Scandinavians celebrate New Year with plenty of partying…
On New Year’s Eve, people in most countries turn on their television to watch a fireworks display from their capital city. Swedes, however, tune in first to a screening of the 1969 British slapstick show Grevinnan och betjänten (Dinner for One / The Countess and the Butler). Just before midnight, a live poetry reading forms part of celebrations from Skansen in Stockholm. It’s Nyårsklockana, a Swedish translation of Tennyson’s Ring Out Wild Bells, read by a famous face.
Danes tune in to a reflective address from their queen at 6pm, live from Amalienborg Palace, which is followed the next day by a more politically-centred broadcast from the prime minister at Marienborg. Bookies may take odds in the run up to New Year’s Eve as to what the Queen will mention in her address. In 2011 the odds were reportedly 50-1 that she’d mention Justin Bieber (she didn’t). Close friends and family gather early in the evening, so may watch the broadcast together, but only after it has finished can they open the champagne.
Fireworks in Stockholm
After that, toasts can be to anyone or anything, but glasses must be constantly replenished until midnight, when the television is switched back on for the countdown at Copenhagen’s Rådhus. Danes like to jump into the new year, so when the countdown begins they find a chair or sofa, perch themselves on it and, on the stroke of midnight, jump off. Those with energy left may take part in a bizarre competition in which they travel from house to house to see how many plates they can smash on the doorsteps of their friends and neighbours. This usually goes better when the neighbours are on good terms.
The Norwegian King, like the Danish Queen, also addresses the nation on New Year’s Eve, from the Royal Palace in Oslo.
This article has also been published in Nordic Style Magazine.
Fika 