How to do summer like a Scandi
If winter was about hygge, midsummer for the Swedes is all about family, feasting, flowers and fun, says Daniel Pembrey
In the beginning, there were Abba hits and flat-pack Ikea furniture. Then came the Scandi crime fiction that flooded our bookshelves and television screens. We hit peak hygge last winter. Now, a new wave is set to break: Nordic midsummer celebrations, regarded as the most important event in the Scandi calendar. You may have already seen flower garlands around fair heads. Get ready for more, starting tonight.
In Sweden, Midsommar (Midsummer Eve) falls on the Friday closest to the solstice – that is today, for 2017. It creates a three-day weekend and families reunite at the farm or summer house. Cities become ghost towns.
For the 100,000 Swedes living in the UK, though, this presents a midsummer challenge. Half live in London, including Princess Madeleine of Sweden and her British-american banker husband Chris O’neill, and a good portion of the rest live in the UK’S other big cities. What to do, given the event’s rural traditions?
Charlotte Ågren, of Notting Hill, moved to London with a boyfriend; when he left, she stayed. “I love London and don’t want to leave. But it’s nice to feel connected to my fellow country people.” So she began London Swedes, an online community now counting 30,000 members.
In 2013, Ågren sent a Facebook invitation to gather for midsummer in Hyde Park; unusually large for a natural urban space, in parts of its 350 acres you could almost imagine you’re in countryside. She went to bed and awoke next morning to find 6,000 responses, swiftly rising to 24,000, causing park wardens some consternation. “We knew we had to do things differently,” she says.
So tomorrow evening, the Loft Studios in Kensal Green will be transformed into a Scandinavian midsummer house, with a barn, fairy lighting, real grass and a flower garlands station. Nine hundred guests are expected – half of them Scandinavian, half British and other nationalities. Other London events include a party hosted by the Swedish Chamber of Commerce at a barge on the Thames in Battersea tonight, with flower crown binding, a midsummer pole, folk music and Rekorderlig cider.
There is plenty happening outside London, too. Near Edinburgh, the Scottish-swedish Society is hosting a midsummer party in the garden of Niddry Castle tomorrow afternoon. The Liverpool International Nordic Community is holding a service and festivities on Sunday morning at the Nordic Church and Cultural Centre.
“It’s also very much a grass roots event,” says Alexander Malmaeus, chairman of the Anglo-swedish Society. “You can get your Swedish food – the smorgasbord – from Ocado now. The midsummer pole is a vertical piece of wood with a cross-brace and a pair of large wreaths, adorned with greenery and flowers.”
For Bronte Aurell, a Dane married to a Swede, who runs the Scandinavian Kitchen in London’s Fitzrovia, and has a book called Nørth coming out in September, midsummer is about indulging with family and friends. She says while most of the Scandinavian diet – fish, fruits, salads – is healthy and lagom (‘in moderation’), allowances can be made at midsummer. Strawberries and any cake containing them are in demand – “as many strawberries as you can muster!” she encourages. “We also like smörgåstårta, or sandwich cake – a giant sandwich filled with prawn, salmon and mayonnaise.”
In a part of London’s Marylebone known as ‘little Sweden’, grocery shop Totally Swedish reports brisk trade in herring and gravlax salmon; interior products store Skandium sold out of a Marimekko picnic table covering last year.
Homewares firm Cloudberryliving. co.uk has seen a run on its Skagerak Helios fire bowls that double as a fire pit and barbecue.
“It’s all about making the most of the sun and the light after those long, dark winter months,” says partner Alicia Gilbert. She believes we are just catching up with the Nordic tendency to embrace outdoor space during the summer by creating ‘rooms outside’.
Today is also Freya’s day, the Norse goddess of beauty and fertility. Ågren knows plenty of couples who met at midsummer, and it’s not hard to see why. One tradition has young women pick seven different flowers to lay under their pillows, so their future husbands appear to them in a dream.
If that doesn’t help, aquavit might; literally ‘water of life’, the 40 per cent proof spirit is drunk chilled, as neat shots. Inhibitions dissolve and revellers dance around the pole. And if it doesn’t get dark, there’s no point in going to bed (alone). The birth rate spikes in Sweden nine months later.
“Of course it’s a date we celebrate with a special menu,” says Philip Hamilton, Swedish chief executive of Aquavit, the London branch of the New York restaurant holding two Michelin stars. “Along with a maypole in St James’s Market.”
Needless to say, Britain has its own midsummer traditions: from the Oak King and Shakespeare to the hordes who gather at Stonehenge. With the coming of Christianity, many pagan celebrations were moved to the feast of St John the Baptist on June 24; effectively a summer Christmas, until the Reformation put a stop to the fun.
Perhaps it is due a resurrection. Millions in the UK have Scandinavian ancestry; many more would welcome any seasonal excuse to eat and drink to excess. Make Midsummer Eve a night to remember – or not, depending on the amount of aquavit consumed.
Aquavit is drunk, inhibitions dissolve and revellers dance around the pole