American girls and boys sometimes dance around a Maypole and crown a
queen on the first day of May. The girls and boys of Norway, Sweden, and
Denmark have a midsummer holiday when they too dance around a gaily
decorated pole, but they are not celebrating the coming of May. They are
greeting the long summer day.
In the long ago people believed that June twenty-third was the day on
which Odin, the sun god, won in the fight against the frost giants. So
they danced and sang in praise of Odin. And people of those lands have
kept up the old custom.
[Illustration: DANCING AROUND THE MAYPOLE]
The school children of one Swedish town were gay and happy on the
twenty-third of June. The big boys set up a tall pole in a field near
the schoolhouse. Then a crowd of girls and boys tied branches of fir,
spruce, and pine on the pole. They put bright flowers among the green
branches.
When the pole was bright with the evergreen and flowers, a troop of
girls and boys came from the schoolhouse and played games on the grass
around the Maypole. But the greatest fun would come after dark. So early
in the afternoon they hurried home to dress in their gayest costumes to
be ready for the frolic that night.
[Illustration: SWEDISH CHILDREN IN NATIONAL COSTUME]
Grown-ups came to the night celebration too. The dance lasted far into
the night, for all through those northern lands there is no darkness on
the midsummer eve. The sun shines all through the night in the places
far to the north, but even in the southern part of Sweden where these
children live, the sun was gone but a few hours. During those hours
while the sun was gone, the sky was almost as bright as day with
twilight.