Trevlig midsommar!

[liv]

Sweden has a holiday the weekend nearest to the summer solstice. People generally spend this holiday going out into the country and staying up all night drinking and eating pickled herring with new potatoes. I had no desire to do this and also didn't have the appropriate contacts to do so.

So I went to a misummer fête thing in Hågelby park. This allowed me to observe the other midsummer tradition, which is dancing round a sort of weird cross thing with two circles hanging from its arms [picture, so you can see what on earth I'm on about]. There were lots of people in traditional dress, and you could tell they were real costuming geeks, not like the half-hearted efforts that Stockholm city put on for 6 June. And the musicians had some fun-looking period instruments, even if they were using them to play what sounded almost exactly like Here we go round the mulberry bush, complete with the mimes for all the different domestic chores.

Hågelby is a pretty park in general with views over a lake and a well thought out rock garden and a little collection of farm animals for the edification of urban children. Cutest little piggy ever! There was also a guy running around in a bunny suit, pulling a magician out of a hat, which I thought was cute in a kitschy way. So it was a fun afternoon in all but nothing terribly world-shaking.

Yes, there is a lot of daylight at the moment; it basically hasn't been truly dark at all this week, though at this lattitude there is still a definite period of night between about midnight and 3 am. The thing is that daylight at 10:30 pm doesn't really look any different from daylight at 10:30 am, and dusk-merging-into-dawn at 1 in the morning doesn't look different from dusk at more normal times. So there's not really anything to see worth staying up for.

Comments

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

I've been meaning to ask you: what time is Shabbos going out atm? I'd guess some time between midnight and 12:30...?

[liv]

Not quite so bad; this weekend, which was the latest havdalah in the year, was 11:49 pm. But I've been awake at midnight and it really isn't dark at that time, so I'm not quite sure how they figure it out. Maybe it's just a nominal hour after sunset?

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

It's not to do with darkness; it's to do with the sun being a certain number of degrees below the horizon; ideally this should coincide with there being three stars visible. In low latitudes the sun is heading rapidly further down below the horizon at the time, so it soon gets more dark; in Stockholm, by contrast the sun is travelling almost horizontally, so it doesn't continue to get darker; and the upper atmosphere is still lit up by it (because the sun hasn't set up there), so it remains partly light.

You shouldn't need to start using arbitrary times until you've crossed the Arctic Circle (and you know what R. Feinstein's comment was about living there).

Also, do not forget that local midnight is not 12:00 according to Central European Time; where you are, it's going to be getting on for one o'clock in the morning.

[liv]

Thank you, I really like the way you know these things and take the trouble to explain them. Like that thing about where the sun apparently sets you explained recently. I appreciate.