Scenes from Midsommar | Maine’s Colorful Swedish Folk Festival

Every summer, a community founded by Swedish immigrants in remote northern Maine plays host to a colorful, one-of-a-kind cultural celebration.

By Heather Marcus

May 28 2019

Suvi Peterson outside the Lindsten Stuga, a log house typical of the early Maine Swedish colonists.

Photo Credit : Greta Rybus

Each summer, visitors from all over the world come to Aroostook County, a far-flung destination in northernmost Maine, to take part in a solstice celebration called Midsommar. The three-day festival is held in Stockholm and New Sweden, a pair of small villages in the heart of the Maine Swedish Colony. And as writer Katy Kelleher discovered when she recently took part in Midsommar, the event is steadfastly traditional. “The settlers came from Sweden in 1870, and we’ve never really changed how we celebrated,” organizer Brenda Näsberg Jepson told her. “To modern-day Swedes, our Midsommar seems quaint and old-fashioned.”

In reporting on her trip for Yankee, Kelleher said the event’s fidelity to its roots is exactly what makes it so special. “There is something transformative about [Midsommar] … Jepson says it’s like ‘walking into a time warp,’ and I’m inclined to agree.”

In providing the images for Kelleher’s words, Portland-based photographer Greta Rybus also had the chance to step back into the past. What she found was a feast for the eyes, from vibrant folk costumes to heaps of wildflowers to mouthwatering heritage foods and one magnificent maypole. Below, you’ll find some of our favorite outtakes from Rybus’s trip. To read the full story, see “Välkommen to Midsommar,” from the May/June 2019 issueof Yankee.

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Special thanks to University of Maine student Lukas Lagasse, one of the next generation of Midsommar organizers, whose help was invaluable in writing captions for Yankee’s story and for this post.

Scenes from Midsommar

Maine’s Colorful Summer Swedish Folk Festival

Decked out in traditional folk costumes, descendants of the Jepson, Lagasse, Peterson, and Söderberg families — all part of a wave of Swedish immigrants to Maine between 1870 and the early 1900s — gather wildflowers for Midsommar.
*Photo Credit : Greta Rybus*

Zivah, Ilsah, and Suvi Peterson. Zivah holds a bouquet of lupines, which grow profusely in Maine and Sweden and features prominently in the Midsommar celebration.
*Photo Credit : Greta Rybus*

Kristi Peterson with her daughter Ilsah. A local seamstress who has created many outfits for festival participants over the years, Kristi wears a dress whose form was inspired by the *folkdräkt* (folk costume) in Skåne, Sweden’s southernmost province, with colors reminiscent of Jämtland, a province in the north. Ilsah wears a dress reminiscent of the elaborately colored *folkdräkt* in the central province of Dalarna.
*Photo Credit : Greta Rybus*

Suvi Peterson uses a bit of elbow grease to pump water into a buckets of lupines. Behind her is the Lindsten Stuga, a log house typical of the early Maine Swedish colonists.
*Photo Credit : Greta Rybus*

The interior of the Lindsten Stuga, built in 1894 by Swedish colonists Karl and Kerstin Lindsten. It was gifted by their daughter, Annie, to the New Sweden Historical Society, which moved the structure to be adjacent to the society’s museum, and restored it. The *stuga* is filled with many of the Lindstens’ original furnishings.
*Photo Credit : Greta Rybus*

Audrey Wimmer of Stockholm, Maine, makes a flower wreath known as a *midsommarkrans*, which typically features tamarack, daisies, Queen Anne’s lace, buttercups, and lupines.
*Photo Credit : Greta Rybus*

Local potato farmer Sven Bondeson secures fresh flower and greens to the maypole. He hails from the part of New Sweden known as Lebanon (early settlers chose the name because of the mighty cedars that grew in that area), where he lives on a homestead gifted to his great-great-grandfather Johan Victor Johnson by the state nearly 150 years ago.
*Photo Credit : Greta Rybus*

Sven Bondeson, Glen Peterson, and Robert Barnet raise the maypole, or *majstång*, on the grounds of the New Sweden Historical Society.
*Photo Credit : Greta Rybus*

Traditionally, the maypole is cloaked in the greenery of tamarack and birch leaves and brightened with lupine blooms. The length of the Maine winter dictates what other flowers may appear: This year, vivid pink azaleas and lush white viburnum have been added; in other years, yellow lilies or pink peonies may show up.
*Photo Credit : Greta Rybus*

Rachael King, Rachel Ring, and Bill Duncan are among the talented local musicians who fill the air with the often invigorating, sometimes mournful Swedish tunes that are integral to the Midsommar festivities.
*Photo Credit : Greta Rybus*

Children in their folk costumes gather around the maypole to perform the traditional Swedish *ringlekar* (ring games and songs).
*Photo Credit : Greta Rybus*

A descendant of Måns Jeppson, who immigrated from Skåne in 1871, Britta Treu of Ohio attends Midsommar each year. Members of her family still live on the tract of land in the northern Maine woods that they acquired more than a century ago.
*Photo Credit : Greta Rybus*

Don’t Miss Midsommar!

New Sweden’s Midsommar will be held June 21–23, 2019
Learn more at facebook.com/newswedenhistoricalsociety

Heather Marcus

Heather Marcus is the senior photo editor for Yankee Magazine. She works closely with the art director and a large group of contributing photographers to tell our stories about people and place in a compelling way. Living and growing up in New England, she continues to be inspired by the communities, the landscape, and the wonderful visual opportunities the region affords.

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