Little Sweden USA

A blog about Lindsborg

I had the very special pleasure to attend my first Midsummer’s Day festival in Lindsborg yesterday. It was a beautiful day, sunny but not too hot and the north(Swensson) park in Lindsborg was filled with people enjoying the day. There was a wide variety of good food available, and many local artists and crafts-people were on hand sharing the products of their creativity.

Sheryl and I had a lot of fun. We were a little busy at first, tending to our Midsummer’s Day committee responsibilities*, but for the most part we got to simply enjoy the day. For me, the were two highlights that stand out. They both speak to the timelessness nature of festivals and celebrations such as Lindsborg’s Midsummer’s Day.

In the mid-afternoon, watching the youthful Swedish dancers dancing to Swedish songs peformed by their classmates and leaders, I was struck by the thought that a very similar scene was likely played out a couple of hundred years ago, in Sweden, by the distant relatives of those I was watching perform. Timeless.

Later in the day, at Heritage Park (near the Smoky Hill River), came the traditional raising of the maypole. This was followed by more Swedish dancing, including one number that involved almost 1/3 of the audience. Charlotte Anderson, the dance director, did a wonderful job with this dance, especially considering how many of the audience had never done anything like it before. It was something to see!

I took around 280 photos yesterday and pulled out 39 I felt were worth sharing on Flickr; they are located at my Midsummer’s Day photo set; they’re also available as a Midsummer’s slide show. From that set I have posted 9 here**.

Midsummer's Day

Swedish dancers

Swedish dancers Swedish dancers

raising the maypole the maypole

procession of musicians

dancing around the maypole

the timeless maypole

Simu-posted at All the Pages and Little Sweden, USA.

* Sheryl is on the Midsummer’s program committee and I did publicity. That included working with local radio personality James Keith; he did 5 “live remotes” from the park, and I was the opening and closing guest.

** A note about my use of Flickr. I’m once again hosting my own images on this blog, and providing links to more images on Flickr. I’m in no way dissatisfied with Flickr; it’s just that I wanted this site to by augmented by Flickr, but to not depend on them for something as fundamental as the photos I’m blogging. Also, and this is secondary to simply wanting to host my own blog images, none of the available Flickr sizes quite worked for me. They were either too small or too large. Hosting my own images also means setting my own image size. I like using flickr for previously stated reasons: sharing with a larger audience, ability to view images in different sizes, and so on.

Lindsborg’s Midsummer’s Day Festival, a traditional Swedish festival celebrated worldwide, returns to Lindsborg: Little Sweden USA, the weekend of June 18th. This festival, held to celebrate the beginning of summer, is one of the most popular of all Swedish celebrations, and Lindsborg is proud to host this fun-filled family oriented Swedish-American festival. Now in its 34th year, Lindsborg’s 2005 Midsummer’s Day promises to be a fun-filled day for everyone in the family!

More information about Midsummer’s is available at the Lindsborg Chamber of Commerce site, including the schedule of events and the list of arts and crafts vendors.

Lindsborg is located in McPherson county, and Progressive Farmer magazine has just declared the county to be one of the best places to live in rural America. Ranked number three overall, McPherson takes the top spot for the Midwest region.

Their top 10 list includes links to information about each of the leading locations, including an overview article, stats, and a photo show. The photo show is not bad, (perhaps I’m biased) but would be better if Lakeside Park in McPherson wasn’t listed as being in Lindsborg.