Midsommar, cont'd.

Saturday was spent sleeping in, eating, and taking a nice walk to see another Midsommar pole raised and visit friends.

Most importantly, the newcomers to the sommarstuga (summerhouse)--such as myself--were given a tour of the little compound.  There are three main structures, arranged in a sort of horseshoe shape.  If one is looking at the front door of the main house, there is a long, low barn on the left. 
This houses building materials, mechanical tools and a beautiful bright orange 1960s Renault 16TL. 

The main house is being completely redone by Eriks pappa, in a mix of old and new techniques and materials, but with great respect for historic Swedish design.

While gutting and acquainting themselves with the place, they found lots of tiny shoes stuffed in the space between the floorboards of the second floor and the ceiling of the first.  This is not as creepy as it sounds, as a shoemaker lived in this house, and I am told that using old clothing as insulation in a house was not uncommon.  Look at the adorable little things!  I mean...uh...these are important Dalarna artifacts which should be carefully examined and preserved.....but how LITTLE!  They each have a little baby insole made of näver, or birch bark.  The same material was used to make the insoles of Eriks mamma's folkdräkt footwear some seventy-five or hundred years later.  I wonder if these were meant to be sold, or were old?  Or possibly were samples?  I didn't check to see if there were pairs.






While the renovations are underway, the family stays in a rather cozy sleeping loft in the structure to the right of the main house, with even more barn space.  This is his pappa's workshop, lumber storage, a treehouse built many years ago, and, on the far side, the four-person outhouse. 









There is, of course, also a woodfired sauna that pappa built and a woodfired water heater for bathing after the sauna or when absolutely necessary.  There is a cellar between the sleeping loft and the main house, underground but with its own small hut for an entrance.

Best of all, we slept in a darling little structure called the bagarstuga, or the bake house.  It's where they bake Christmas bread in December (when it's not 25 below, like last year), and has beautiful wooden racks hanging from the ceiling.  It does have a bit of electricity tucked into the corner for a small refrigerator-slash-stove, but all the washing is done with a three-tub system and there is a great little fireplace to be lit for warmth and company.

We mostly hung around and enjoyed the grey but pleasant weather, admiring the gardens, watching the family work on the houses, reading and finally going in the sauna.  It was exhausting! Neither of us has had much practice recently, and although it was only 52 or so degrees, that was more than enough to wipe us out.  I had to pour a bit of cold water over my head every now and then.  But it hurts so good!  When I was in I wanted to be out, but when I was out I wanted to be in....terrible stuff.

                                 monster rhubarb!  and love yellow and white windows...

                                           a Dalarna-specific fencing technique

Erik ended up falling asleep almost directly, but I lit a little fire, had a glass of wine, and read the rest of Slaughterhouse Five.  I really had thought it was much more...sci-fi?  Anyways, check that off the 1001 books to read before you die.  Enough light was coming through the windows that I could read just by that and by firelight, although everyone who came in to get a snack generously tried to turn the lights on for me.  But I was enjoying my tenuous memories of the houses at Plimoth, politely ignoring the coffemaker and seeing only a small bed(stead?), tiny fireplace, table and cupboard.  Of course, it's at least two centuries too young, but it was a pleasant evocation.  Looking out the window at the meadows from the tiny house I also couldn't suppress a desire to sew some turn-of-the-19th-century dress and lie around with leather-bound books and write a letter inviting the interpreters from Coggeshall Farm to come visit.  I put more logs on the fire (I have a problem with quitting fires), climbed into the warm bed, and watched it burn down as I fell asleep, dreaming of the Janet Arnold patterns I was going to scale up when I got home...

Glad Midsommar!

Hello all,
Glad Midsommar!
For this most famous of Swedish holidays, we took the train up to Falun, then drove out to the summer house of Familjen Lehto in Gulleråsen (look it up!).

I think we shall take it one at a time.

Midsommar lunch was relatively traditional, starting with silltårta (herring pie) and snaps.  A perfect halloumi sallad was kindly prepared for me, as well--I could have eaten all of it.  Halloumi is a problem for me...Then älg (moose) in a really incredible porter sauce, as well as potatoes, of course.  With a beer local to the extended family on the west coast.

(Silltårta)

(Lehto pojkar)

Followed by Swedish strawberries with lemon, sugar and vanilla ice cream!

