Changes Coming for Midsummer's Day 2008
Lindsborg Kansas will once again host its annual Midsummer's Festival the weekend of June 21st, 2008. Festival organizers this year are planning dramatic changes to underscore the community's Swedish heritage and, at the same time, offer visitors the experience of stepping into it.
In early February, Lindsborg News-Record publisher John Marshall conducted an interview with Midsummer's Festival co-chairs, Becky Anderson and Susan Achenbach. They discussed the changes planned for this year's festival; we hope this information helps make you more excited about attending this year's festival.
Full festival information, including schedules and pricing, will be posted here in the next few weeks.
Changes Coming for Midsummer's Day 2008
Midsummers Day returns to Lindsborg, "Little Sweden USA," on June 21 with new events and activities to embrace the community's Swedish heritage and to involve guests and participants more intimately in the celebration.
The festival (Midsommardag) celebrates the beginning of summer and is one of the most popular of all Swedish celebrations. This year, Lindsborg will host this family-oriented, Swedish-American festival for the 37th consecutive year.
Festival organizers this year are planning dramatic changes to underscore the community's Swedish heritage and, at the same time, offer visitors the experience of stepping into it.
"We felt that the event, over the years, had sort of lost a lot of its original intent, which was a celebration that focused on Swedish heritage and invited people to be an intimate part of that," said Becky Anderson a co-chairman, with Susan Achenbach, of this year's Midsummers.
"We have had meetings with others who have long experience with Lindsborg's Midsummers, and who also had been to Midsummers festivals in Sweden," Anderson said. "It seems that our Midsummers had become very performance-driven, with visitors and guests outside looking in. But in Sweden, people are able to participate, take part in so many ways, much like, say, our Fourth of July." "When people go somewhere, they want to experience, not just observe," Anderson said.
A Swedish village is planned for this year's Midsummers, and in it will be, among many features, the shops of artisans, the homes of settlers, the studios of artists and craftsmen, the den of a story teller, the kitchen of a homemaker. Perhaps, even, a food market. (Potato sausage, made with an original iron stuffer, is one example.)
We'd like to creat a charming, engaging space that invites people to 'come in.'"
"One of the great features of Midsummers is the blomkrans," Achenbach said, an activfity in which young, old and in-between can make their own decorative head wreaths, or blomkrans, at a long table stocked with fresh cut flowers, and with assistants ready to help.
"Wouldn't it be great if people could, for example, paint their own Dala horses? Or make an item - participate in an experience and have something to take away with them?" Achenbach said. "It would be so absolutely Swedish."
Visitors would be able to absorb as well as observe. For example, Midsumnmers planners also envision a kind of parlour with the Svenska Vänskaps Gruppen (Swedish Friendship Group), in which the casual visitor may hear people speaking in Swedish, or in English, explaining the traditions and customs handed down over generations - or they may help visitors learn Swedish phrases, or the meaning of certain customs or folklore that have never been fully explained.
"A visitor might come into this 'home,' or 'parlour,' and sit down with them and say, 'My grandmother used to have this custom ...' or 'My grandfather used to have this gadget...' and ask, what was it? Or they might just want to learn how to say 'Happy birthday' in Swedish," Anderson said. "In this village, we'd like to have lots of parts of life that you would find in a Swedish town."
"We hope that Midsummers is not so much about climbing on bleachers and watching, as it is about people walking around and doing, taking part, and we hope people from Lindsborg will participate, help us with these new features," Anderson said. There is a Swedish game, she said, called "Kubb," similar to lawn bowling. "Wouldn't it be fun to have the first annual Kubb tournament, showing people how to play it, and then go with a tournament?
There will be music as ever, and dancing, with the youthful Lindsborg Swedish Folkdancers and their elder counterparts, the Lindsborg Folkdanslag, each celebrated locally and nationally for their talent and jubilance. The festival will feature a children's area with crafts, games, and story-telling. Throughout the day Lindsborg, its people and many of its visitors will be in Swedish costume, adding to the flavor of Midsommardag.
The celebration will continue later in the day downtown, and ultimately to the Old Mill Museum and its Swedish Pavilion and Heritage Complex for the traditional raising of the maypole and more Swedish dancing.
Midsummers, said Anderson and Achenbach, is not simply about Lindsborg, but it is also about visitors having an enjoyable day and taking away a good experience. "The educational experience of this is important," Anderson said. "It's about a wonderful, rich heritage passed down to the generations, and along to visitors as well, so that others can take it away, too."
