When you' traveled for 24 hours and the sun is still up at 3am in the meadows of Leksand, take a deep breath and pinch yourself it's not a dream, it's Sweden. Vanessa Asell takes you on a trip to the land of the midnight sun.

Leksand is a three hour drive northwest of Sweden's capital, Stockholm. In a fairy tale setting of mountains and lakes in the landscape of Dalarna ("the valleys"), Leksand is a small town which attracts pilgrims every year for its midsummer celebrations. For a few days, the streets of this otherwise quiet place swell with Swedes in folk costumes and tourists in caravans.

Midsummer Eve always falls on a Friday, and this year the festivities commence June 23. Originally a feast commemorating the summer solstice, these cross-generational celebrations take place throughout the country, with variations from place to place, and family to family. The main event is the raising of the midsummer pole. Brought from Central Europe in the late Middle Ages, each of the almost one hundred villages around Leksand has adapted it to suit regional tastes; nevertheless, most still retain Sweden's omniscient golden rooster and the Swedish flag, garlands that stand for village unity, and crossed arrows, a thirteenth-century symbol of Dalarna mens' need for freedom.

Getting it up in Gropen

Getting it up
Celebrations start Friday night when "church boats" - long, open, narrow wooden rowboats with thirty-odd singing and playing passengers, clad in folk costume - make their way down the Siljan Estuary. Once ashore, spectators join in as they carry the garlands for the midsummer pole to Gropen, an enormous pit created during the Ice Ages which now serves as a natural amphitheater and plays host to the thousands of people who have come to see the pole's erection, an annual rite since 1939.

Human power, coupled with poles bundled two by two like a pair of scissors, raise the pole off the ground and up the remaining 90 degrees. Leksand's legendary ice hockey team gradually pushes it to a vertical position by resting the pole in the "v" of the "scissors." The white-painted one-piece timber stock weighs a hundred kilos, and the crowd appreciatively cheers its raisers on, chanting "Ooooooooooo heeeeeej" at regular intervals. (Several years ago, to everyone's surprise, the pole broke when halfway up. Luckily no one was hurt, but it made headline news.)

Midsummer night dreams

Once up and fastened and the singing of the national anthem dispensed with, collective insanity sets in: Thousands of people dance holding hands, imitating frogs by jumping up and down. Frogs are succeeded by bakers and musicians - all songs and dances in a repertoire we Swedes learn as children and pull out for celebrations like this. From above it's a kaleidoscope - colorful crop circles in motion.

This shortest night of the year is magical. Before going to bed, and without saying a word until the next morning, pajama-clad children run across dewy meadows to pick seven different flowers to they put under their pillows. Whoever shows up in their dreams is whom they will marry! (There have been times of laughter as well as tears at the breakfast table the following morning, and since my future remains uncertain, I can only blame it on picking the wrong combination of flowers, or breaking the magic by talking in my sleep.)

The land of the midnight sun

All dressed up
Day two, Midsummer Day, and we are off to church. Viewed from across the lake, Leksand's Church snuggles nicely against blue mountains. One of Sweden's larger rural churches, it has existed in its present form since 1715, with the oldest parts dating back to the thirteenth century. It is constructed in such a way that if you arrive late and are relegated to seats in the back, you see nothing but big pillars. My family is always late for church, no matter how hard we try, slowed down by the effort of properly donning our Leksand folk costumes. Usually we number five - my father, mother, two sisters and me, while Grandmother supervises, sometimes scolding, and Grandfather complains that we are late this year, again. With all the rules that apply about who wears what, it takes time to make sure we have the correct shirt, skirt, apron, bag, shawl, jacket, hat, gloves and pin on - we don't want people to think we're mourning, or that my teenage sister is married, or that my mother isn't.

The delay always pays off. The sight of a whole family in folk costumes is not only a welcome reminder of Sweden's past but a Kodak moment as well: One year a busload of Japanese tourists put us into their photograph albums, and our images made their way to Japan. Later, we followed.

Gropen, a natural amphitheater, fills with thousands of people on Midsummer Eve

After church, if weather permits, we pile into church boats, and, coordinated by the oarsman in the back, move the oars to the sound of music played by locals. We soon make it to the port of Tibble, more of a jetty actually, where pickups take us to Vastanvik, where yet another midsummer pole is waiting to be raised.

Saturday night marks the grand finale of midsummer. Beginning at our place, which family members democratically dubbed Fagervik - Fair Creek - we gather in the meadow below our burgundy red timber house. Thanks to a clever miner who once thought to make paint from the residues of a nearby copper mine, most houses around Lake Siljan are painted the same color. Swedish flags are hoisted, and laughter and singing can be heard from parties where people feast on schnapps, pickled herring, and gravad lax with potatoes fresh out of the ground. Our family spices up this Swedish tradition with ingredients from abroad. While living in Spain, we served tapas and Rioja; this year we're planning sake and sashimi.

My sisters, Agnes and Charlotta, dressed in traditional Leksand folk costumes

Sated, we head to Vastanvik. Marching along the curvy road, we wave to the odd raggare, Swedish hillbillies, honking the horns of their birch tree decorated cars. Even automobiles get to have fun these days! Once there, we participate in activities run by Brudpiga, the local rowing team: the wheel of fortune and the rowing machine competition, among others. Year after year we bring home the whole gamut of prizes: Hard crisp bread (Leksands knackebrod), a year's supply of chocolate, vouchers for canoeing at the local camp site, or smoked salmon. The tunes of the local jazz band playing away in the old fire station Spruthuset invites us to dance, and we dance the night away.

With the sun's presence throughout, there's no real separation between night and day so before we know it, day three has come, and with it the soccer game. We usually manage to cobble together two teams of slightly hangover or tired ex-pros, amateurs, cousins, neighbors and grandfathers, all willing to give this annual game their all, or at least what's left of it.

Game over, midsummer over. The Swedes in colorful folk costumes and Europeans in their caravans take to the road, only to come back for midsummer next year.

For more information about Leksand, log on to www.Siljan-Dalarna.com (click English), or email the tourism information office on leksand@stab.se

Information about traveling to Sweden is available at Scandinavian Tourist Board, Izumikan Gobancho 4F, Gobancho 12-11, Chiyoda-ku. Tel 03-5212-1121, fax 03-5212-1122.