MIDSUMMER'S EVE IN SWEDEN
About adding some Scandinavian flavour to your Summer Solstice celebrations!
Glad Midsommar! Happy Midsummer!
My best wishes for summer solstice 2025 to all of you based in the Northern Hemisphere! And if you are in the Southern Hemisphere, happy winter solstice to you!
People often ask how Swedish people celebrate Midsommarafton or Midsummer Eve.
Feel free to try the following suggestions:
Roll naked in the dew on Midsummer’s Eve to ensure good health!
Pick healing herbs because they are extra powerful on Midsummer’s Eve.
Walk backwards 7 or 3 or 9 times around a well, and then you will see the one you’re going to marry in the well. Another variation on this is to get undressed and walk backwards around a spring in the woods. When you’re done, you’ll see your spouse-to-be in the water. (The nakedness might attract some attention!)
Pick seven kinds of flowers, place them under your pillow, and you’ll dream about the person you will marry. Usually it’s said that you should do this while keeping absolutely silent. Sometimes you also have to jump over 7 fences (gärdsgårdar) while you’re picking them SOURCE
Pictured above: what a gärdsgård looks like!
In Scandinavia, Midsommarafton (Midsummer Eve) is one of the biggest days of the year. Today Scandinavians dance around a pole decorated with foliage, while wearing crowns made from locally picked flowers in their hair. They eat large amounts of pickled herring and potatoes garnished with sprigs of dill. They also sing drinking songs, toasting each other with small glasses of schnapps (a strong alcoholic drink resembling gin). The amount of alcohol that flows freely on this day is off the charts.
This year the astronomical summer solstice (in the Northern Hemisphere) falls on Friday June 20th. However, in Sweden Midsummer Eve is always celebrated on a Friday that falls between 19 - 25 June, so Midsummer Day then automatically falls on a Saturday. This is done for practical reasons: (most) people enjoying a day off work (and a long weekend to recover from the indulging in excess).
Photograph by Davide Biscuso, sourced from Unsplash
People often assume that celebrating Midsummer originally was a pre-Christian tradition, but we don’t have any written evidence of this from the Early Medieval Period. We have no written accounts at all of the Vikings celebrating midsummer.
Historians have put forward some guesses (not facts):
They think that large bonfires were lit on hilltops or on the seashore, symbolising the power of the sun and offering protection against malevolent spirits. In the Viking Era fire had purifying powers: warding off darkness and disease.
The Old Norse people probably drank large amounts of ale and mead. They would have feasted, recited poems and engaged in storytelling.
Communities probably gathered at this time of year, making it a time of matchmaking, oath-swearing, and solidifying alliances.
Offerings and sacrifices to the deities and/or land-spirits (landvættir) were likely made to give thanks for the past harvests and to seek favour for the current season and future harvests (This is the realm of Rune JARA or JERA). SOURCE
The Church has celebrated the birth of John the Baptist on June 24th since the fourth century CE. It seems that the Church introduced this feast day in Sweden in the 11th century (the century that Scandinavia was Christianised).
Photograph by the author taken at Foteviken Museum in Skåne, Southern Sweden
A more scientific perspective on the summer solstice:
In my personal devotional work, I always follow the astronomical solstice. The word sol means sun in Latin and stice is derived from the verb for standing. The Sun appears to stand still for three days. Of course She (in the Old Norse Tradition the sun is female and the moon is male!) still sails overhead and completes her arc across the sky, but she rises at exactly the same point on the horizon for three days. The same thing happens at the winter solstice, before that point (of rising) starts shifting again.
Solstices and equinoxes happen because Earth's axis of rotation is tilted 23.5 degrees from the plane of its orbit around the sun, which causes the seasons. On the summer solstice, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, so it receives the full impact of the sun's rays for the longest time, making this the longest day.
Following the same reasoning, one would assume that the summer solstice should also be the warmest day of the year. However, a slight seasonal lag occurs because our (mostly watery) planet takes time to absorb the heat, according to the Royal Meteorological Society. And at the North Pole, the sun does not set on the summer solstice at all, while at the South Pole, the sun does not rise.
In plain English: the astronomical summer solstice happens on June 20th in the US and on June 21st in Europe.
Scientifically speaking: this year (2025), the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere occurs at 02:42 UTC* on Saturday, June 21, 2025. That means it occurs at 10:42 p.m. EDT** on Friday, June 20 and at 3:41 a.m. BST*** on Saturday, June 21. SOURCE
* Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the primary time standard globally used to regulate clocks and time.
**EDT is Eastern Daylight Time.
*** BST is British Summer Time
Spiritually speaking, the summer solstice is a good day to express gratitude to the Sun (for the gifts of light, heat and life on Earth). You can perform a small ritual and perhaps drum for the Sun, or pour a libation, sing a song, recite a poem or reflect on the way that the Sun supports your life here on Earth, (and so forth). There is no need to follow a specific protocol or tradition, be as creative as you like! (but this essay has hopefully given you some ideas, if that is what you are looking for).
Now remember to pick seven kinds of flowers and put them under your pillow…
Varsågod!
You are welcome!
I try (but sometimes fail) to get out at least one essay a week (sometimes more), due to travel, international teaching commitments and family care responsibilities (our family lives with Alzheimer’s and I have written several posts about that). If you would like to see regular posts about about Nordic spirituality and my life as a Forest Witch (and of course short videos of all the wildlife here!), please follow me on Instagram or Facebook, thank you! All artwork and photographs shared in my posts are my own, unless explicitly credited to a different source.
Imelda Almqvist, Forest Witch, Sweden
BIO FOR IMELDA ALMQVIST
Imelda Almqvist is an international teacher of Sacred Art and Seiðr/Old Norse Traditions (the ancestral wisdom teachings of Northern Europe). So far she has written four non-fiction books and two picture books for children. Natural Born Shamans: A Spiritual Toolkit for Life (Using shamanism creatively with young people of all ages) in 2016, Sacred Art: A Hollow Bone for Spirit (Where Art Meets Shamanism) in 2019, Medicine of the Imagination - Dwelling in Possibility (an impassioned plea for fearless imagination) in 2020 and North Sea Water In My Veins (The Pre-Christian spirituality of the Low Countries) was published in June 2022.
The Green Bear is a series of picture book for children, aged 3 – 8 years. The stories and vibrant artwork, set in Scandinavia, invite children to explore enchanting parallel worlds and to keep their sense of magic alive as they grow up.
Imelda has presented her work on both The Shift Network and Sounds True. She appears in a TV program, titled Ice Age Shaman, made for the Smithsonian Museum, in the series Mystic Britain, talking about Mesolithic arctic deer shamanism.
Imelda currently has a handbook for rune magicians (about the runes of the Elder Futhark) in production (it will be published by Moon Books in 2026). She is now working on a book about Inuit deities and mythology. Imelda runs an on-line school called Pregnant Hag Teachings, where all classes she teaches remain available as recordings, which can be watched any time.
Website:
http://www.shaman-healer-painter.co.uk/
YouTube Channel: youtube.com/user/imeldaalmqvist
Online School: https://pregnant-hag-teachings.teachable.com/courses/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/imelda.almqvist/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/almqvistimelda/