Midsummer is the most mysterious of the festivals
At the end of the video clip to Erik Lundins Let “Haffla” The Midsummer Bar burns. Dark green leaves are licked by flames and the axle flags dance in the summer evening when a euphoric lundin runs past. His sweater says: “This is Sweden”. The dot of the bar only happens after we have witnessed a large group of friends consisting of young, non-white Sweden who celebrated in a traditional way with Haring, Snaps, Cream card and Pentathlon.
The hot summer of 2018, when the video clip came out and I saw it with warmth in my eyes, I had never tasted herring. When I took my first chew food for the same summer, inspired and ready, I had to spit it out immediately. But I didn’t give up, I wanted to be a person who loves herring, and now I have become someone who likes to put it on the board when it appears at the hotel breakfast. But seven years ago I had never celebrated Midsummer. I was never invited for a celebration of this from outside, since such a mysterious vacation.
Are Such a secularized country is surprisingly great in Swedish culture. Although ordinary Swedish does not believe in higher forces or praying dinner prayer, although religious contexts are often laughed at or are seen with fear, the Swedish holidays and especially the dining table are inviolable and out of reach. The outsider child has to wait in the room or go home while the food in the family is consumed. The Swedish dinner – especially during vacation – is a ceremony with rules that are implied for those who grew up with them. Spontaneity is excluded. Everyone who is not expected is not always undesirable, but rarely clear.
I grew up In a relatively non-religious house, where the Iranian holidays were the ones who were celebrated. My youth smoke for a long time boiled lamb, tamarind and saffron rice with melted butter. At home with my classmates I was never measured. For the brick route with chicken stir -made on pre -grilled chicken, I longed for the home base of Mom’s Salad Olivie, where the chicken is steamed and then carefully chopped, where every cooked potato is peeled by hand. I have not been overly curious about the Swedish holidays or I felt completely out of their own.
“What the country? Are you going to your home country? ‘
But of all traditions, Midsummer is the one who is usually darkened. It is a holiday that is full of a common meaning, but in practice it is private. It is often celebrated in summer houses, on plots that are inherited or borrowed through generation networks. For those who are outside these circles- “What the country? Are you going to the home country?” – The celebration can be virtually invisible. It is not kept secret, but it is not open either.
That the American The film director Ari Aster A horror film made about Midsummer says something about the mystery of this pagan fertility ritual. The Swedish audience laughed at the exaggerations, recognized itself in the songs and flowers, but not in the Mensblodsbrygden or suicide ritual. Yet there is something that could strengthen the mystery around the Midsummer to fear. What makes this vacation so closed of those who look outside?
The Swedish traditions and places have been inherited. The unpaved road to the country. The pedigree on the wall. The initials embroidered on the kitchen towels. Anyone who has no childhood memories that smell like tongs, freshly painted color and hot smoke of the stove, is not only lacking in experience, but also availability. When the video clip to “Haffla” Published, Erik Lundin wrote that he wants to live until the day that the video capacity has lost the opportunity to set up eyebrows or raise questions. But the question is whether Sweden will someday be able to make such images belong to Canon.
Sociologist Antonio Gramsci Described how power is not only exercised by coercion, but by hegemony – the silent dominance in which the values of a group become so clear that they are no longer seen as standards. The hegemony does not have to be defended, it has already been converted into the neutral. You don’t bind the wreath, you are the one who knows how to bind a wreath. You don’t eat herring, you have eaten herring all your life.
The person who improvises commits offenses in style
Midsummer is not an aggressive exclusion, but is based on an implicit idea of who the Swede is and what the Swedish community looks like. No porter is required if the input is clearly coded.
Nobody wants to call That for pronounced exclusion, but anyone who does not yet fit in, can adjust or stand outside. Welcome, but only if you do the right one. And that also applies to the food on the Midsummer table. It is simple and sleek, white and cold. Not too much, anyway. Everything must feel light and free, but nothing is random. A click of sour cream on a perfectly boiled potato, a taste experience that embraces without surprisingly. A newly opened herring can, slices of onions that slide into sweet vinegar. The first bite is often not -ing dug – the salt, the cold fish, the texture that allows without offering chewing resistance. You play along until you get used to it. There is no food you cook, it is food that you pop up. The traditional Midsummer Food does not require technology, only obedience. Everyone who improvises commits style fractures.
And even if there are too many snaps, there are rules about how much you get to Bell. It is good to get drunk, brew, laugh and even cry a splash. But never back in a different way or continue. Everyone who knows too little makes mistakes, and the person who makes a mistake is visible. The codes are always transmitted by the bodies.
I celebrated Midsummer according to all art rules. On the farm, with snapshots and beautifully set long tables. Strawberries made with whipped cream in the Finnish bowls of the special cupboard. I also celebrated with grilled lamb, watermelon from Morocco and sing to “Dammi Falastini” Massy narrow kitchen where every person has come up with new ideas, a sweaty friend who presses a piece of lambs while he grilles for everyone. This year I will celebrate on the beach in Malmö, beyond all traditions. Maybe buy with a good herring from Österlen on the way down. My midsummer bar on fire is not destruction, but a marker for autonomy. I know what this is, I did it. And now I choose something else. Not as a protest or despite, but in freedom. For traditions, not being protected against change, but to be worn by more.
With Willem Dafoe in Venice
15:08
