Another thing on Sheila's bucket list for this trip was to see a Lucia evening. This is a long-standing Swedish tradition, usually occurring on Dec. 13th. Each local parish or district chooses a young woman to be Lucia, the bearer of light, and there are many traditional songs that go along with this. The version that has become the national standard looks like this image from the Web:
Every year, the Swedish television network SVT chooses a "Lucia of the Year", that is filmed in advance and then broadcast on Dec. 13th. Most of these up to 2004 were as shown above, but that year they selected the town of Malung in Dalarna for Årets Lucia. There is a large college in Malung, dedicated to the preservation of folk customs and arts, and they did a VERY different Lucia after researching how it might have been done 150 years ago.
There was a HUGE uproar! How dare anyone mess with beloved traditions!?! Where were all the songs that went along with Lucia every year? Where were the white dresses? The Star-boys? But those of us interested in the folk-traditions loved it, of course. And a few years ago, someone got the idea to re-create this historic version and do a very small tour with it. 4 churches in Dalarna get to have this experience....and we got tickets to the one in Mora, a (theoretical) 4-hour drive from our temporary home in Östersund.
We got to the church 30 minutes early, hoping to get good seats. We should have gone 90 minutes early!! Our views were quite restricted by a column and the pulpit. But we could hear....the acoustics were amazing! And thankfully, there was a photo-op at the end.
And I actually snagged a bit of video! Now the question is....can I get it into the blog, and will it play when and if I do?
And then back to our hotel, one street over from this street of shops.
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