24 June, 2005 - 10:00 by Blog - Henriette

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Fun

Finnish midsummer night traditions.

Who'd have believed it? It's already midsummer! It seems like it was -20 C and 50 cm snow only a minute ago. Or well, a week. A month, at most. And here I have just bought netting for the windows to keep the wasps out ...

... anyway, here's a few midsummer night traditions.

  • If you roll around, naked, on a dewy meadow, you'll have luck in marriage.
  • If you collect 7 different flowers on midsummer night's eve and keep them under your pillow you'll dream of your future husband.
  • Heh. In one village all the girls of marriable age went out to roll naked in the rye fields next to the place where boys of marriable age lived, so the boys would see them.
    Now, that's what I call practical thinking.
  • First, take a sauna. Then run naked through the ditches of the rye fields: you'll meet your future husband at the ninth ditch.
  • Walk around a three-cornered field three times, naked, on midsummer night. On the third round you'll meet your future husband.

    • Then there's all the traditions with a big midsummer fire: in Finland this goes back hundreds of years, to one of the old gods, Ukko. If it's calm enough we'll have a midsummer fire, too, but it'll be much too large to jump over it.

    Because traditions are cool I've done the 7 flowers thing almost every year. If I've dreamt of anybody I've managed to forget all about it before morning, though, every time.