonfires are an ancient custom related to keeping away evil spirits, demons and witches. For most of
the Swedes though, Valborg just means the end of the winter season.There is no better way to celebrate it
than singing Spring songs. Spring songs and choral singing are very typical of the Swedish Valborg celebrations,
with many of the traditional songs dating as far back as the 19th century.
Midsummer Eve/ Midsommar afton
To a Swede the word "Midsummer" holds joy and visions of sunny meadows, shimmering waters, the sounds of an accordion or a fiddle, dancing around the maypole and a sun that at midnight seems to linger by the horizon, only to rise in full blaze again. The summer solstice brings daylight all night long, decidedly so in northern Sweden.
It is probably the most popular festival day in Sweden together with Christmas. The customs around Midsummer are many and very old. Dating back to the Viking Era, midsummer was a time for old pagan celebration and fertility rite.
The Maypole is still risen everywhere in Sweden and people are playing old songs and dancing games around it in nearly every village. Nowadays, Midsummer is a national holiday, celebrated on the weekend closest to June 24.The actual day of the celebration is the longest day of the year, signifying that summer has reached the half-way point.
Many people make a blomsterkrans, flower wreath, for themselves or their children. Traditionally, young, unmarried ladies pick seven or nine different flowers to put under their pillows to make sure they will dream about their future husbands.
After the dancing, people go home to have dinner, which traditionally includes pickled herring, new potatoes, sour cream, with chopped chives, bread, and cheese. Dessert is jordgubbar med vispgrädde, strawberries with whipped cream. Sometimes, smoked or cured salmon (gravlax) and other cold dishes are served. Traditional beverages are beer and snaps. The celebration often continues late into the summer night, either at home, a public dance floor, or farmer's barn.
Candle making is a strong tradition in Sweden. With the long, dark winter nights, well-made candles were historically essential and are associated with many of the oldest festivals.
Before the religious reformation in the 16th Century Sweden, churches were lit up with beeswax candles that burned slowly and cleanly. A colony of bees, while it only produced one pound of wax per year, was then valued as highly as a cow. Swedish beekeeping was extensive at this time, until Gustav Vasa had all bee colonies confiscated during the 16th Century.
Swedes have long looked to their traditional Lucia festival to bring a bit of light into their lives amid the dark mid-winter days. And it seems that no matter where they go in the world, they take Lucia with them. The first recorded appearance of the white-clad Lucia in Sweden was in the country-house setting in 1764. The custom whereby Lucia serves coffee and special cat-shaped buns (lussekatter) dates back to the 1880s, although the buns were around long before that.
On December 13th one of the most traditional Scandinavian festivals is celebrated all over Sweden, Norway, and on the Swedish speaking parts of Finland. It is Lucia's day, the festival of light, celebrated in memory of the Italian Santa Lucia.
In the early hours of the morning, a young woman, dressed in the white long gown with a red ribbon around her waist and wearing a crown of blazing candles, is accompanied by her attendants (tärnor), who are dressed similarly, and by the star boys ( stjärngossar), who wear cone-shaped hats decorated with stars. They bring hope and light during the darkest months of the year. They sing traditional Lucia songs, serve steaming coffee with gingerbread cookies and saffron bread.
The original Lucia was a young Christian girl from the town of Syracuse, on the Italian island of Sicily. She was beheaded by sword on the 13th of December in 304 A.D. during the persecutions of Christians that occured in the late Roman Empire.
Saint Lucia was one of the earliest Christian martyr saints to achieve popularity. She is the partron saint of the Sicilian town of Sicilian town of Syracuse and the patron saint of the blind. Some believe that her relics are resting in the church of Saint Lucia in Venice, north Italy.
In those early ages, the Norse used to celebrate the winter solstice on the same 13th of December, the shortest day and the longest night of the year. The solstice was a magic time when people particularly feared goblins and ghosts, and bonfires would be burned to celebrate the changing of the course of the sun.
The Norse converted to Christianity around 1000 A.D. starting to adopt Christian traditions and to abandon their pagan beliefs. As the winter solstice festival fell originally on the same day that Saint Lucia Day, both pagan and Christian traditions mixed to become the modern Lucia celebration: the festival of lights.