Swedish Midsummer

Glad Midsommar or Happy Midsummer! We had a few good weather days recently but apparently it's a traditional Swedish Midsummer if it's cool and rainy. So here we are with 56F and drizzly rain all day to celebrate the beginning of summer. The official longest day of the year will be Sunday with a 3:31AM sunrise and 10:07PM sunset. It doesn't get to full night and only reaches nautical twilight this time of year.

What it looks like at 1:30AM

The city is quiet as everyone left for the country to celebrate the Friday and Saturday holiday. The stores are closed along with most of the restaurants. We passed a few open places and fortunately our corner grocery was open when we stopped off for a few items. Skansen is celebrating Midsummer all this weekend with traditional dancing around the maypole so we went there today. They have to raise the maypole first which takes some time, some music, and a lot of standing around before the dancing could begin. Here's some pictures and a few videos.

Video of the maypole going up:

Video of some dancing in the rain:

2 Videos of the popular Little Frogs song:

English version of the lyrics:

The little frogs, the little frogs are funny to observe.
The little frogs, the little frogs are funny to observe.
No ears, no ears, no tails do they possess.
No ears, no ears, no tails do they possess.
Kou ack ack ack, kou ack ack ack,
kou ack ack ack ack kaa.
Kou ack ack ack, kou ack ack ack,
kou ack ack ack ack kaa.

Here's some more rainy pictures of Skansen before we left since we finally had enough of the rain.

 bacon bread in a skillet, but unfortunately we already ate lunch