A Midsummers night with Camels

I was invited by a couple of friends to celebrate Midsummers eve at their summer house on the northern part of my Island, Öland. 
Midsummer is traditionally always celebrated outdoors and every Swede is hoping for the best, weatherwise. If there are children present, there are usually games and dancing around the Midsummer pole, or Maypole, a flowered and leafed pole, often in the shape of a cross. It's of pagan remains with a background from several countries.

There were no children present at our celebration so we went directly for the food and drink. The first extra shows the table with Pickled herring, cheese, bread, new potatoes and some kind of white yoghurt based sauce. The drink is mainly beer or white or rosé wine.There's also small quantities of white spirits "Snaps", often with a multitude of spices added. The quantity of a snaps is rather small but the glass is raised often, sometimes a song is sung while drinking. This part can easily go completely out of hand and a lot of Midsummer celebrations end with some of the guests having drunk far too much. Not so at our party though.

After the meal  we went for a walk around their large garden. Their daughter, not present, makes sculptures and one of them was placed in the high grass. Her mother also makes sculptures, mostly miniatures that you can find all over the garden, see second and third extra.

Us three men took a cycle trip to look at the camels nearby. May years ago one of the farmers nearby imported Camels, Llamas and Alpacas because he liked the animals and because he thought they would like the climate here, which they did. And since a few years they are a big tourist attraction and riding them out on the plain 'Alvaret' is very popular. They graze freely in fields covering large areas but we soon found them and gave them some grass so they would stay a while for blips.

The evening continued with some grilled meat and potato salad, coffee, cake, a lot of laughter and talking and ending with some music, I had brought my guitar and together we sang songs that everyone could join into. The evening ended at 12 at night when a slight drizzle started, so we went to bed after a very nice day.