Last night, I got to experience my first Swedish Valborg, Sista April, Walpurgisnacht, whatever you want to call it.

It had been built up a bit for me in advance. Lund being a university town, it tends to get celebrated around here in the same way as college students traditionally celebrate just about anything: Heavy drinking. I've been talking quite a bit in the last couple weeks with two groups of student entrepreneurs (more about them in later posts) and both had mentioned it to me as "a party not to be missed".

The official, traditional Valborg celebration is a thing of song and fire. Student organizations hold a number of competitions in the morning and a men's choir holds an evening performance in the main city park, followed by a bonfire.

The unofficial tradition is for students to spend most of the day between the competitions and the bonfire hanging out in the park, grilling and drinking. In years past, they've also had a tendency to bring couches and stuffed chairs with them to provide a comfortable place to sit all day and then leave them there. This year, the unofficial traditions were fought with a ban on furniture in the park and the decision to close Systembolaget (the government-run liquor monopoly) for the day. I heard there were also parents passing out anti-drinking pamphlets at Systembolaget's door the day before, but I suspect they probably do that every year.

As for Annika and me, neither of us are serious drinkers, so we spent the day pretty much normally until the evening. We did end up making a run to the grocery store in the late afternoon and it was by far the busiest I've ever seen it there, but I only spotted one obviously-drunk woman, so the events of the day weren't so clear as I might have expected.

When dusk drew near, we biked down to the park. Along the way, we found ourselves on a side street where there were four or five drunk guys wandering around in the middle of the road and making general nuisances of themselves. As we neared the end of the street, one of them jumped onto the back of a girl's bike as she rode off; I didn't think much of it, since people ride like that around here fairly often. But Annika stopped briefly as she reached the cross street and, as I came to a stop behind her, I felt someone coming up behind me.

Reflex kicked in when the presence got too close - I don't recall whether I actually felt any physical contact or not - and I snapped around to my left to look behind myself, also pulling my left arm up, ready to backhand the intruder. What I saw when I turned, though, was a guy half my age and too drunk to even notice that his sunglasses weren't on straight, trying to climb onto the back of my bike for a ride. I checked my hand and, instead of striking, held up a finger and, in a generic "bad puppy!" voice simply told him, "No," and he backed off without further incident.

Arriving at the park, we locked up our bikes and took a walk through. The crowd was much more diverse than I'd expected, with a broad cross-section of ages, races, and subcultures evident. The closest American equivalent I can think of would be Homecoming, as you had a crowd dominated by students, but also with older folks and families well-represented. We walked a lap around the park, just to see the people and what was going on. There was also a small carnival midway in an adjoining street, but we left that for later.

We got back to the bandshell and fire site just as the choir finished up and took a final bow. The bonfire-to-be was a cone of natural branches towering over the crowd's heads - I'd call it easily 15 feet tall. I'm normally used to seeing bonfires made of scrap lumber or the like, but there was nothing of that sort in evidence.

Ten minutes after the choir left the stage, a procession of half a dozen students in blue jackets came through carrying small torches. We were probably 30 feet back from the fire site proper, with multiple solid walls of people in front of us, so I didn't get to see the actual lighting, but I imagine they spaced themselves evenly and torched the wood in unison. It went up quite nicely and quite largely, with long flames licking out above the crowd - or at least above where some of the crowd had been before it was lit - and masses of embers and a heat haze drifting across the moon. Thinking about it again makes me wish I'd had a good enough camera (and sufficient skill) to capture it.

The crowd started to thin almost immediately after the fire was lit and we were able to work our way up to where we were behind only a single row of people and watched the fire for a bit more before going to check out the midway. It was maybe two blocks long with a row of five or six rides down the middle and about as many games along each side. None of it was terribly interesting, so we just walked one lap around, then went back to the fire.

By this point, the fire was mostly collapsed into a pile of red coals about 8 feet across and maybe knee-height in the middle with a number of stray not-yet-burnt branches sticking out of it. We got into the first row, moving in as close as was comfortable, and enjoyed the warmth while watching a couple older folks use branches to roast sausages. The fire hadn't been built up any since the original lighting, but it didn't seem to be dying out any further either.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to enjoy the fire as long as we would have liked, because one of the police officers keeping watch over it picked up a sprayer and started hosing it down. I'd guess that it had been allowed to burn for an hour. Only an hour seemed like a bit of a waste, but, then, it's been a dry spring here so there was some question of whether fires would be allowed at all. But, still...