Personally I think we always should celebrate midsummer on the midsummer solstice but that would be inconvenient for businesses so now we celebrate it as earliest at June 19th or as late as June 25th and always on a Friday. Midsummers eve isn’t a holiday but tomorrow is. Still only a few people work today because this is one or most likely our biggest holiday.

People eat the same food we always do on holidays 🙂 Pickled herring and pickled salmon but the salmon can be switched to smoked salmon. For the few of us that hates pickled anything when it comes to fish we have meatballs and prince sausages. Perhaps some have a barbecue, some kind of oven omelette and always an old fashioned Strawberry cake.

Back in the days when people believed more in our beings than people do today it was really important to stay away from any kind of being since most of them seems to truly hate us 🙂 🙂 🙂 Never bathe in a lake or stream since Näcken and the Bäckahäst (sorry no wikipedia site with English text, but it’s much the same as näcken but a horse) would do what they can to drown us but we also had to think about the forest nymphs or the lantern man who gladly would make You lost in the forest or swamps/bogs.

depending on where one lives the trolls could either be good neighbours or, like the mountain trolls, really bad. Mountain trolls liked to kidnap people and force them to live in the underworld for the rest of their lives. Sometimes trolls wanted their children to have the same opportunities as human children (I guess that meant humans with higher incomes) so they swapped babies. If one would suspect that had happened to ones own baby the easiest way to find out was to be mean towards the baby, a troll mother would be horrified because a troll mother would never in any way be awful towards children. If the child actually would be a changeling the troll would take her own child back as fast as she could.

If a girl would want to know to whom she would be married there was an easy way to find out. Before going to bed at midsummers eve she would, without talking for the rest of the day, have to climb either seven or nine fences and pick either seven or nine wild flowers that she would put under her pillow and when she started to dream she would know who her husband to be would be. It was also very important to be outside to collect the morning dew because it had healing powers. Collect as much as one could and save it because when colds and other diseases would come during the autumn/ winter they would just pour some of it in a cup and drink it, some would even have it in their baths even though baths in them selves was a bit dangerous according to what they believed 🙂 🙂 🙂

Well I’m off to bed and I’ll most likely wake up early enough to collect lots of morning dew 🙂 Before I’ll be off to bed I will have the last cup of tea for the day and perhaps have one of the French rolls I baked earlier today. I think I’ll have beetroot salad, ham and Västerbotten cheese 🙂

I wish You all a pleasant Midsummers eve.