Valborgsmässoafton

May Day (the 1st of May) is a pretty big holiday here in Europe, and associated with it in some countries is Walpurgis Night, which occurs on the last of April. In Sweden, it is known as Valborgsmässoafton and is mainly celebrated by University students, and the largest traditions are at the 2 largest universities in Sweden: Lund and Uppsala. Blake celebrated Valborgsdag last year in Lund, and so this year, since we live quite close to Uppsala, and since one of my good friends, Ida, happens to be a student at Uppsala, we made plans to go celebrate a traditional Valborgsmässoafton there. During the day people gather in parks, drink alcoholic beverages, grill and generally enjoy the weather (which luckily for us, turned out to be a great day).

If you are a student, then the day traditionally starts off with a healthy breakfast of champagne and strawberries. Well, I'm not a student, and as much as I hate to admit it- I'm not as young as I used to be, so we started our day off with an awesome pancake breakfast (made by Ida, who may be the only Swede who truely knows how to make a pancake) and a small glass of champagne. After that we walked to the river and tried to find a spot for the boat race. By 10 am, most of the students were quite drunk, and there were masses of people crowded along the river to see the boats.

In Uppsala different student groups go rafting in on home-made and often humorously decorated rafts, such as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme above. Some of them were pretty funny. You can click here to see all the pics I took of the random boats and of the whole day. We sat just above the first mini-waterfall, so we got to see most of them before they were destroyed. You can see one of the boats about to go over the fall:


The crowd is pretty funny- the students sometimes throw stuff at the boats, and they only cheer when the boats crash at the bottom of the falls. Here is a video I took of one of the unsuccessfull boats. Look at the divers who jump in at the end to help them out:

It was too crowded to find a place where we could see the falls, so here is a youtube video from someone who got there much much earlier to claim a spot than we did:

After the race, around noon, everyone walks up to this huge castle and has a picnic of pickled herring and more champagne on the lawn. Yummy. (No really though, turns out I like pickled herring!)

If you are a student and wasted by this point, you run to a Nation (which is sort of like a frat, but co-ed and anyone can join), where they have "Champagne Races" where students go to drink and spray champagne on each other. We decided to stay in the sun and drink our champagne and beer and relax instead. And I am not complaining.

At 3, an enormous crowd gathers near the castle to wave their summer caps (they look like sailor hats) around. Ida and I walked over there to check it out:


That was the end of the festivities that we took part in for the day. After that we just enjoyed the sun, hung out with friends, played some (american) football, and watched all the craziness around us. Like for instance, how clothing became optional:

Some people didnt quite make it through the day, like my co-workers Tony's friend:

Later that evening, some left-over pagan rituals took place all over Sweden, like for instance, having huge bonfires, but we all headed back to Stockholm for some dinner and some sleep after a long, hard day of drinking and picnicing in the sun. :)