Today is the national day of Sweden. Hurra! 🇸🇪 It’s pretty new as an official holiday. Apparently it was the founder of Nordiska museet, Artur Hazelius, who 1893 started to celebrate the day by arranging a spring party at Skansen in memory of the election of Gustaf Vasa as King of Sweden in 1523 and that our constitution was signed on June 6 1809.

Thereafter the day continued be be an unofficial national day until 1916, when it became known as “Swedish flag day”, but it took until 1983 before June 6 officially became Sweden’s national day and not until 2005, the National Day became an official holiday (we had to sacrifice Whit Monday). And to be honest we do not celebrate it in any way, not as the Norwegians on 17th of May or the Americans on 4 of July. Naturally since it is a quite recent holiday, but foremost since we already have strong traditions on ” our real national day” Midsummer.

So, what is typically Swedish then? When I searched Unsplash for typically Swedish images to me, I got caught be these (photo credit Davide Biscuso, Jessica Pamp, Rebecca Johansson, Julia Wallin and Andreas Strandman).

Yes, they are all about nature and I guess that is what is very much Sweden to me.

BUT then my Instagram feed showed a post one of the accounts that I follow, DadHarmony and I realized that this is really what Sweden is all about.

Men, as dads, hanging out together doing something that is not seen as a typical manly thing to do (like drinking beer, watching sports, fishing and/or roaring) namely – singing. This is as far from the stereotypical macho-man, which is so much focus right now through organized crime and gang violence (especially in Sweden). This is what Sweden is about, a country were you are free to do good things together with others even if it’s breaking the oh so boring and outdated norm.

Watch, enjoy and understand what swedishness is all about.