Hella, the Viking : Easter in Scandinavia

After being quiet for a while due I recently got my brand new Cintiq, which will allow me to make cool illustrations for the blog (and other surprises that you will see...), I have also been busy shooting a video at Internationella Skolorna of Barcelona, where they invited us to make Swedish decorations for Easter (today you will discover that I was not born to make decoration...) .

I thought that it would be easy to make use of this, to talk about how other Scandinavian countries celebrate Easter and that's how I got inspired to write today's entry.

NORWAY:

On Holy Thursday and Good Friday everything is closed in Norway. Shops are just open few hours on Saturday and Sunday on Easter holidays. On Monday Easter (just like here in Spain) it is also a bank holiday, so Norwegians make use of those 5 free days to go skiing in the mountains, specially because they know that it might be the last chance that they will have to enjoy the snow on that year.

Easter bunny is not popular in Norway, instead they have a lot of chicken decoration. Chicken are considered a symbol of fertility and lust just like dawn and the sun, while eggs represent the rebirth of plants and animals on spring, after a long and dark winter.
Yellow is the most predominant color on Easter, and because of that during these most of products packaging have that color.

Norwegians also use yellow napkins and candles to decorate their tables, yellow flowers (like tulips and daffodils), which they also give as a gift to their friends and relatives.

They also hang Easter decorations and painted eggs on birch branches and put them in their homes.

During these days they also read crime and detective stories. This tradition started on 1923, and nowadays event some food brands (i.e. milk brands) put crime and detective stories in their packaging.

When it comes to food, they eat eggs (rebirth symbol), oranges (which they import from Southern countries like Spain... Norwegian families eat around 5-7kg on Easter...), lamb (symbolizes Christ and also the spring), yeast bread, cakes, candies and a lot of chocolate (specially Kvikk Lunsj).

ICELAND:

Easter on Iceland is longer than Christmas, and because of that Icelanders make use of those days to spend some time with their relatives and travel through out the country, just like their Scandinavian fellows.

Their most famous tradition is related with chocolate eggs, which appear in supermarkets three weeks before Easter. There are a lot of kinds: cream filled, big like heads, ... but all of them have something in common: inside them there's a little message just like Chinese lucky cookies.
Unluckily and due to the harshness of Icelandic weather, they cannot go egg-hunting (everything is covered with snow).

Around XVIII and XIX century, when fresh food was scarce, there was a tradition which consisted in cooking a rich and thick porridge on Sunday easter. That porridge could be made of rice, which was considered a luxury food in those days.

DENMARK:

On Easter a lot of houses and shops are decorated with yellow and green ornaments, specially with daffodils.

The most popular Danish symbol of Easter are eggs: they are used as ornaments, either as simple painted hen's eggs, an imitation of them, or chocolate and/or sugar eggs.

Hens and roosters are used as decoration too, and near the German border, the Easter bunny is becoming more popular every time.
Few weeks before Easter, Danish children prepare and cut the letters and then write a teaser verse. The letter is anonymous, although it is signed with a number of points that corresponds to the number of letters of the author of the letter, so that the receiver has the opportunity to try to guess who sent him the letter.

The pledge is a chocolate Easter egg, which will be delivered on Easter day. The letter comes with a snowflake which representes the first flower of the year.

When it comes to Easter food, they eat basically spring food like herrings and other fishes, little hot dishes, sliced meat and cheese. Most of people drinks bier (there's a special kind of beer for those days. It's more tasty than regular beer) and schnapps.

Easter is not only a Christian festival for Danes, but also the spring festival which was associated with superstition and connected to weather forecast.

SWEDEN:

In the case of Sweden, we decided to prepare a little surprise for you after Internationella Skolorna in Barcelona contacted us to invite us to a Swedish decoration workshop, and made use of it to let them tell you about how they celebrate Easter in Sweden. We hope you like it :)