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There is nothing more practically screaming Swedish Midsummer than strawberries. It’s a must at the Midsummer Feast (with whipped cream) as much as the flowers and the Schnapps to the pickled herring…

The Maypole though has begun to vanish since people are more and more living in the cities and neither got the time or the possibilty to find enough material to make it from.

This past Friday we celebrated the Swedish National Holiday, Midsummer Eve out in the countryside with good friends.

Their stable and barn.

We had no Maypole to dance around at our Midsummer Fest, but I must admit that I kind of miss it. Not necessarily to dance the amusing “frog dance” around it *giggles*, but just to see it stand there garnished with garlands of flowers, as the phallic symbol it has been and now for traditions and the arrival for summer.

As I suspected, there were even tough to find enough flowers (7 different species) for the girls to pick this year and lay under their pillows to dream about their future husbands. They have all already bloomed out. I can’t even remember that this ever has happened before.

Will this mean that there gonna be fewer marriages in the nearest future? *giggles*

I can’t think of any Swedish National Holiday that is so connected to the nature, especially since every one escape the cities and go out in the countryside this holiday, leaving Stockholm totally emptied like a ghost town.

The weather was very traditional too - offering some rain here and there… One tradition on the Midsummer Eve is to eat outside and very often you have to carry the table out and in between the showers…. *giggles*

We started at our friends farm at around lunch time - under roof though, charged up to our teeth with eager to eat pickled herrings and drinking Schnapps - and singing some Schnapps songs! That’s also why the photos didn’t get better than this - blame it on the schnapps

An old tradition is to put branches of birch every where as decorations.

Some of you may make YUK-sounds at the thought of pickled herring, but I wonder if you have tasted the Swedish home made inlayed herring? Yes, I admit that it might take a couple of tasting oppurtunities to get used to it. I didn’t eat herring until I was all grown up and only with sourcream and chives on the top.

Pickled herring with red onion in left lower corner, fresh potatoes, different kinds of mixed herring / shrimp / egg halfs with shrimps and roe, cheese and Swedish crispbread.

I believe it’s like many other things we eat, sometimes we learn to eat it, it kind of grows on you! And we change taste in different ages too. I didn’t eat olives until I was grown up either and now it’s my absolutely favorite snacks!

We also did some walking quiz and this year we weren’t the winners as we were last year. OK, we guessed at most of them, but it still was clever of us…

It’s a lot about eating, drinking and socializing as every feast is, so we also had a BBQ at dinner time. Every one had to bring something with them and we did bring pork fillet (and potato salad), stuffed with garlic and marinated for hours in my best BBQ sauce.

So you want to know how to do that? Take Original Caj P’s BBQ sauce (like an ordinary BBQ sauce, brownish with some taste of hickory) but spice it up with salt, mixed pepper, paprika powder and yellow mustard seeds (a must!). It’s the best!

Sorry, no pictures, the hungry monster throw her self upon it and teared it apart as a wild animal and totally forgot to take pictures. I get very hungry in the countryside - or at the sea - be aware of that cruisers…

Since the host has built up a little music studio on the top in the barn, they went in there to jam a little. I’m sorry to say that I missed to take more photos of them. Darn in the barn…

Mr Lifecruiser at the drums, with the host on guitar - which he mastered excellent.

The Midsummer Eve is the most romantic genuine traditional holiday we have in Sweden since Valentines Day has been adopted more lately, so what about the LOVE this evening?

Well, as you might suspect, Mr Lifecruiser and I did our best despite the fact that we didn’t see any moonlight because of the clouds…. *giggles*

…and we had good help from their Nordsvenska stallion which has mares coming there all the time now to get humped loved… They were in different paddocks, lovelorn for each other.

  
The Nordsvensk stallion and his current girlfriend

We ended the Midsummer Eve in their guest cottage were we finally slept deep, surrounded by all the pleasant sounds in the countryside.

- but I didn’t wake up by a cock crow in the morning - neither the roosters or Mr Lifecruisers! *giggles*

Another cock in the house

Captain Cocky Lifecruiser

UPDATE: See all the photos of the Midsummer Feast 2007 in a Flickr slideshow. If you want to see the comments, just move the cursor to the center of the image and click on the i that appears. Or make it go faster (down in left corner).

Lifecruiser Tips:
RennyBa’s Facebook date and Midsummer in Norway.
Maribeth’s Loon Mountain Hike.

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