The Party Spirit of Midsummer

 

It is June and I crave the old tradition of a midsummer party with a bonfire, Swedish strawberry cake, and of course, sauna. The other night we invited some friends to stop by at sunset. In midsummer, twilight lingers in the sky for hours. Our midwestern weather had been brutal for days with temperatures in the humid 90’s, but we had a break, temperatures dropped, and I felt as if having a backyard bonfire would be feasible. However, getting people to join in the sauna is not always easy.

photo © Steinmann

That’s okay. Sauna is unfamiliar to many and some folks just don’t fancy it. Some are simply not comfortable putting on a bathing suit. But I am on a mission to share sauna’s good vibes. There is a kind of wild joy, even in the middle of the city, in getting barefoot in the grassy backyard, pulling on a bathing suit after dark and chatting with friends in the hot sauna or sitting quietly breathing in the fresh scent of birch leaves from a sauna whisk. One feels clean and refreshed after a dunk in the stock tub filled with cool water. Just sitting by the fire, gazing at the evening sky brings on a feeling the French describe as, bien dans sa peau; it means to feel good in one’s skin. It’s a threshold feeling for me. It loosens me up and helps me reach a deeper connection with nature, others and even myself.

KAJ performing Bara Bada Bastu. Photo: Wiki Media Commons

Nothing captures the free spirit of a sauna party better than the Eurovision song this year from Sweden Bara Bada Bastu. It did not win the contest but it was certainly a contender with its humor and earworm melody. You really don’t need to understand the lyrics to appreciate that it is a song about fun and togetherness in the bastu–or sauna (in Finnish). If you do understand the lyrics–in Swedish dialect from Finland–there is a bit more to the story. The song opens with three guys sitting by a campfire in the woods while one plays an ancient riff on the accordion. The singer makes eye contact with viewers and intones, “Nåjaa!” It’s a no/yes phrase of “oh well” reluctance. In this context, the singer counters the viewer’s indecision with a “C’mon, join the party” invitation: Bara Bada Bastu, “Just take a sauna!”

“It feels like we’re going out in Europe to represent the brotherhood between Sweden and Finland,”

–Jakob Norrgard, member of KAJ, a music and comedy group from Vörå in Ostrobothnia, Finland.

There is an interesting cultural context to the song Bara, Bada, Bastu which illuminates the long story of relations between Sweden and Finland. The group KAJ is from Finland and part of the Swedish-speaking language minority. Furthermore, the song is in the unique dialect of their region. I think the reason that this song represented the country of Sweden, and not Finland, at the Eurovision Song Contest is because it could reach a broader Swedish-speaking audience (only 5 percent of Finns are Swedish speakers) and it would help build a cultural bridge between the two countries by bringing a better recognition of the small but proud number of Swedish speakers in Finland who consider themselves completely Finnish, bastu and all.