Julgransplundring = Christmas Tree plundering (aka St. Knut's Day)

Today, we watched a julgransplundring (jul = holiday; gran = tree; plundring = plundering) celebration at the Nordiska Museum. You might think that the holiday season ended, but 13 January is officially St. Knut's Day, and a day to take down the Christmas Tree. While St. Knut's Day might be tomorrow, the Nordiska Museum celebrated today.

The julgransplundring celebration tickets were sold out, but our general purpose tickets to go the museum afforded us a majestic view of the central hallway and tree. Normally, this event involves kids taking all the candy off the tree and eating it. It also involves much dancing around the tree to very traditional songs. This particular celebration focused on a lot of cute kids, a songleader, pianist & bass player, and some very enthusiastic dancing. Elizabeth & Chris joined them while Stephen and I documented the events from the balcony. The ornaments are all paper ornaments, and the big owls (uggla = owl) were so cool.

  

The spiral of dancers starts to form around the tree... there were eventually 3-4 (or more, depending on how you count them) rings of people.

  

   

Opening processional song (posted to youtube because it was too big to share; perhaps this way of sharing will also work better): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx0zUghDST0&feature=youtu.be

One of our favorite songs:

A link to one of our favorite songs (no idea what the name of the song is): https://studio.youtube.com/video/ON7PZy3fbKA/edit

The Nordiska Museet (museum) is one of the more spectacular architectural buildings on an island full of museums; the museum itself is home to more than 1.5 million Swedish cultural items. In addition to the exhibit on the melting ice in the Arctic (the exhibit we went to see), you can see exhibits about Swedish cultural traditions, 1950s fashion, jewelry, British influence on Swedish fashion, August Lindberg (artist, poet, author), and more.

The building itself is eye-catching and one that I've wanted to go into for a while. The picture on the left is from the wikipedia page about the museum, while the one on the right is a photo I took today (note the bluish sky- a welcome relief from gray).

  

The glint of sun off the building across the street. Unusually balmy & warm today, but nice to have some sunshine after a bit of gray again.