Easter
When do people dress upp as ‘Påskkärringar’ in Sweden? Is Maundy Thursday a public holiday? The celebration of festivals and folk traditions among the people of the Nordic societies is one of Nordiska museet’s areas of expertise. Here you can find out more about Easter celebrations based on the museum’s collections and expertise.
The days of Easter and Holy Week
The week before Easter is known as Holy Week and begins with Palm Sunday. The Easter weekend consists of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Eve, Easter Sunday and Easter Monday. Easter is linked to Shrove Tuesday and Lent.
Good Friday marks the death of Jesus and was traditionally observed as a day of mourning, when unnecessary work and public gatherings were forbidden. Easter begins at midnight on Easter Eve through Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday, making Easter Sunday the greatest feast in the church year. In Sweden, however, people traditionally begin celebrating on Easter Eve, just as they celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve.
Why is it called ‘påsk’ in Swedish?
The word påsk comes from the Hebrew word ‘pesah’ for passover and the Medieval Latin ‘pascha’. The English word ‘Easter’ comes from ‘Eostre’, an old Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring and dawn. Only English and German-speaking countries use this name, while most other languages base their word for the holiday on the Hebrew word.
Easter food and eggs
Eggs have long been one of the most important symbols of Easter. During the Catholic era in the Nordic countries, it was forbidden to eat eggs during Lent, making them a special treat at Easter. They also symbolised the Resurrection of Jesus, while the arrival of spring meant hens began laying eggs again after the winter.
Decorating eggs has been an Easter tradition for centuries. Eggs were once coloured with plants while being boiled and were often given as gifts, sometimes to servants or as a tithe to the priest. Today, the tradition continues as people paint eggs and exchange cardboard Easter eggs filled with sweets.
Many people in Sweden eat similar foods at Easter as they do at Christmas, including herring, salmon, beer and schnapps. What makes Easter distinctive are eggs and lamb. The tradition of eating lamb originates from the Jewish Passover and became part of the Christian Easter celebration. Across the Nordic countries, lamb is prepared in different ways and remains a popular Easter dish.
Easter witches
Dressing up as Easter witches, påskkärringar, is a common Easter tradition throughout Sweden and takes place on Maundy Thursday or Easter Eve. In Finland, children also dress up as Easter witches, but usually on Palm Sunday, when they go door to door carrying decorated willow twigs.
The oldest written records of Easter witches date from the early 19th century, although the tradition is probably older. Originally, it was adults who dressed up to imitate and frighten people as witches. The tradition originally refers to the belief that witches travelled to the mythical mountain Blåkulla to meet the Devil before Easter. During the 17th-century witch trials, witches were believed to be especially active before their journey to Blåkulla.
Children dressed as Easter witches wish people a Happy Easter with Easter cards in the hope of receiving sweets or a small coin. Today’s Easter witches are inspired by those of the old farming society, with baskets or coffee pots recalling the witches’ ointment containers.
Easter twigs
Easter twigs or påskris were introduced in Sweden in the late 19th century. By the 1930s, it had become common to decorate them with colourful feather tufts and Easter ornaments. The tradition spread quickly throughout the country during the 20th century and became especially popular in the 1940s and 1950s.
The colourful Easter twigs of today are an example of how Christian heritage and folk traditions are combined in modern Easter celebrations. The decorated twigs we use as ornaments today were once used for symbolic whipping during Holy Week, as a reminder of Jesus’ suffering on the cross. In the farming society, people also playfully whipped each other with the twigs. Nordiska museet’s collections include stories of this tradition from the 19th century, including one father who playfully chased his family with twigs.
What do people in Nordics celebrate, and how?
As a museum of cultural history, Nordiska museet documents everyday life and festive occasions in the Nordic region. For example, we research: What do people celebrate, and how? What do the traditions and rituals of yesterday and today look like? And what role do they play in our social life?
We have been gathering knowledge about traditions since the late 19th century
Since the late 19th century, we have been documenting and gathering knowledge about traditions and rituals in people’s everyday lives and celebrations, which represent festivals and traditions. This knowledge takes the form of artefacts, photographs, folk memories and transcribed interviews featuring examples of rituals and traditions.
We have also collected and documented this material through fieldwork (that is, documenting celebrations on site), sending out questionnaires, interviewing people and, more recently, through digital collections.
Traditions change and are dynamic
Over the 150 years that the collections have been in existence, there have been enormous social changes in Sweden and the Nordic region. Traditions and social patterns are also dynamic and change: traditions are born, transformed and evolve in line with people, the times and the media. We continuously analyse the material in the light of both contemporary processes and historical circumstances.
Many factors shape and change celebrations
In short, it can be said that celebrations today reflect a multitude of influences from past social structures, from our own time, from migration, as well as social, economic and technological change.
Festivals and festive celebrations in the Nordic region are strongly influenced by the Christian faith, changes in society and values. Further factors include folk and supernatural- beliefs, folk religion and folk values that can be traced back to Nordic peasant society.
Over the 150 years that Nordiska museet has been gathering knowledge about traditions and rituals linked to festivals and special days of the year, there have been enormous social changes in Sweden and the Nordic region. Traditions are born, transformed and evolved in tandem with time and it’s people.
Ritual?
Over the past 150 years, research perspectives and concepts have also changed. A key fundamental concept is that of ritual. This refers to the practical observance – what people do in connection with a festival, tradition, specific day, time of year or event. Such as eating semlor, hiding Easter eggs, lighting candles in cemeteries or going ‘trick-or-treating’.
Rituals often involve symbols, such as the Christmas tree, the Midsummer maypole, waffles and semlor, or, for that matter, the crisps and dip enjoyed during Friday nights for the ultimate “fredagsmys”.
Tradition?
You could say that a ritual becomes a tradition when people attach particular value to the ritual and the celebration, without these necessarily having to be particularly old or widespread.
This definition, too, reflects the perspective of academic research. However, in everyday speech, the terms ‘ritual’, ‘tradition’, ‘festival’ and ‘custom’ are often used interchangeably. When we talk about traditions here, we are generally referring to rituals that are particularly valued; Christmas celebrations are one example.
Religious festivals
Another important term is ‘festival’ (högtid), which refers to rituals that are more closely linked to religious calendars. In the Nordic countries, the Christian calendar has dominated, but other religious calendars play an important role as well.
The boundary between religious calendar rituals and secular rituals appears to be becoming increasingly blurred, reflecting the secularisation of society. Most people in Sweden celebrate religious festivals without paying attention to their religious connection.
Annual festivals and life-cycle celebrations
In addition to the church calendar, festivals have historically been shaped by the rhythm of the farming year and agriculture. These are known as annual festivals or calendar rites.
Many festivals are linked to the human life cycle, where church rites have been, and remain, of great significance.
However, as society changes, so does the significance of these rituals. Although many people are still baptised today, it is not uncommon for this to take place through non-church naming ceremonies.
Ever-changing and dynamic
One of the most important insights into rituals and traditions to emerge from research is that they change. Certain particularly transformative social changes have left a clear mark on both everyday life and on rituals and festivals.
Perhaps the most significant from a cultural-historical perspective are the role of the church, as well as urbanisation, democratisation, the welfare state and the pursuit of social justice.
Contemporary life and tradition
As the Nordic countries became increasingly urbanised, economic conditions changed. People were no longer producing goods simply to provide for themselves. The family was transformed into a unit of consumption, able to purchase all the goods marketed in connection with festive occasions.
Traditions and festivals follow people’s movements between communities. Some are upheld, others fade away, and some take on a different meaning.
