New Year’s Eve
The celebration of festivals and folk traditions amongst the people of the Nordic societies is one of the Nordic Museum’s areas of expertise. Here you can find out more about New Year celebrations based on the museum’s collections and expertise.
New Year’s Eve – a modern celebration
The celebration at midnight on 31 December is the first calendar celebration of the year. Today, New Year’s Eve is a festive evening when people often dress up, enjoy luxurious food such as lobster and champagne, and celebrate with friends rather than family.
At midnight, it is common to watch New Year’s speeches on television, celebrate with fireworks and make New Year’s resolutions. Staying awake until the new year arrives is a relatively modern tradition that spread from the upper classes in the 19th century.
The luxurious New Year’s dinner is also a fairly recent tradition, becoming especially established in the late 20th century. One of the newest Swedish traditions is eating pizza on New Year’s Day, often while watching ski jumping or the film Ivanhoe, which has been shown on Swedish television on New Year’s Day since 1982.
The history of New Year’s celebrations
The beginning of the year on 1 January belongs to the Western Gregorian calendar. In Sweden, 1 January officially became New Year’s Day during the 16th century, but it was not firmly established until the 19th century. During the Middle Ages, Christmas Day was considered the beginning of the year.
Celebrating New Year’s Eve and the midnight hour became more common in the late 19th century, connected to urbanisation and the introduction of a unified national time system in 1879.
New Year’s ringing at midnight was introduced at Skansen in 1893 by Artur Hazelius, founder of the Nordic Museum. In the 1920s, radio began broadcasting New Year’s celebrations with church bells and Tennyson’s poem Ring Out, Wild Bells. Since 1977, Swedish Television has continued the tradition of reading the poem at midnight.
New Year traditions and beliefs
According to traditional beliefs, New Year’s night was, like Christmas night, filled with magical powers. In rural communities, people used the night to predict the future through practices such as interpreting coffee grounds, melted tin or årsgång (“year walking”), where a person walked silently around churches to receive signs about the future.
New Year’s resolutions are a relatively modern tradition in Sweden. The custom was unknown in the farming society and became common during the 20th century, influenced by the American tradition of New Year’s resolutions.
Fireworks and other loud celebrations are found in many New Year traditions around the world. Originally, they were intended to scare away evil forces before the new year. Today, alternatives such as laser shows are becoming more popular because they avoid risks to animals and nature.
New Year celebrations across the Nordic region
New Year traditions vary across the Nordic countries. In Denmark, jokes and playful customs are common, together with foods such as cod and kransekager. In Norway and Denmark, some people jump into the new year by standing on a chair at midnight with a coin in their hand, hoping to avoid poverty in the coming year.
In Iceland, New Year’s bonfires are lit, similar to Valborg fires in Sweden, and people traditionally dance around the fire dressed as elves or trolls.
In Finland, it is common to cast New Year’s fortunes in tin. A rough shape may represent money, a boat travel, a bird happiness and a flower admirers or marriage.
