Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
SWEDEN Midsummer
There is a scene ingrained in the collective Swedish subconscious: a maypole clad in birch leaves and flowers, with two wreaths hanging from the cross’s outstretched arms; a long table set for a party on the veranda of a country cottage; bowls filled with strawberries — the first of the season; and the guests, many crowned with wreaths of flowers, who will eat, drink, sing and dance into the wee hours of the year’s longest day.
Midsummer, a celebration of the summer solstice, is one of the most important holidays on the Swedish calendar. Festivities commence on Midsommarafton, or Midsummer’s Eve, which is always a Friday in late June. This is when, as crooned by the Swedish rock band Kent:
We drink to another midsummer
Fresh potatoes and herring As if time stood still. Historians trace midsummer celebrations to pagan festivals, but most modern traditions solidified in the 1900s.
There are specific dishes to be served — new potatoes, pickled herring, strawberries — and songs to be sung, including “Sma Grodorna” (“The Little Frogs”), which involves hopping around the maypole. Traditionalists dust off their folk costumes, and bouquets of flowers are tied into colorful midsummer crowns. Beer flows freely throughout the day, and food courses are punctuated by shots of ice-cold aquavit accompanied by raucous drinking songs, called snapsvisor.
Yet the only absolute must at midsummer is nature. Those unable to retreat to the countryside can join public celebrations in city parks or the three-day festival at Skansen, an open-air museum and zoo in Stockholm.
Even without a maypole, a traditional feast, or a single shot of aquavit, the spirit of midsummer can still be summoned with little more than a grassy lawn.
In a Stockholm park, I once spent a dreamy Midsummer’s Eve with only a picnic blanket, a single-use grill and a messy wreath of wildflowers. Playing Swedish lawn games in good company beneath clear blue skies was celebration enough to mark the passage into summer and welcome the abundant daylight that had finally returned to Sweden after months cloaked in darkness. — Ingrid K. Williams
Each August, in the medieval Provençal town of Grasse — also known as the perfume capital of the world — the village pays three days of exuberant homage to one of the two fragrant flowers that shaped the town’s destiny: the jasmine.
During the Jasmine Festival (the first was in 1946), villas are decorated with purple garlands, as is much of the town and town square. Women dress up in various versions of flower blooms and play medieval instruments. And on streets lined with quaint cafes, children watch flower-themed puppet shows.
The bells of Cathedrale Notre Dame du Puy ring out in celebration. The main event is a parade during which a fire department truck filled with jasmine-infused water is sprayed on the crowds. Floats slowly motor through the circuitous streets while young women throw flowers into the crowd, and men in bowler hats on stilts make their way through cobblestone streets strewn with petals.
Grasse’s place in the history of perfume is undisputed. In centuries past, Grasse had a thriving leather business, but the tanning process made for pungent merchandise. A local perfumer offered a pair of scented leather gloves to Catherine de Medici, the queen of France from 1547 until 1559, and an industry was born. Both jasmine and the May (or Damascus) rose play major roles in the perfume industry as well as in a number of famous perfumes.
For dates and information on this year’s festivities, check the website of the Grasse Tourism Office: grassetourisme.fr.
— Colleen Creamer
Spain has an outsize reputation for celebrating. Every corner of the country provides its share of festivals, most encouraging long nights of prodigious eating and drinking.
Events range from the silent and somber religious processions of Semana Santa in Valladolid to the polka-dot social whorl of Seville’s Feria de Abril, to the running of the bulls in Pamplona during the Feast of San Fermín.
Despite all this visual pageantry, abundant history and, for many of these celebrations, deep religious roots, one of the most beloved spectacles is La Tomatina, a massive food fight held in the tiny town of Buñol, 25 miles outside Valencia. The festival, which lasts less than two hours and involves the hurling and smashing of nearly 180 tons of overripe tomatoes, has been a fixture on the Spanish calendar only since the late 1950s.
