Maypoles and Fertility on mid-summer's day

"...Swedes survive the winter only by thinking of what they will do on that summer's day..."

"...celebrated on the weekend coming close to the real midsummer day...a mass exodus takes place just before with thousands of Swedes evacuating the towns and heading for their weekend cottages in the country. They erect a maypole, erect being the operative word as in fact it is a pagan symbol of fertility...they dress it up in leaves and flowers...and then spend the afternoon dancing around it pretending to be small frogs..."
- courtesy Colin Moon

And the above sums up what I was up to in the last weekend. Mid-summer is such an important part of the summer holidays in Sweden and it formed a part of our official transition agenda in AIESEC Sweden.

I had been a part of it last year when i first got to Sweden and i had been looking forward to it. While last year's midsummer was celebrated in Uppsala, this year we made our way to Bromma which is on the outskirts of Stockholm and very near to where the Swedish Royal Family lives. We were being hosted by Emelie, the very beautiful and classy VPOGX of the Stockholm local chapter of AIESEC. She hosted us in her family's summer house and such a wonderful time (all 45 of us) had.

Traditional Swedish food in the form of potatoes, herring and home made bread was punctuated by the singing of Swedish drinking songs, at the end of each song we drank alcohol. Wine, beer and strong liquor flowed all afternoon and we of course built the fertility pole which i am dressing up here in the picture.

Drinking Games of every sort followed and we still managed to catch the Ukraine v Tunisia match on TV, after which we had a sumptous dinner organized by AIESEC in Stockholm Uni and Uppsala. We had acapella right after and an impromptu kareoke session. Victoria from SU plays the piano and guitar equally well...you go girl! There were a few crazy people who went down to the lake for a midnight swim but i did that already so i just cheered them on from the safety and warmth of the docks.

Click here for all the pics

All in all, a fantastic weekend which didnt end until dawn which didnt really happen as it didnt really get dark. The sun was up and shining by 2am!!!

I will miss midsummers in Sweden, but for sure will be back here to spend more of them in the future!

eL