What it’s like to celebrate midsummer in Sweden

As my Swedish army bike rattles down the last hill, I place a hand on the basket to secure my Midsummer contributions: two king-size sausage rolls and a green bean and orange salad. The wide-open fields of southern Sweden’s fertile Söderslätt plain, yellow with rapeseed flowers, stretch out to my right, while to my left, the Baltic Sea has just slipped out of sight, having been there for most of my 20-minute ride from the station.

When I turn into the gravel drive, Malin and Christian’s century-old brick villa, Källbacken, meaning ‘hill with a spring’, is already clattering with preparations. Malin and her seven-year-old daughter Edith have been out picking the flowers and greenery that will decorate the midsommarstång, or maypole, which they’ve laid out neatly on a table. I place my sausage rolls alongside and am immediately marshalled into scrubbing potatoes.

For Malin and Christian, new potatoes, dug up only days before from the patch at the bottom of their garden, are central to the feast. “Unlike Easter and Christmas, you don’t normally have hot food at Midsummer: it’s about potatoes, and herring,” Malin says.

The preparations began months ago. “We actually start preparing for Midsummer in February,” she explains, describing the family’s annual trip to buy early-maturing Swift potatoes, which then stand, packed in egg cartons, in the barn for three months before being planted in early May. It feels a fitting ritual ahead of this festival, which originated back when Sweden was an agrarian society. Midsummer celebrations not only marked the longest day of the year but welcomed in a new season of fertility. Many Swedes still head to the countryside to celebrate.

Although this is my tenth Midsummer in Sweden, the celebrations I’ve been to have been low-key affairs eschewing tradition: a barbecue, games, but no maypole. Malin and Christian, however, go all in. As well as the potatoes, the couple provide home-grown chives, pickled herring, Christian’s home-brewed IPA, and a bottle or two of snaps or akvavit, the Swedish spirit used for toasts and to accompany singing.

This celebration is unusual, though, for the lack of heavy drinking – because there are many babies and small children present. Midsummer, more than Christmas or New Year’s Eve, is when Swedes really let loose, taking full advantage of daylight that lasts until close to midnight, and singing and dancing until sunrise.

In previous years, Malin made her own pickled herring, but this year there are five varieties supplied by Abba (the fish-canning giant, rather than the sequin-clad Seventies four-piece), and she’s also made gubbröra, meaning ‘old bloke’s mix’. It’s a salty spread combining chopped, soused and spiced sprats, hard-boiled eggs, mayonnaise and dill.  

As I’m scrubbing potatoes, more people start to arrive and, as with every Midsummer I’ve ever been to, it’s a mix of Swedes and internationals, the language bouncing between English and Swedish. By the time I come outside, the table is crammed with dishes. Magnus, a childhood friend of Christian’s, has brought a silltårta, a traditional cake made of herring and creme fraiche thickened with gelatine and served on a butter and breadcrumb base. Someone else has brought the obligatory västerbottenpaj, a quiche flavoured with a pungent hard cheese from the far north, and there’s another quiche with salmon and spinach. Then there are two enormous sourdough loaves, with dark, decorated crusts and some fröknäcke, a heavily seeded crispbread. The only classic dish missing is gravlax – salmon cured with salt, sugar and dill.

Once the potatoes are fully cleaned, Malin throws a handful of dill into the pan and begins the boiling. Swedes take potatoes seriously. All will own a potato-tester, a metal spike the thickness of a needle, with a blunt end and a plastic handle, which is pushed into potatoes to judge their firmness. 

My wife, I tell Malin as we chitchat, is adamant that you must leave part of the spuds poking above the water, cook them at no more than a simmer, and steam them dry in a pan afterwards. But Malin has no time for such fussiness. “I know people who, after half the boiling time, pour out some of the water and add new water, and things like that,” she says. “But I just boil them – not for too long, since they’re new potatoes – but I don’t understand why it should be so difficult.” Once done, the potatoes are placed in a bowl outside to be served with butter and chopped dill and chives, and sliced hard-boiled eggs laid alongside.

