Midsummer: the North celebrates the light

There is one night of the year when the north doesn't sleep.

The longest day. The shortest twilight. A light that lingers long past midnight, as if someone forgot to flip the switch.

In Sweden, that day is called Midsommar. And it is celebrated in a way we rarely celebrate anything here: outdoors, together, with flowers in our hair and feet in the grass.

It sounds like a distant, exuberant party. But actually, we understand it all better than we think. Because we, too, know the darkness.

What exactly is Midsommar?

Midsommar falls around June 21st, on the summer solstice, the brightest night of the year. At the heart of the celebration is the midsommarstång: a tall pole, decorated with birch branches and wildflowers, erected in the middle of a meadow or village square.

Around it, people dance and sing, even the youngest ones. There are flower wreaths, herring, new potatoes with dill, and the season's first strawberries. And there is, above all, an evening that simply refuses to end.

But Midsommar isn't really about the herring or the dance. It's a collective bow to the light.

Those who know darkness understand light

Because here too, winter is long. December, dark by five o'clock. Mornings that remain grey and never quite clear up. That silent hunger for light, for a day that lasts longer, a morning that truly brightens, we know all too well.

And in the north, it's even stronger. There, the sun barely rises above the horizon for weeks in winter. The darkness is deeper, and it lasts longer. The further north you go, the more the light is missed, and the bigger the celebration when it finally returns.

Perhaps that's what connects us so much with the north: we feel a smaller version of that same longing. And so we understand, better than we sometimes admit to ourselves, why you don't just let the longest day of the year pass by. You don't have to hold on to the light. But when it's there, you pause to appreciate it. It's the same tranquility we talked about earlier, when we wrote about hygge and lagom: not more, but exactly enough.

The same light, here too

Because you don't have to fly to Sweden for that long light. On June 21st, the sun sets here around half past ten too, and then the sky glows for a long time afterward. We don't have a midsommarstång in the garden. But we do have that same evening.

For us, that evening often begins with a fika in the garden, around nine o'clock, when the day's hustle and bustle have settled. A table dragged outside. Candles we light, not because it's dark but because it's beautiful. Linen catching the last light. A few wildflowers in a glass, freshly picked or dried, it doesn't matter.

None of it is grand. And that's precisely the point.

Our long summer evenings

That feeling, the evening you don't conclude but let linger, is what we've built an entire corner of the store around this summer. We call it our long summer evenings. Not a package you absolutely need to make the evening beautiful. But a handful of things that help you pause and appreciate it.

And you? Do you celebrate the longest day in some way? With a table outside, a glass in the grass, or simply by staying up a little longer than usual? We'd love to hear about it. Feel free to email us, preferably with a photo of your own long evening.

Glad midsommar.

Julie & Kevin