Midsommar på Hägnan & BBQ hos Hasse

On the midsummer holiday we went to Hägnan, which is the open air museum section of the Old Town - Gammelstad. This is the port where Luleå was first established, with a church town built in the 15th century for people to sleep over after travelling great distances to come for a service. Due to land rising 1cm per year the shoreline started moving further and further away, so a new port and town center was established 9km away. The midsommar festival involves the decoration and erection of a maypole, around which people sing and dance. It was traditionally a fertility rite, and with the shape of the maypole could be called 'the festival of the testicles'.

Lucy improvising a Swedish folk song on a bellows organ with an ex-exhumer who only dreams about dead people, never the living (seriously)

It was very much a family day, and young people without kids were in the minority. The songs sung around the maypole also seemed to be more for kids and included songs about animals. I don't know how this helps fertility as the the couples with kids obviously don't need any more help. Shouldn't it be the spinsters, bachelors, and barren couples dancing around maypole singing suggestive tunes, like "it's getting hot out here, så take off all your tradtional folk costume"?

Decorating

The folk band with nyckelharpa 'key-harp'

Parading

Erecting

Dirty (look) Dancing

Afterwards was a display of folk dancing and folk song singing. This was a bit more 'adult', with some dances involving obvious flirting and partner swapping.

Gammelstad Church

Christina, and Sky

After being out at Hägnan we went to Hasse's for a bbq and some more Kubb.

Hasse trying again to explain the 'quantum' joke about the ICA Qvantum supermarket to a non-scientist

Hannah, Ludde, and Stefan