Then it was off to Gulleråsen to drop off the unnecessaries and head to Boda Gammalgård.  This is a heritage site of sorts, a collection of old houses and objects traditional to the area.  Boda is part of Dalarna, one of the areas of Sweden that holds its traditions most dear, which we know is saying a lot.  It's where those little red wooden horses come from, and is famous for the Leksands knäckebröd I'm such a fanatic about, as well as various other highly identifiable Swedish Things.  It reminds me of New England, and Boda Gammalgård reminds me of Plimoth Plantation without the interpreters (and where the houses are original), or a bit of the historic house I used to live in.


So, of course, this pulled at many heartstrings, especially with the great numbers of people in folkdräkt, or traditional dress that is specific to the village or area you (or your parents, etc) grew up in.
Below, the woman to the right is wearing Bodadräkt, but I don't know about the women to the left.

Eriks Mamma has her grandmother's Bodadräkt, and it turns out it fits me perfectly.....but we didn't have enough of the pieces (shoes, stockings, etc...hers are too personal and special for me to wear) to be able to participate...I was rather jealous...Maybe next year? There are all these great little insider things to know about the outfits, which I am still learning...some bits are for högtid, which translates literally to "high time", but of course means more like "the most special occasions".  Sometimes your apron faces one way, sometimes another, and what is interesting to me about the Bodadräkt is that it has a beautiful red, yellow, orange and green horizontal striped swath of fabric sewn into the front of the skirt, almost mimicking an apron, and you COVER this with a plain dark piece of wool for less festive occasions (I hope I will be corrected if I'm misinforming).

Folkdräkt also comes in many iterations, some more successful than others.  Some people buy used, some people make, and some people have things made.  Of course, sometimes a plan white button-down or store-bought stockings stand in for "missing" pieces, but I imagine this affects your traditionalist reputation....However, everyone participating in this celebration seemed to have rather beautifully hand-made pieces.  Handwoven hems, embroidered cuffs, bobbin lace trim on headcoverings...all very special objects!

 We sat and watched the procession from the "porch" of a 17th-century building.  These people have just built the floral garland to wrap around the Midsommar pole, and accordion and fiddle players lead the village women who are carrying it to the site.

There was no shortage of the cutest children you have ever seen in tiny versions of their parents' folkdräkt, as seen above.

And pretty Swedish musicians...

Here you can see many women in Bodadräkt, and then another outfit I can't identify (the woman with the vertical stripes), but it's probably relatively local.

Familjen Lehto sitter och väntar.

Beautiful, complex melodies accompanied the wrapping of the garland and the raising of the pole, which takes a surprisingly long but pleasant time.  The man on the far right had some incredible leather garters and belt/waistband/possible 18th century weightlifting aid.

The pole is lifted through great group effort, including many groans and cheers from the audience as folkdräkt-clad men used these cross-poles to lift it a few feet, then moved a few feet down and did it all over again.

As we drove around the countryside, you see that each pole is decorated somewhat differently, and are of varying sizes, but this one was rather impressive and beautiful.

A musically obsessed friend told me much about nyckelharpor before I came to Sweden, and I got to see a few in action at this celebration!  See a performance of a baptism waltz here.  Beautiful!  Below is a picture of one of the girls playing accompaniment to rings of children and their adults dancing around the pole.  Best known: Små Grodorna, or "Little Frogs", where everyone hops around saying how weird frogs look without tails or ears.

Pretty adorable.

Next on the itinerary:
Party!  A friend of Erik's friend has a house within walking distance of his, and she had a wonderful big midsommar party.  We talked a lot (in English) about language and learning Swedish and how awesome it is to have big dinner parties that are a sort of pot-luck, which we don't do hardly as often as they do here.  The welcoming drink was something with rhubarb, I believe, and boy was it delicious and tart.  We proceeded to eat lots of wonderful healthy food and drank lots of wine and snaps.  As often happens, the tables were taken down one by one so that there was more after-dinner mingling space, and I got to talk a lot with almost everyone.  Some I had met when they were in living in or visiting New York, and I was seeing them for the first time in Sweden.  It's rather nice to know people, especially when you are the girlfriend some people haven't met.  Everyone is always so welcoming, but it makes going to parties exciting instead of nervous-making.

Plus the boxes of wine help.

Magic extending table.

Along with the little frogs and the aquavit, another famous and beloved tradition is to pick 7 different types of flowers and sleep with them under your pillow.  Whoever you dream about will be the person you marry.  For the record--didn't actually put them under the pillow.  But I did have a nice time picking lots of beautiful Dala flowers on our way home.

Saturday and Sunday reports later....this is already becoming a short novel.  And we have to go on a picnic, it's insanely gorgeous outside.