Held annually on the last Wednesday of August, the merriment begins with a ham placed on top of a greased pole in the town square. Once someone manages to claim the ham, trucks discharge past-theirprime tomatoes to the crowd. As the trucks wind through the narrow streets, revelers are squeezed into shooting-fish-in-abarrel range. Juicy, red, vitamin C-packed mayhem ensues.
This year’s Tomatina will be Aug. 29. After crowds started swelling to more than 50,000 a while back, the authorities limited access to the first 22,000 participants who purchase 10-euro tickets.
If you go, think about taking goggles to protect your eyes, a pair of old sneakers (they’ll be ruined) and a change of clothes in a waterproof bag. After the battle, residents pitch in by hosing everyone — and everything — off.
Information is available at latomatina.info.
— Andrew Ferren
For four mead-soaked days in September, the small Bavarian town of Selb on the Czech border transforms into a phantasmagoric realm of dancing elves, fairy maidens, head-banging Teutonic warriors, and vendors in chain mail and codpieces, hawking everything from stained glass to Mutzbraten, a Bavarian-spiced pork specialty.
Festival-Mediaval (this year, from Sept. 6 to 9), which claims to be the largest medieval festival in Europe, follows the unspoken rule of such events in that loosely faithful historical re-enactments mix with characters and imagery drawn from the magical worlds of JRR Tolkien, “Game of Thrones,” Dungeons & Dragons and countless other fantasy and role-play subgenres, with a generous sprinkling of pirates and Vikings of unclear historical and geographical provenance.
While the Selb festival doesn’t approach the Middle Ages with quite the bellicose rigor of other German fests like the Kaltenberg Knights Tournament, said to be the world’s largest jousting event, there will, of course, be battles taking place on land and water, by joust, sickle and powder keg.
Festival-Mediaval also offers a range of workshops where visitors can, for instance, make herbal tinctures according to the original recipes of the visionary Benedictine abbess Hildegard von Bingen, take tin whistle lessons or have their manuscript appraised by Bernhard Hennen, author of the German fantasy hit “The Elves” and its many sequels.
Festival-Mediaval’s musical program runs the gamut from Nordic goth-industrial to a neo-shamanic Hungarian duo called the Moon and the Nightspirit, and a professed German minstrel named Knud Seckel who plays what he describes as “jazz for Crusaders.” A four-day pass costs 90 to 111 euros ($111 to $137). Camping is included, not to mention falconry, medieval dance and entry to a gigantic tug of war that unfurls in the shadow of the Fichtel Mountains.
— Charly Wilder
Fishing boats and competitive rowing teams sail into the 25th annual Scottish Traditional Boat Festival (this year June 30 and July 1) in the cozy seaside town of Portsoy on the north Aberdeenshire coast. Famed for its picturesque, 17th-century harbor and stone buildings, the much-photographed village frequently stars in TV commercials and feature films, including the 2016 movie “Whisky Galore!”
But when the waterfront is filled with stately antique vessels like the Isabella Fortuna — a restored, 45-foot fishing boat built in 1890 — the cameras are generally pointing in the other direction.
Other vessels regularly at the festival include the White Wing, a 33-foot sailboat built in 1917, and the Waterwitch, a fishing boat launched in 1923. The festival also brings in a flotilla of smaller vessels. In between cheering on the rowing teams and visiting larger fishing ships, attendees can even try to pilot boats in Portsoy Harbor.
No matter what you plan on doing, it’ll help to keep the elements in mind. “The majority of the activities take place outdoors,” wrote Vivien Rae, one of the organizers, in an email. “So be prepared for the Scottish weather, bring sunscreen and also an umbrella!”
Other attractions include pipe bands, play areas for kids and plenty of clooties — a type of spiced, sweet dumpling — as well as fried fish, rare whiskies and other local flavors. Visitors can check out the town’s museum, housed in a restored ice house and salmon processing plant from 1834, which includes information on local family histories and genealogy.
If you go, do pay attention to the rules: In previous years, the organizers have announced bans on bananas and on whistling, both frequently believed by mariners to bring bad luck. Information: stbfportsoy.org.
— Evan Rail