スウィデシュ移民（スウェーデン）のお祭り •Sweden's Midsummer Festival

６月２５日はスウィデシュ移民（スウェーデン）のお祭りが、マンハッタン最南端バッテリパークの右隣（西側）Robert F Wagner Jr Parkにて行われました。

全てのスウィデシュがそうではありませんが、本物の青い目に金髪女性と言えばここの民族ですね。主にスウェー デン、デンマーク、ノルウェーイが、あのバイキングを祖先に持ちますが、私の様なロン毛の男性は見ませんでした。（笑）

嬉しい事に今様な バンドではなく古典的な音楽とフォークダンスに風習（髪飾り）とピクニックをしながら皆さんで楽しまれていました。他所のお祭りではお酒が入り奇声を張り 上げてる民族もよく見ますが、スウィデシュはとても社交的でフレンドリーな大人しいユニークな民族なんだなぁと思いました。

アイビーの十 字架にひまわりの花輪が二つ並んでいましたが、スウィデシュ　コミュ二ティー会長さんの笑いながらのご説明によると、元々は男性のシンボルを表わしたモノ で、キリスト教が来て十字架の花輪を取り除いてしまったと...



スウィデシュ料理と言えば、生サーモンにミートボールですね、飲み物は Lingonberryソーダーでさっぱりした美味しさでした。

帰りはテクテクとハドソン沿いの公園（完成時は５９丁目まで続く）を歩き ました。

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Sweden is known as the "Land of the Midnight Sun", so it stands to reason that Swedes would hold a festival at the Summer Solstice when the warming sun shines brightest on that snowy northern country.
We found out about the Midsummer Festival a little too late to add it to our Fun Things to Do pages; sorry about that, we'll be sure to add it to our Manhattan Page next year in plenty of time.

So at the last minute we headed down to Wagner Park (20 Battery Place, on the Hudson River)  to see what was happening.

The festival took place from 5pm to 8pm and we arrived at the park a little after 5pm; what a pretty story-book scene!
Many of the girls were dressed in flowing white sleeveless dresses with garlands of real wildflowers and ivy around their heads, looking like visiting Norse goddesses of summer.  Many of the men were wearing garlands, too, and looked equally good. (See photo at left)

Festival participants were busily making wildflower garlands at a few tables and we stopped to watch them for a while, then moved on to watch the dancing. The dances were pretty but not too unusual from my point of view; they were something like the American folk dances we learned in school (I'm sure the roots must be the same), but seeing them done in costume by happy healthy-looking people in a beautiful setting was quite charming. The older men seemed to love dancing the most.

The Food
We had been watching the l-o-o-n-g food line the whole evening, hoping that it would get shorter but finally decided to give up and get on line. The food tents had been set up by well-known and popular Swedish restaurants here, but as usual, we didn't have much cash, so we shared a fixed price entree - Swedish meatballs with potatoes and lingonberry sauce, along with a big but light-as-air waffle with sweet cream sauce, and a big glass of lingonberry soda. It was enough for both of us. The other choice was Swedish-style preserved salmon which looked great, too, but we had to save our pennies, and didn't want to feel "stuffed", so a shared entree was enough.

If you never tried lingonberries, if you have a chance, by all means taste some! The flavor is something like cranberries but without the tartness. The "soda" was much better than I expected; it was actually sweet lingonberry sauce mixed with carbonated water - I don't normally like soda, but this "soda" was very good!

After the festival ended, we walked along the river at twilight for part of the way home. The Hudson River is very close to becoming one very long park from the Battery all the way up to the end of Manhattan island, and from what we've seen of it so far, it's very beautiful.

And for the curious-minded, here is some more info about Sweden from Wikipedia. For more pics see our slide show below:

日本語/明　English: Liz