Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/06/27
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]It's Sunday, I'm still recuperating from Midsummer Eve. For those of you who don't know, Midsummer is very special for Swedes. It's not a Scandinavian thing, it's a Swedish and Finnish specialty. What you probably do know about are our long, dark, cold winters. Midsummer is the opposite pole, but at the same time it's the zenith. From that day on, we're headed back to the long, dark, cold days. Sweden doesn't have a real "national day". Sweden has always been Sweden. Swedes didn't win their independence from another state. It's been Sweden all along. What's there to celebrate? But Midsummer, a pagan celebration that the Church tried to tone down by declaring it was John the Baptist's birthday, is THE day that almost all Swedes celebrate. You could set up a tent on the main street in Gothenburg or Stockholm and you would not be disturbed. There is no traffic. I've tried to capture the two contradictory aspects of the day. The bacchanalia: http://www.dlridings.com/paw2004/26.html and the awe of the heavens: http://www.dlridings.com/paw2004/26alt1.html You don't celebrate Midsummer in the city. As a curiosa: The majority of men who drown at this time of the year are found next to the piers, with their zippers down. I have more, much more, but it takes a while to recover enough to do some editing. Where is that aspirin?! Daniel