Jumping Fences

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Swedish Midsummer tradition suggests that anyone in the search of romance and true love performs a certain ritual on the Midsummer night. The ritual consists in jumping over seven fences/walls, pick seven different kinds of flowers, then put the flowers under the pillow, and then sleep on it. Do that, and you will dream about the person you will marry.

The Nordic countries share a lot of culture and history, and it turns out that this tradition is also known in Iceland. Randomly meeting a group of young girls after a night out on Midsummer, me and my travel companion half-heartedly pick up on the tradition. We jump two walls, but don’t bother to pick any flowers. The next night - admittedly after a few glasses of wine - we decide that there is no reason we shouldn’t complete the ritual.

One problem become apparent straight away. On the Icelandic countryside there aren’t very many fences to jump. At least not without risking the neighbors calling the police, and facing a rather awkward explanation. Hence, our interpretation of fence/wall becomes very liberal. We figure that with this pagan tradition the rules can be adjusted to suit more modern times. Counting the two jumps from the previous night, there are five to go. Our local host’s porch fence is too good to pass up. Three. A neighbor’s unfinished porch. The material is laid out already, and we agree that there will be a fence eventually. Four. The playground nearby is surrounded by a rope, fencing in the area. Five. The golf course is surrounded by a stone wall. Jump. Six. A road bar - there we go, the last fence. Seven

Now, the flowers. Being on the tipsy end of the scale, and not knowing the first thing about wild flowers, it doesn’t take us long to find seven “different” kinds of flowers. The expert would probably refer to some of them as leaves or berries. However, to me everything greenish fall under the category “green stuff”, and I have no problem using the words plant, flower, fruit, vegetable, or grass interchangeably. Screw botanic intelligence. Mission completed.

So, seven fences and seven flowers. Under the pillows they go. Did we dream about the person we’re about to marry that night? Still no ring, but a fulfilled pagan ritual might have a distant future expiration date...

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Comments

[Di]

beautiful
After this wall jumping escapade I had 12 bruises.... but still have the pressed flowers to put in a frame Amazing CC that you can remember the "walls" in our inebriated state:-)