Swedes doesn’t really celebrate the Swedish national day. It was not until 2005 the 6th of June became a public holiday. You might wonder why this is, but actually swedes don’t really know the answer either. Swedes could actually learn a thing or two here from their Nordic neighbours Norway. But this is, of course, the only thing they do a bit better than us.

6th of June was celebrated as the ‘Swedish flag day’ up until 1983 when it became the Swedish national day. The tradition of celebrating this date began 1916, in honour of the election of King Gustav Vasa in 1523, as this was considered the foundation of modern Sweden.

Most of the swedes doesn’t celebrate this day at all but are happy to get a day off work, maybe even a piece of strawberry cake to their afternoon ‘fika’. Many at leas raise their Swedish flag in the back yard. Then there are a few really good swedes, that proudly stand tall together with our royal family in ‘Skansen’, Stockholm. The celebration is filled with great speeches and a lot of music from a flavorous mix of Swedish singers. Actually Midsummer is more like the unofficial national day.

Another weird, and actually a bit sad thing, about Sweden and its national day is that swedes are almost scared to sing the Swedish national anthem. Swedes scared to be called racists. One might wonder what is racist about loving your country and sing the national anthem. I mean we start all the football games in the world by singing the playing countries national anthems. But that’s just typical swedes.

Nowadays we’ve come further and more and more people are celebrating the 6th of June. Why don’t we all join in in this dramatic version of ‘Du gamla, du fria’ with Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

(This is actually a commercial from Volvo, thereby the snow.)