The Seven Flowers of Midsummer Eve
Let me bring you to the 20th-something of June in Sweden. The trees are a delicate light green, the breath in your lungs fresh, the sun never setting, casting a beautiful orange light over the thousands of lakes sprinkled across our landscape. Now, flowers of all shades are coming into full bloom, perfectly on time for the wreaths we put in our hair. Have you seen our wreaths? The embodiment of summer, the sign that the longest day of the entire year is here. It’s Midsummer in Sweden, one of the most celebrated holidays. I think it might be the day we’re most connected to our natural surroundings. We eat the first strawberries and fresh potatoes of the season, gather flowers and greenery to construct flower crowns and Midsummer poles, and if the weather allows it, stay outside all day.
On the night of Midsummer Eve, an old tradition is being kept alive all across the country. As the longest day of the year, the air was believed to be filled with magic. It is said that you should venture out into the night and gather seven different flowers. If you put them underneath your pillow when you go to sleep, your dreams will reveal your future spouse. In Swedish folklore, the young woman would also jump seven wooden fences, gärdsgårdar, before going to sleep. I hope you’re picturing this: a suspenseful, young girl with her arms full of flowers, jumping fences in the lush, blooming countryside – the sun having yet to set completely. This is a story of us humans, the nature surrounding us, but more than anything, about not just us in nature, but us as nature.
There seems to exist a blatantly modern belief that us humans can be extracted from all other living things, as if we make up an inherently separate realm of Earth.
The impact that we have can be one of domination and destruction, one of desperate attempts to control an unpredicted, bustling ecosystem of life. But this is not an inherent trait in us, not at all.
In a time where our closest ecosystems provided us with everything necessary for life, we also provided other species with so many niches in the landscape. When we, for thousands of years, mowed our meadows only once annually, and stored the hay for our livestock to last the winter, we acted with nature, as nature. Our intertwinedness created a nutrient-poor soil where beautiful grassland specialist flowers could thrive, and insects and reptiles find refuge.
With care, we took some things with our scythe, and managed to give back even more. It is truly unique.
In a traditional Swedish hay meadow, one square meter of land could hold as many species as an equal plot of land in the rainforest, it is said. All this as a result of year by year transferring the cuttings off the land, consequently giving space for picky flowers that would struggle against generalist species in nutrient-rich soil. Humans have a capability not just to co-exist with other flora and fauna, but to breathe so much life into nature. With care and understanding, careful not to take more than we absolutely need, we are nature.
So the story of the seven flowers is also a story about us. It might be a reminder of our care, and of what beautiful things are given back to us when we care. Today, it is getting increasingly hard to gather seven species.
When we swap our care for greed or ignorance, we lose more than I think we might realise.
It is hard to recreate the biotopes lost when the traditional hay meadow went from one of the most prominent landscape features of Sweden, to a relic of the past. This is because we can’t control nature – we are part of it. Maybe it’s hard to go back to the agricultural systems of the past, before artificial fertilisers. But maybe the point isn’t to recreate, but to simply and humbly, care.
Tullerum, Sweden.
