Easter is Påsk in Swedish (cf. archaic English "Pasch" or "Pascha"; from Latin which got it from the Hebrew "pesach"). Our equivalent of "Happy Easter" is Glad Påsk. Here, I'll describe current Swedish Easter traditions and try to trace their origins.
Depending on where in the world you live, you might not recognize some terms I'm using below, like e.g. Fat Tuesday, Maundy Thursday, or birching. If a word confuses you, please look it up in Wikipedia - that's where I found many of these words in the first place. When I've included Swedish terms as well, the Swedish is in italics.
Shrovetide bun: (fastlagsbulle, today more often called semla) A wheat-flour bun
filled with almond paste and whipped cream. Traditionally they're eaten before Lent, on Fat Tuesday (regionally on Shrove Monday instead), but as today's Swedes don't keep Lent many have them
weekly during Lent as well.
In its present form, the semla dates to the early 1900s. Before that, the bun was filled with almond paste only, and either boiled in milk or served in a bowl of hot milk. When prepared this way, it's known as hetvägg ("hot wall", from German "Heißwecken" meaning "hot wedges). We got the idea from Germany, and they were first mentioned in Sweden in 1689. In the 19th century, farmers too had started to eat hetvägg, often a bought bun without filling, served in hot milk - for dinner!
Anther traditional name for the semla or hetvägg are fettisdagsbulle ("Fat Tuesday bun"). Semla long meant only the plain, unfilled, wheat bun itself (from Latin "simila" and German "Semmel", meaning fine wheat flour).
Lent: To most Swedes, Lent is just a name for the weeks before Easter. Sweden became Protestant in the 16th century, so actual fasting during Lent hasn't been prescribed since. But in some areas, a tradition of abstaining from rich food and avoiding parties, dancing and weddings during Lent lived on into the 20th century.
Easter twigs: (påskris) During Lent, budding birch twigs are adorned with
bright-coloured feathers and set in water to sprout leaves. In addition to the feathers, they may be hung with small, light ornaments in the shape of e.g. eggs, chickens, or Easter witches.
(Some use pussy willow twigs for decoration as well, but it's used as is without feathers or ornaments, and isn't called påskris). Florists sell påskris with feathers
already attached. Big bunches of them are displayed in buckets, both outside florist shops and in flower stands at markets, looking very bright and cheerful.
In the 17th century, there was a custom of birching each other at Easter as a reminder of Christ's suffering. Over time, it developed into a game, where the first person to wake up in the
morning sneaked up on the sleepers to birch them in their beds. Påskris was used for decoration at least since the late 18th century, when it might be decorated with colorful
ribbons, paper flowers and other embellishments. Feathers have been used on it at least since the mid-19th century. By the 1930s, the påskris had spread all over the country, and
people embellished them with coloured feathers and paper flowers, and pompom chickens.
Easter witch:
(påskkäring; "Easter hag") On Maundy Thursday, some children (mostly girls) dress in a full-length skirt, apron, and headscarf (the essential 19th century farmer woman outfit), and have their faces painted with lipstick red dots on the cheeks and lots of dark freckles. They accessorise with a metal coffee pot (preferably a vintage copper pot) and perhaps a
broom, and go out to knock on their neighbours doors for treats, wishing Glad Påsk. The coffee pot is handy for carrying the candy. My little påskkäring is
traditional in style; today you often see the kids carrying a modern broom, and wearing a bibbed barbecue type apron, which gives a somewhat different look...
Please note: you can click on the Easter witch pics for closeups.
In traditional belief, witches were the most dangerous during
the last week of Lent. Later, when people no longer believed in witches, youngsters used the witch theme to have some fun right before Easter. In the early 19th century, they might dress up
like witches and then play tricks on people; later in the century they dressed up and went from house to house in the village asking for contributions in money or kind to the youngsters' Easter
party. By the early 20th century, it had evolved into the påskkäring custom of today.
