Smoke signals: it's spring!

As I write this blog post after lunch smoke is drifting past my window obscuring the otherwise bright sunlight and messing up my newly cleaned windows!  Neighbors are presumably burning dead wood and other garden debris from last autumn and winter.

Instead of writing my blog post this morning I read "Norrköpings Tidningar" over coffee and breakfast.  We are lucky to have a really good local paper with interesting book reviews and op eds.

Then I went outside with a bucket of warm water and vinegar to clean the windows so the sun could really shine in. This was before the bonfires!

While I was out there I noticed how many dead leaves and other rubbish were lying around in what could once have been described as borders or flower beds.  I started clearing and found green shoots growing under all the debris. 

I saw the first lady bird of the season and soon a little yellow butterfly fluttered past.  I had made a conscious decision not to use my phone for anything other than taking photos or answering calls this morning.  I wanted to experience the day, or at least the morning, without social media.  That's one reason I decided to write my blog post later.  Since I write on the computer it's tempting to just check Facebook and emails at the same time.  Before you know it half an hour or more has slipped by.

Earlier, at about 6 a.m. when I went out with Monty, I picked some birch branches and hung them with bright feathers and little "påsk kärringar," Easter witches, that I had bought at Willy's, the supermarket. 

There are so many charming traditions throughout the Swedish year and one of my favorites is that of children dressing up as witches and running around riding their broomsticks!  This is not part of Easter in any other country that I know.  It was so much fun the one Easter I remember spending in Sweden as a child. My cousins Bodil, Malin and I (in those days it was only the girls who got to dress as påsk kärringar) searched my grandmother and aunts' wardrobes for old dresses and headscarves.  Then we made ourselves up to look really scary and tied the scarves round our heads and ran around the farm astride brooms screeching and whooping.  There's a wonderful faded old photograph of the three of us putting on our worst grimaces for the camera that I think is at my mother's house in Bushey.  I will look for it when I'm there at Easter.  This to me was so much more fun than all the sweet Easter bunnies and chicks.  I was a good and quiet child, so the opportunity to run amok was much appreciated!

While outside clearing the borders this morning my neighbors Marcus, Rocio and Joel came over for a chat and offered to help me cut the tops off the trees that are a bit like a hedge at the front of my house.  Marcus came over with his power saw, ladder and long extension cable and an hour or so later the garden was looking a lot more ready for spring.  I love being outside and feeling part of the rhythms of nature.  I would not like to live anywhere without a garden, fresh air, earth and water.  And fire.

Later this month, on the 30th, comes Valborgsmässoafton, St Walpurgis Night, with its giant bonfires to confirm that spring is really here.  It is celebrated in the Baltic States, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Slovakia, The Czech Republic and Germany.  It's based on the pre-Christian tradition of gathering on this festival day, midway between the Spring Equinox and Midsummer, or Summer Solstice. 

In the Celtic tradition this time of year was known as Beltane and became incorporated into the Christian church year, as with most pagan, or pre-Christian festivals. From the 8th century on it was called St Walpurgis Night, or Valborgsmässoafton, after the Christian Saint Walpurgis who was from Dorset, England, and is credited with converting the heathen Germans to Christianity and frightening away the witches who were said to gather on the night of 30th April to 1st May.  So the påsk kärringar are probably an old remnant of the pre-Christian festival called Beltane in western Europe and Valborgsmässoafton here in Sweden.  What all these signs and symbols mean is that it's Spring! A time to clean out the old, even burn it up and thereby convert it into smoke, also a sacred element, and offer it to the gods!