Strawberries,
flowers
& midsummer

Have you ever heard of the Swedish Midsummer? It is the biggest summer festival in Sweden. Traditionally, a Midsummer pole is erected and decorated, flower wreaths are made and strawberries are eaten. Our Swedish office also celebrated and prepared for the festivities. Midsummer’s Eve is the day before Midsummer’s Day (and thus falls on a Friday, between June 19-25). This year it was celebrated on June 24.

Our colleagues at the PUMA Office in Stockholm, Sweden, also prepared for the festivities. With self-made flower wreaths and fresh strawberries they got in the mood for the midsummer weekend.

Learn more about the origins of midsummer

Midsummer marks the longest day of the year. The holiday originates from Sweden, but it’s celebrated in other countries too and many use the weekend closest to the date for traditional festivities. Midsummer is like a never-ending lunch party that involves flowers in your hair, dancing around a pole, singing songs while drinking. And downing a whole load of pickled herring served with delightful new potatoes, chives and sour cream.

The history

Midsummer started as a pagan ritual for fertility and a successful harvest during the Stone Age. The pagans believed that plants had healing properties during the summer solstice and they honored the day showing reverence to nature with rituals. They danced around maypoles, fashioned garnets, and herbs were picked on Midsummer’s Eve and bonfires were used to keep away any evil spirits.

In Sweden, it is an incredibly popular holiday and comes second to Christmas. Midsummer Eve is not a public holiday in Sweden, but is equated with a public holiday in the Banking Act and other legal texts (as are Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, and Easter).

Why pick seven different flowers?

According to legend, girls are supposed to pick seven different kinds of flowers and put them under their pillows on Midsummer’s Eve. When they do this, they supposedly dream about the person they will marry.

Everything that grew in Midsummer was charged with magical powers, and in order to preserve the magic, people tied a wreath that they kept. For example, the best way to get energy in winter was to put a dried midsummer wreath in the annual Christmas bath.