Cute as today's Easter witches may be, in the 17th century witches and children were a deadly combination. In the years 1668-1676 about 300 people, mosly women, were executed in witch trials in Sweden (a part of the Inquisition that spread to Protestant countries as well). The witnesses at the trials were children, generally accusing the prisoners of having abducted them and flown them to the sabbath of Satan in Blockula (Blåkulla; "Blue Hill"). The idea was that children were innocent, so they couldn't lie (sic!), and consequently their accusations must be true... Some children gained a reputation as beeing good at spotting witches, and were brought from village to village. In the end, many of the prisoners pleaded guilty - because then they would be absolved and thus save their souls, but as witchcraft was a capital felony, they were still executed. In hope of a lighter sentence, some prisoners accused others in their turn, bringing even more people to justice. Eventually, veracity of the children's testimonies was put into question, causing authorities to put an abrupt end to the trials, and to prevent additional accusations the parsons were orderd to spread the word that all witches had now been expelled from the country... Today, some feminists claim the "witches" were herbalists or strong women persecuted by society, but the accounts of Swedish witch trials don't support this view at all. Here, it was very much about the children's testimonies - sometimes perhaps originating in innocent fabulation, or driven by a wish for attention or getting back at people they disliked. Some investigators even used torture-like methods to get the children to name witches.
Food: Besides eggs, fish seems to be common Easter fare, and so has lamb become during the 20th century. In my family, we have a smörgåsbord style meal at Easter Eve, including pickled herring and lots of eggs. Many of us drink påskmust - a popular seasonal carbonated soft drink (known as julmust when sold at Christmas - just the label differs). It was created in Sweden in 1910 as a non-alcoholic alternative to beer. It contains hops and malt and is less sweet than the big international brands of soft drinks.
Flowers: Yellow daffodils are sold in huge quantities for Easter, but you'll hardly see them in a garden that early (unless Easter falls very late or you're in southmost Sweden). This year (2008), Easter is early, and even though Stockholm has had its warmest winter in 250+ years, the only garden flowers I've spotted are crocus (mostly in lilac or yellow), snowdrop, and winter aconite.
Popular colors: Spring green and yellow, often combined with violet and/or orange. I presume it's based on the colors of early spring flowers (above). In that case, perhaps the occasional inclusion of orange may stem from the darker yellow of the daffodil's trumpet.
The concept of using different colors for decoration at different holidays seems to have emerged in the early 1900s. When my grandmother was a child in the 1920s, her mother used yellow and green in decorative accents at Easter (and red and green at Christmas), but if you go back a few more decades, festive decorations are just generally colorful.
Easter eggs: Everyone gets Easter eggs (never Easter baskets). Many eggs have a printed
design, often incorporating chickens, eggs, and Easter hares (the eggs I've seen range from reprints of 19th century German designs with hares dressed in clothes, to Disney heroines). The hares
is one 'import' that hasn't quite caught on; there may be hares on Easter eggs (often imported from Germany), and there might be a chocolate hare among the other sweets in your Easter egg, but
Swedish Easter traditions generally don't include hares (and bunnies even less).
I've read that the colorful cardboard eggs filled with candy became common in Sweden in the early 20th century. Today there are both genuine German eggs made in Erzgebirge and Chinese 'imitations'. Imported German panoramic sugar eggs were given as Easter gifts in wealthy homes in the late 19th century, and such eggs had a revival in the 1950s (by then I think they were produced here). In recent years they're once again available, though not very common.
More traditions: Easter cards became popular around 1900 but today not that many people send them (I see them at the postcard stands every year though). They're way less popular than Christmas cards are.
Printed paper tablerunners with Easter motifs were common in the 1920s and 1930s, nowadays they're not used that much.
There's probably a lot more to be said (especially about traditions in the contryside, where most Swedes lived), but I've got to draw the line somewhere. The further back you go, the more regional the traditions are (as well as being less documented). At least the above should give you an idea of Swedish Easter traditions in the last 100 to 150 years.
