Today is Midsummer’s Eve and the beginning of the BIGGEST celebration in the Swedish calendar. Yes bigger than Christmas, yes bigger than New Year. What’s not to love? The fertility rites, the drunkenness, the Swedes heading off en mass to family cliques, the songs and dancing round a maypole (oh that’s the fertility rites again)? Still it’s a day off and there is an institutionalized and annual dig at the French.

So to mark the occasion a few links about the great country of Sweden which we have called home now for the last 13 years.

• Swedish Midsummer: The Origin
• Swedish Midsummer: The Light & Magic
• Eating well in Stockholm by Tyler Cowen
• The rise of Sweden’s super rich
• Why the Swedes love doing something that Americans hate

And if you want to capture the modern Swede’s spirituality, it will probably happen on Midsummer after the hangover has gone and people are sitting outside in the magical light by a lake looking at a sunset.

Read this: The Messiah in the Mountain: Darwin on Wonder and the Spirituality of Nature

Glad midsommar!