Mid Summer in Sweden

Last weekend I attended a gathering in honour of mid-summer in Sweden. It was arranged by the IAESTE (exchange organization) in Sweden. Apparently, after Christmas, Mid Summer is the next biggest holiday in Sweden for family gatherings and meals.

There were 20 students from Copenhagen that attended. Since it was held on a relatively remote island (Bohus Malmön) about 1.5 hours drive north of Göthenborg we drove there. As you can see below, the 4 cars we took weren’t very big for 20 people.


In total there were 60 participants. I can’t remember where everyone was from, but I do know there were people from Ecuador, Greece, Malta, Sweden, Switzerland, Croatia, Finland, Canada, Kakistan, Czech Republic, and Norway. There was an amazing atmosphere all weekend. Everyone was very keen to know where everyone else was from and find out about life in other parts of the world.

I was amazed by how being just a little bit more north makes such a difference to the amount of light. The photo below was taken at 2:35am and I am really not sure whether it is the sunset or sunrise. It never really got fully dark. It was just slightly darker than dusk.

On Saturday we spent quite a bit of time exploring the island. It has some beautiful beaches and lovely rock hills. (While the hills are the highest point of land I have seen since arriving, they sure didn’t qualify as mountains as many people were describing them as.) The weather was beautiful and sunny, but extremely windy.

On Saturday night we went and actually watched the sunrise. It was very beautiful.