Easter

Easter in Sweden

by Po Tidholm

Sweden is a large country with a lengthy coastline, as the tourist brochures keep telling us. So when the big seasonal holidays come round, Swedes embark on long journeys to visit friends and relatives.

Celebrations in the countryside
Although contemporary Swedes are an urban people, most of whom live in cities or large towns, the vast majority still have one foot in the countryside. If they don’t have any family left in rural parts, they often possess a holiday cottage there.

An agrarian strain runs through Sweden’s self-image: this is a nation of strong, sinewy peasants, raised on meat and turnips. Most people are agreed that festive occasions in Sweden should be celebrated in the countryside. Easter is no exception.

Easter witches roaming the neighbourhood.
Easter colours liven things up as winter recedes.
Photo: Ulf Lundin/imagebank.sweden.se

Easter is the first extended weekend of the spring, and for many this means the first trip out to their holiday cottage, which has been locked and deserted all winter. There are window shutters to be opened and stuffy rooms to be aired. The woodstoves are lit, and the smoke fills the kitchen, naturally.

Coughing and spluttering, you flee out to the yard, where the wagtails — if you live in southern Sweden, that is — have just begun their mating ritual and the last of the snowdrifts are melting in the pale spring sunshine. In the north, Easter is more of a skiing holiday.

Once the cottage has been cleaned, swept and warmed up, Easter can begin. The members of the family arrive from near and far. At Easter, the aim is to gather as many relatives together as possible.

Secular holiday
While in other countries Easter is specifically a religious holiday, it has become a secular one in Sweden. The Swedes are well down in the statistics when it comes to church visits per year, and even if Easter swells the numbers slightly, most people celebrate it at home with their families and relatives.

Many of the practices associated with Easter have religious origins, but this is not something that bothers Swedes much. They eat eggs because they have always done so — not because they have just completed a fast.

Nowadays, eggs are a favourite accompaniment to the dish of pickled herring that is the centrepiece of most Swedes’ Easter meals. And few associate the omnipresent birch twigs — nowadays decorated with brightly coloured feathers — with the suffering of Christ. Easter has its own rituals.

Decorated birch twigs are a common sight in Swedish homes during Easter. Photo: Lola Akinmade Åkerström/imagebank.sweden.se

From sweets to salmon
Children dress up as Easter witches; clad in discarded clothes, gaily coloured headscarves and red-painted cheeks, they go from house to house in the neighbourhood and present the occupants with paintings and drawings in the hope of getting sweets in return.

Having consumed all these sweets, they are then given Easter eggs filled with yet more. Parents of a more ambitious turn of mind let the children search for the eggs themselves in a treasure hunt — following clues and solving riddles until they find their prizes.

A traditional Easter lunch is likely to consist of different varieties of pickled herring, cured salmon and Jansson’s Temptation (potato, onion and pickled sprats baked in cream). The table is often laid like a traditional smörgåsbord. Spiced schnapps is also a feature of the Easter table. At dinner, people eat roast lamb with potatoes au gratin and asparagus or some other suitable side dish.

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Po Tidholm is a freelance journalist and a critic with the Stockholm daily, Dagens Nyheter. Po Tidholm wrote the main sections about how we celebrate in Sweden today.

Agneta Lilja is a lecturer in ethnology at Södertörn University College, Stockholm. Agneta Lilja wrote the sections about the history of Swedish traditions and festivities.

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The authors alone are responsible for the opinions expressed on this web page.

Translation: Stephen Croall/Lingon

© Photos:
Photo 1: Rossi Rosster/Scanpix
Photo 2: Beppe Arvidsson/Bildhuset

Copyright: 2004 Agneta Lilja, Po Tidholm and the Swedish Institute. This text is published by the Swedish Institute on www.sweden.se.

by Agneta Lilja, Södertörn University College

In Sweden, the Easter celebrations used to begin with the three days of Shrovetide, full of carnivals, games and revelry. One of the more popular activities was to playfully thrash each other with birch twigs on Shrove Tuesday. Another Shrovetide practice was to toboggan down steep slopes so that the flax would grow tall. People were also supposed to mark Shrove Tuesday by eating seven hearty meals. A 40-day fast then followed, with its own rules concerning food, such as a ban on eating meat or eggs.

Easter, the most important Christian festival of all, commemorates the resurrection of Christ. It begins on Palm Sunday in celebration of his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. In olden time the red-letter days in Holy Week before Easter were governed by church decree. On Maundy Thursday, you were not allowed to spin or chop wood, as this might intensify Christ’s suffering. Also on that day, witches flew off to consort with the Devil at Mount Blåkulla, and people used to protect themselves by painting crosses on their front doors and hiding broomsticks and rakes so that the witches could not fly on them. Good Friday was spent in quiet contemplation. People dressed in black and ate salty food without anything to drink. Young people thrashed each other with birch twigs. The whole week was designed to recall Christ’s suffering and death on the cross.

On Easter Saturday, the celebrations turned joyful, and people began eating eggs again. Eggs were sometimes painted in different colours, probably because they were often given away as presents. In the 19th century, Swedes began filling paper eggs with sweets. In western Sweden, the practice was to light bonfires, fire shotguns and shout to scare away witches. People sent one another anonymous Easter letters with their own designs. The custom of bringing birch twigs into the house and decorating them with coloured feathers dates back to the 1880s. In southern Sweden, egg games, such as egg-bashing, have long been popular. Trick-or-treat became an Eastertime tradition in the 19th century, originally practised by adults in masks and costumes, but later by young girls.

SWEDEN.SE - the official gateway to Sweden

SWEDEN.SE - the official gateway to Sweden

Easter in Sweden

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