A Swedish Midsummer meal is often formal, with places neatly laid on a long table outside, folded napkins and garnished dishes. But this year, thanks to all the young guests, it’s a come-and-go affair, with guests sitting down with different neighbours every time they refill their plates. The conversation touches on the shortage of another Midsummer essential: strawberries, which a bad harvest has pushed above 80 kronor (£6) a litre, if you can get hold of any at all.

I pile three sorts of herring onto some crispbread, its saltiness setting off the sweet-and-sour bite of the pickle, and also indulge in some gubbröra, enjoying the cinnamon, allspice and sandalwood spicing of the sprats. The potatoes are firm, sweet and a little nutty, the perfect partner to the stronger flavours of the other dishes. I also take some västerbottenpaj, which is so rich with Västerbotten cheese — somewhere between a mature cheddar and a parmesan in strength — that I have to stop at a single helping. The silltårta, an old-fashioned addition even to this very traditional celebration, has a jelly-ish consistency that doesn’t quite appeal to me, but goes down well with the other guests.

After the meal is over, I join the children and some of the adults walking it off in the surrounding fields and picking flowers for the midsommarkransar, Midsummer crowns made of birch twigs woven together. When we return, we get to work erecting the maypole, about three metres tall, with a crossbar. While it’s commonly believed to be a pagan fertility symbol, representing male genitalia, experts insist each year in Swedish newspapers that there’s no evidence to back it up – but looking at it, I find it hard to see what else it might be. Soon, adults and children alike are holding hands, circling around the pole, pretending alternately to be a musician playing a violin, someone washing clothes, and, in the most raucous of the dances, jumping like a frog. 

The celebrations segue into a house party, and then, later in the evening, a barbecue. Christian pulls a pile of waste wood from the barn and lights a fire, which we sit around as the mothers and daughters go out once again to pick flowers. 

“You have to jump seven fences and pick one flower in each field, and you’re not allowed to speak to one another. You have to be quiet the whole time,” Malin explains of this last ritual. “And then you have this small bouquet; you put it underneath your pillow and you’re supposed to dream about who you’re going to marry.” This is one part of the celebrations I can’t partake in, but as I bed down on a mattress upstairs, I feel satisfied that I’ve truly welcomed the summer.

Midsummer feasts to visit

While most Swedes will celebrate Midsummer in friends’ country or island homes, there are organised celebrations for visitors. In 2025, Midsummer falls on 21 June.

Tällberg, Dalarna
Dalarna county is renowned for traditional Midsummers, with folk costumes, folk music and dancing. Åkerblads Hotel, in Tällberg on Lake Siljan, serves a traditional Midsummer smörgåsbord, with herring, new potatoes and västerbottenpaj, after which you can go into town and take part in the celebrations. Alternatively, at Våmhus Gammelgård, an old farm maintained by Sweden’s main conservation organisation, you’ll be served kolbulle, a thick pancake with diced, salted or smoked pork.  

Ringsjön, Skåne
Bosjökloster, a country house and former nunnery on the shores of Lake Ringsjön in Skåne, Sweden’s southernmost county, puts on a lavish Midsummer spread. Expect all the classics, plus specialities containing ingredients foraged in nearby forests, and plenty of vegan and vegetarian options. Once the buffet’s over, join the dancing around a maypole erected on lawns leading down to the lakeshore – one of the most popular celebrations in Skåne.

Småland
Getnö Gård, a resort on Lake Åsnan in Småland, offers a traditional Midsummer buffet – served, untraditionally, after the maypole dances – including a strawberry cake prepared to a recipe handed down by the owner’s grandmother. Most visitors stay over in the campsite or cabins.

Fjäderholm
In Stockholm, the archipelago is the place to celebrate, and Fjäderholm is the closest island, 30 minutes by ferry from the centre. Rökeriet Fjärderholmarna, a smokery, serves a traditional Midsummer buffet, with all the essentials and more. There’s also live music and dancing around the maypole on the island.

Väderö Storö
The Väderöarnasor ‘weather islands’, a 35-minute ferry ride from Fjällbacka on the west coast, are the most far-flung islands off the Bohuslan coast. Väderöarnas Värdshus restaurant on Väderö Storö, the biggest island, lays on a Midsummer buffet, picking guests up from nearby Hamburgsund.