Midsummer in New Sweden

Midsummer Day, Caribou, Maine, in the far northeastern corner of the United States, three hours’ drive north of Bangor, seven hours north of Boston. Here mile-wide potato fields lie framed by birch and spruce. Here are blooming lupines, buttercups and daisies. 

We turn in to Burger King. Anna recognizes the building, similar in every town from coast to coast, and hollers “Fries, Pappa, fries”. Erik chimes in “Dajs, dajs”. The power steering creaks a bit as we back the station wagon into a parking space. Sunshine and ninety-six degrees Fahrenheit slam against us as we step out from the protection of air conditioning and tinted windows. Summer came late this year, but now it’s here, there is no question about that. Anna’s folk costume is rumpled in the rear, her socks have collapsed around her ankles and we just don’t have the heart to put the bonnet on her in this heat.

Inside Burger king it is cool. Over the speaker system James Taylor sings “That’s why I’m here”. On the wall is a large Carl Larsson mural. It would seem odd and out of place in our area, but Caribou is on the threshold of Swedish country. Here, we and many other more or less Swedish people have traveled to celebrate Midsummer.

Eight miles north of Caribou is New Sweden, founded in 1870 by former ambassador WW Thomas. He recruited Swedish peasant families on behalf of the Maine Governor. A special commission had decided that the best way to restart agricultural production in northern Maine was to transplant an entire colony of Swedes. So it come to be, that 51 men, women and children celebrated midsummer together in Gothenburg June 23, 1870 and at noon the following day sailed off with the steamboat Orlando toward Maine. They had been recruited through lectures and advertisements that promised one hundred acres per family of one of America’s richest areas with comfortable, Swedish climate. 233 years earlier, the “Keys of Kalmar” had sailed from Gothenburg to New Sweden in Delaware; perhaps it was in memory of this journey Ambassador Thomas’ English colony in Maine also took the name New Sweden.

The first group arrived on Saturday July 23. A week later came first addition to the little colony: Anders Westergren, who read about New Sweden in the newspapers in Bangor, and immediately decided to move there. Before the end of the year the population reached 114, and at the tenth anniversary in 1880 there were 517 souls. Our car atlas pegs the population at 738.

Erik seems full. He starts to smear and throw food around. Anna sits there in her yellow folk costume with a blue cardboard crown with Burger king insignia, flirting with all passers-by. My wife inspects the ladies’ room for diaper changing opportunities, but it is the same bathroom as in Bangor and Boston and Albuquerque – no diaper changing table, only ceramic tiles on the floor and a hot air blower instead of paper towels. We change diapers in the car, followed by playtime in the swings and slide behind the restaurant before we buckle the children into the backseat and drive to New Sweden.

We were there yesterday afternoon and decorated the Maypole behind New Sweden Historical Museum, under Swedish and American flags. Anna had picked flowers in advance. At first she wouldn’t give them up, but the attention of tourists and old Swedes got her to focus on cameras and compliments over the travel worn daisies. We saw an occasional American we had met three years and two children earlier, when we happened to come here on the “wrong” weekend, and decided to return for Midsummer. There are a handful of native Swedes here, and also some Americans, who have lived in Sweden. The biggest discovery during our first, childless visit in New Sweden was the pastor of the Gustaf Adolph Lutheran Church, Hans Andrae, from my childhood Norrköping. He and I figured out he must have been one of the scoutmasters at my first jamboree.

While waiting for today’s Midsummer dance exhibition and public dancing, with the vain hope to get the children to take a nap, we go for drive. We pass roads to Sweden and Westmanland. In Jemtland, on the way to Stockholm, we pass Everett Larsson’s store. When Coca Cola offered him a free neon sign with the Coca-Cola symbol in the corner, they Americanized away one of the s-es in Larsson. He didn’t bother to complain.

We turn right towards Stockholm. The landscape is tall here. The birch trees are short. Names on mailboxes we pass give a Swedish sense: Andersson, Hede, Quist, Jepson, and so on. Many houses display both American and Swedish flags on this day. We arrive somewhat surprised in downtown Stockholm, which only consists of half a dozen houses. We take a picture of the post office through the car window.

The Midsummer celebration culminates in Thomas Park. Everyone sings the American national anthem and some of us follow with “You old, you free”. The folk dance group “The Little Folks” marches in with the maypole and a new blue and yellow flag, donated by The Swedish Flag Society in Gothenburg. Camera shutters click and smatter as costumed kids get up on stage and start dancing “Upon cellar hill”. Monica Söderberg from Stockholm founded this children’s group for the New Sweden Centennial. She runs a “Scandinavian Gift Shop” in Caribou. The group’s current leader is American. Now and then it shows, when the children mispronounce an occasional word as they sing.

Anna stands up in her seat, clapping her hands, swaying with her hips. Erik wiggles impatiently and starts screaming. I have to go for a stroll with him. Then it is Anna’s turn to move a little more. I let her swing at the nearby playground for a little while. Eventually the public dancing starts between the rows of benches in the outdoor arena, after the adult dance exhibit and some Irish or Scottish folk songs, how they now ended up in the Swedish Midsummer program. This ends the celebration. We exchange addresses with newfound Swedish friends from different parts of Maine and promise to come back again next year. Anna and Erik dance and jump on the stage. They protest when we say that it is time to go home. Anna says she wants to go back to the motel room instead.

Within ten minutes both are asleep in the back seat. The road south runs almost straight. We leave New Sweden and some of our Swedish emotional baggage. I reflect on how rarely we celebrated Midsummer correctly when we lived in Sweden. Now we drive two hundred miles to see a Maypole. The car stereo plays James Taylor again, but inside my head I hear fiddle music. 

(June 1986)