Puss!

More new things!

Like a library card!
And strawberries:

(I'm pretty sure the missing ones fell off my bike, definitely were not eaten before I got home!)


Fabric and pattern:

And, most excitingly, something to make that shirt with!

New sewing machine came in the mail!  Well, new to us.  We had to pick it up at Bussgods, and the best/cheapest subsequent transportation is:

(you can see Eriks vanity cykel in foreground right, vilken cykel!)


Lots of packaging, but love that the seller left the handle out for easy transportation.  Looking good here:

And even better here! It's the shape of a home machine but made of the satisfying grey metal of an industrial.  Comes with a removable work-surface extension and a poorly-wound bobbin of blue thread.

Lots of exciting and somewhat mystifying feet as well...afforded me an afternoon of exploration.  Thank the great Burda gods for the internet.

We bragged to each other about sewing skills.

Friday we had a big party to go to--Farfar Gösta's 85th birthday party in Falun!  He had a two-week birthday celebration, visiting family in Falun and on the West Coast, swimming to his heart's content.  I had a rather satisfying and ego-boosting time with him, as he doesn't speak any English but we still got on famously--I made full Swedish sentences!  Sometimes even without thinking too hard!

Soon I will do a post about really kind of awesome Swedish things Americans never would have thought of, and that little green milk container on my English-Swedish dictionary will be one of them.  Why is it shaped like that?  Why do they have single-serve milk packaging that doles out only little blips of milk at a time?  Is it genius?  Spill-proof?  Probably both.

Next up: single-use ice-making plastic bags.  Definitely genius.

Good news

I start Swedish lessons on June 27!  Thanks to my sixteen years of education (and watching those kids shows I talked about) I am able to start at level 3C (the highest is 3D).

The Svenskundervisning För Invandrare (Swedish language school for immigrants, which sounds like, "inwanderers") institution fully funds this endeavor, and because I'm starting at that level I have been placed in a school called Hermods.

If the course being completely subsidized isn't enough incentive to learn the native language and participate fully in the community, they also offer a monetary "bonus" if you finish the highest course and successfully complete the final test within a year of starting your studies.  But not a 600 kr savings bond or something, it can be up to 12,000 kr!  (That's nearly 2,000 dollars if the dollar stops climbing already).  Untaxed.

Anyways, totally gauche to talk about money, I know.  But....I just wanted to gloat a little, because even the subsidized Swedish lessons seemed like "bonus" enough...

In other news, bike basket:

 

puss!

Två År

Two years ago, I finally found this boy my friend Cresa had insisted I meet.

And here I am! (well, that's him below, but here I am in Sweden!)

 

For our two-year anniversary, we went to Gästrike-Hälsinge Nation (nation explanation), which has a great summer restaurant.  We sat outside, drank a bottle of wine, analyzed our fellow diners, and, after the longest, longest wait finally had some delicious entrees.

We then walked to another nation for a terrific cherry beer and some really terrible "jazz" music, and ended up back home on the patio, as usual.


The next day (our real anniversary) we had a party, theme: Invasionsfest.  Music was female vocalists singing in English and male vocalists singing in Swedish, and food was also split on national lines.  Erik won for presentation with meatballs and cornichons stuck through with tiny Swedish flags as toothpicks, and beautiful, elaborate little cheese crackers made with the seriously delicious Västerbottenost, bits of salmon, crème fraîche, roe, and chives.

I made pigs in blankets and pretzels, so I win for...most bready?

Anyway, we had a nice bike ride out to the huge grocery store for ingredients, and spent most of the day preparing, which I love.

In Sweden you often (always?) have a "welcoming drink" to serve to your guests as they come in, and Erik picked the French 75, which was, of course, a hit.

Erik's darling friends came over to help us warm this little house, bringing thoughtful gifts of tigerlillies, Jämtland microbrews and Oreos, American wine decked with Swedish ribbons, and a "welcoming hand": a really lovely small sculpture on which we can hang jewelry, etc!

It was such a great time that yesterday was spent in bed or on the couch, reading love stories and watching Tarkovsky.  And eating leftover pigs in their blankets.

In other news, I'm still waiting on that personnummer, and the herbs that I bought at Plantagen the other day (which I forgot to tell you about) are struggling a bit in the long, hot days....but thankfully today is rather cool but sunny, so they are back outside! I think today I will replant them and give them a bit of a chance to relax into their new home.  And hang some pictures!

Puss!