Hygge's over: now it's time to Midsommar like a Swede

In the beginning, there were ABBA disco hits and flat-pack Ikea furniture. Then came a swell of Scandi crime fiction, flooding 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 seen flower garlands round fair heads, already. Get ready for more, starting tonight.

In Sweden, midsommar (midsummer eve) falls on the Friday closest to the solstice, creating a three-day weekend, and enabling families to reunite at the farm, the summer house or the island getaway. Cities such as Stockholm become ghost towns.

For the 100,000 Swedes living in the UK, this presents a midsummer challenge. Half live in London, including H.R.H. 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, 30 a well-spoken Swede living in 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 the entrepeneur began London Swedes, an online commmunity now counting 30,000 members. 

In 2013, Ågren sent a Facebook invitation to gather for Midsommar 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 woke next morning to find 6,000 responses, which soon rose 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, complete with barn, fairy lighting, real grass for a picnic 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 for young professionals at a barge on the River Thames in Battersea, tonight, complete with flower crown binding, live folk music, a midsummer pole 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 midsummer 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, which promotes friendship between the two nations. “You can get your Swedish food – the smörgåsbord – from Ocado now. The midsummer pole [much like the maypole] is a vertical piece of wood with a cross-brace and a pair of large wreaths, adorned with greenery and flowers. In Sweden, it tends to be birch and meadow flowers, but any greenery will do.”

For Bronte Aurell, a Dane married to a Swede, who runs the successful Scandinavian Kitchen restaurant in London’s Fitzrovia, and has a book called Nørth coming out in September, midsummer is about indulging with family and friends. 

Mostly, the Scandinavian diet – fish, fruits, salads – is healthy and lagom (‘in moderation’), but allowances are 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, eaten by the slice.”

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 coated-cotton picnic table covering last year.

Meanwhile, Cloudberryliving – which retails and delivers home products across the 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 merely catching up with the Nordic tendency to embrace outdoor space during the summer months by creating ‘rooms outside’, using candles, lanterns, blankets, rugs and the like. 

Every aspect of midsommar is imbued with a sense of renewal; 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 (nubbar) to songs. The usual ratio is one shot to every two beers. Inhibitions rapidly dissolve and revellers dance around the maypole, the light giving the night magical, mystical qualities. 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.

Renewal can come in different forms. “Of course it’s a date we celebrate with a special menu,” says Philip Hamilton, Swedish CEO of Aquavit, the London branch of the New York restaurant holding two Michelin Stars. “Along with a maypole in St. James Market. It’s a special time on the calendar.”

Needless to say, Britain has its own midsummer tales, traditions and folkloric figures; think the Oak King and Shakespeare, and the hoards who still gather the night before the summer solstice to salute the sun’s rise over Stonehenge.

With the coming of Christianity, festivities were moved to the feast of St John the Baptist - Christ’s cousin, born six months earlier - on 24th June; effectively a summer Christmas. Until the Reformation, people would light bonfires on midsummer eve and stay up to welcome these few days when the sun appears to stand still (the literal meaning of the word “solstice”) before turning back to the south.

Perhaps such celebrations are due a resurrection; many would welcome any seasonal excuse to eat and drink to excess. And perhaps Brits’ growing interest in all things Nordic reveals a deeper cultural confluence. Millions of people across the UK have Scandinavian ancestry dating back to the Viking invasions; celebrating midsummer may remind us of our own lapsed traditions and a shared heritage. Try it out, make it a night to remember – or not, depending on the amount of aquavit consumed.

Daniel Pembrey is the author of Nordic-influenced crime fiction

@DPemb