My first countryside midsummer in Skåne 2019

June 23, 2019

My first countryside midsummer in Skåne 2019

This year's midsummer I spent in a village between Genarp and Veberöd. It's in a place called the Highlands of Skåne. The scenery when/, if you drive around taking different routes to Dörröd, are breathtakingly beautiful! Then you can see it's really the highlands.

Why just first one in the countryside of Skåne? Because my first 2 midsummer's I was around Stockholm, then with friends I met during my hitchhiking in Laholm, and in Skåne we did Stenshuvud hiking and cycling trip. Last year I was in Latvia with family.

We are house + pet sitting (dogs, cats, chickens) in Dörröd for two weeks, and it happens during midsummer, so, instead of planning the usual camping escape, we stayed and enjoyed the local festivities. All the standard traditions you know of Swedish Midsommar were there - the maypole preparation a day before, the maypole singing and building up, then the frog and other dances around it, but the most important is the frog dance! Later the villagers had the games for children to win sweets, but as in Swedish culture it's accepted - everyone is a winner, so, they throw the candies up in the air at the end of games and kids were catching! That was fun! As you can see in the images, it was a picnic atmosphere too, all villagers whoever was at home and visitors came to the Mikeal's meadow bringing their snacks, snaps or coffee. One of the rare days when at least 80% of the locals meet each other. I like this kind of community. Then it was time to leave, prepare for dinner. Before maypole, some villagers arrived with the local "taxi" - Traktor, and now all the kids wanted to go home driven by a Traktor taxi. :)

In the evening every one of the village had their own private dinner party, some just with a family, some together with other neighbours, or maybe left to somewhere else. We joined neighbours with our friends from before: Kurt, Liz and Lisa. We know them through Airbnb at Happy dogs ranch and we have house-sat Lisa's home a few times.

It was a fun midsummer, I must admit. I liked a bit of this laughing, dancing and chatting midsummer and then go back home to my own bed. Although I miss the adventure midsummer, maybe next year!

Thoughts

Swedish & Finnish had a party on Friday (21.06.), now they're back to Monday routine, but Latvian midsummer was yesterday and they've Monday off! 😁 I felt this is mandatory evidence, right. Also, I think this is my first so colourful crown, as usually its white and green. The only ritual I kind of did was picking and creating the crown in silence, then the Swedish Maypole thingy and that's it. The best evening light was on 22nd June, then we had a late evening walk with dogs, loving every single sunray.

I do miss my Latvian midsummer's, they're more off-grid, funnier as Latvians party outdoors better than Swedish haha sorry. Even though I've been to several really well planned Swedish midsummer's, all I miss is the back in the days midsummer's at someone's backyard, jumping over a campfire and then the midnight or sunrise skinny dip. Yup, the best midsummers are in Latvia. ❤️

This year I had the most relaxing midsummer, but maybe because I ate so many potatoes that I couldn't dance 😂

If you want to read more about Swedish Midsummer, I wrote my first article on The newbie guide to Sweden.se here: Celebrating midsommar. It includes a little bit story from my first Midsummer in Sweden on the farm I lived&worked at back then. The community midsummer.