Midsummer

What actually happens

Picking seven wildflowers to place under the pillow at night. Raising the maypole, then the frog dance around it.

• 01Picking seven wildflowers to place under the pillow at night.
• 02Raising the maypole, then the frog dance around it.
• 03Flower crowns worn by almost everyone, of any age.
• 04Snapsvisor — a drinking song before every single toast, without exception.

Sound of the crowd

A live accordion-and-fiddle band, or a speaker playing 'Små grodorna'. The snapsvisor repertoire is genuinely large and sung badly by everybody, which is the point.

How it survived

The maypole tradition arrived in Sweden from Germany in the late medieval period and was combined with older solstice bonfire customs. It became the country's most widely observed non-religious holiday in the twentieth century, and effectively closes the country for a weekend.