Midsummer in Dalarna

Midsummer is one of the biggest holidays of the year for Swedes. Celebrated on Midsummer Eve, the longest day of the year, it is often spent with family and friends, and it involves eating things like herring, potatoes, and cake with strawberries. For a traditional festival, a flower-covered Maypole is also raised, after which people join hands and dance around the Maypole (to songs like "Little frogs..." and all kinds of other children's or traditional songs involving lots of action and jumping!) Ethnologist Agneta Lilja has written a very short text about the holiday here, including its origins: Midsummer Traditions

Since we are in Dalarna right now we celebrated Midsummer first with lunch with Tomas's family, with a traditional meal of very salty herring in thin bread, and then we went to the traditional festivities at Hembygdsgården in Dala-Järna. There probably thousands of people had gathered--and thankfully the weather was quite nice. First the Maypole was raised by a group of men, then there were speeches and folk music played by folk costume-clad musicians, and then dancing around the Maypole. Yaminah had a blast--she laughed and danced and never wanted to stop!

Many people wore traditional folk costumes (from whichever area of Sweden they are from) and especially the children are always adorable in folk costumes, and many people wore wildflowers in their hair.

Yaminah and her Great Grandpa Yngve--90 years apart

Yaminah dancing with her second cousin, Esther

Afterwards we were very happy to spend a fun, relaxing evening with my cousins Helene and Charlotte and their families, at our little house, for food, and Tomas's homemade cake with strawberries.

Yaminah ready to start in on the cake with her second cousins, Arvid and Naomi

Thankfully the cool breeze kept the mosquitoes away until late in the evening, and since it was so light outside, the kids were outside in the sandbox and playing lawn games until 11 PM, when we finally forced Yaminah to come inside and go to bed.

Happy Midsummer!

Summer is finally here!

A long, but fruitful, academic year has come to a close and now my studies are no longer the first thing that comes to mind when I wake up in the morning, and the last thing I spend doing before going to bed, with a break for playing with Yaminah in the afternoon. We are up in our house in Hulån, Dala-Järna, a tiny little village in the province of Dalarna, Sweden.

We love coming up to our house, perhaps because it is not the "real world" here. When we are here we are not working or studying (usually); we see family, friends, and relax, and although we have only been here for a few days, we are already busy relaxing. (Is that an oxymoron? :)

So far the weather has been terrible, but today the rain let up and the sun came out, so this afternoon I mowed the lawn (and actually had fun--that tells you that this is not something I do very often), trimmed around all of our bushes and trees by hand, and then retreated to taking some photos. We realized when we were in China that it is very easy to take pictures whenever one is on vacation or visiting someone else, but we realized, when we wanted to show our Chinese students, that we had almost no pictures of our own town, city, house, or apartment. So today I took a few pictures. Call them "images of summer;" it is a welcome summer, even if the cold is causing people to complain and inspiring a fire in our wood-burning stove every evening.

Tomorrow Tomas is going to build a sandbox for Yaminah, and this weekend is Sweden's big holiday, Midsummer's. I hope to write more about that later with pictures.

I wish you a very nice summer, with time for family, friends, and time for resting. I know that it is what I need! I hope that you will find time to do whatever makes you feel happy and more relaxed...or perhaps inspired. We will be travelling a lot this summer, but for the next 10 days we are just going to be here, hanging out. My goal is to make time for things I love, including reading, walking, baking, blogging, dreaming, and of course for time with family and friends. In a few weeks I will also have a chance to travel, which I also love, but for now, I just want to be right here!

"Cozies & Their Successful Sleuths"

This semester I have been busy, as usual, but this time not taking any teaching classes. Rather, I learned that in order to become a teacher, I had to write a "D level" paper. Although I have already done one such paper within Ethnology, I had to do another within the subject of English in order to become an English teacher. (And there is a very long story behind this, of which I will spare you the details). So, this semester I have hardly had any classes at all, except for a few Chinese classes a week. Most of my time I have been studying alone, either Chinese, or preparing for this D level English paper, reading, reading, reading, and finally for the past few months, writing. It is the equivalent of half of a semester's full-time work, and it has taken a long time. But yesterday I finally turned in my paper, and I am so happy that I am finished! I received a good grade, and that is a relief.

I have received a few "requests" from friends who wanted to read the paper, so if you are interested in reading a 40-page paper on mystery's contemporary subgenre, here you are! Please drop me a note if you are unable to read this for any reason. As I learn how to blog, I am learning the technology as well.

Cozies & Their Successful Sleuths... English paper or here: Full D Paper for Web Publishing in PDF

I love singing in Uppsala's Cathedral!

I sing in Collegium Cantorum, one of the choirs in Uppsala's gorgeous Cathedral. Tonight we had a choir concert; we sang the program we will be singing on our choir tour to Austria this summer. I think it went very well! We sang old music, including "Komm" by Bach, Hear my Prayer by Henry Purcell (love it), but also new music, composed by members of our own choir, including a song for oboe and choir by Helena Hansson. I sang a solo in one of the newly-composed pieces, this one written by Mattias Sjöberg. I wish I could post the entire concert here, but if you are interested, here is my solo from tonight, in two parts because I was unable to manage sending it by e-mail as one large video clip. It is just recorded from where Tomas stood, using his iPhone, so the quality is so-so (you will need to keep your computer's volume pretty low). But you can at least listen. Or just listen to one part (not equally divided). Keep in mind I am an amateur, so it is not perfect, but it is fun! I love singing in choir!