These visits were a reminder of how John the Baptist baptized Christ in the River Jordan. Young people also liked to visit holy springs, where they drank the healing water and amused themselves with games and dancing. In Sweden, they were mainly found in the southern part of the country. Ever since the 6th century AD, Midsummer bonfires have been lit around Europe. It was not until the 1900s, however, that this became the most Swedish of all traditional festivities. Midsummer was primarily an occasion for young people, but it was also celebrated in the industrial communities of central Sweden, where all mill employees were given a feast of pickled herring, beer and schnapps. They also decorated their houses and farm tools with foliage, and raised tall, leafy maypoles to dance around, probably as early as the 1500s. In some areas people dressed up as ‘green men’, clad in ferns. It is a light and happy tradition."Īccording to a brief history of Swedish Midsummer that Tidholm co-wrote for the Swedish Institute: In agrarian times, Midsummer celebrations in Sweden were held to welcome summertime and the season of fertility. "Midsummer is all about celebrating summer, eating herring, drinking aquavit and staying up late. Many Swedes start their summer vacation around midsummer and leave town to spend time in cottages, summer houses or with country-dwelling relatives," Tidholm told me in an email. "Sweden is a thoroughly modern and urbanized country today, but midsummer is one of those holidays where Swedes reconnect with the more agrarian heritage. ![]() But, according to Tidholm, the Midsummer festival in Sweden actually has few Pagan roots. Much of the horror in Midsommar comes from the ancient Pagan history of the festival. Gabor Kotschy / A24 The Real History of Midsummer I reached out to Swedish journalist and author Po Tidholm-who has written a book on Swedish traditions-to sort through the real history of this festival.ĭani (Florence Pugh), Christian (Jack Reynor), and their unsuspecting grad school buddies who visit the terrifying Midsummer festivities. Should they be terrified? In one specific scene, two elderly people take part in ritual suicide, which horrifies the guests, but is a beautiful ceremony to the locals.Īnd since the film does such a good job of immersing the viewer into this strange, beautiful village, it's tough to sort through what is the fact and what is the fiction of Midsommar. The students are interested in observing the ancient traditions, and as these turn more increasingly sinister, they-to varying degrees of success-try to understand and sort through the logic of what's going on. They're approaching this trip-mostly-from a respectful anthropological standpoint. We the viewers are the outsiders along with its main cast-Dani (Florence Pugh), her unsympathetic boyfriend, Christian (Jack Reynor), along with his grad school buddies and their local guide, Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren)-as they visit a commune in Hälsingland, Sweden to celebrate the nine-day summer solstice festival. “If you let something loose on a population of, say, a million people, there may be some small number who have a vulnerability that nobody thought about.What's fascinating about Midsommar, the new horror movie from Ari Aster, is how it slowly settles you into into an isolated Swedish village, and gently elevates the tension of their customs until it's too late. ![]() “One thing we are demanding is longitudinal studies of people who stay in VR for longer periods of time,” Metzinger said. They also expressed sharp concern for the psychological health of those who may begin to confuse VR with actual reality. In a paper on ethical concerns related to VR published in Frontiers in Robotics and AIin April, Thomas Metzinger and Michael Madary, philosophers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany, recommended that people not be allowed to do things virtually that they wouldn’t do in real life, as the sense of embodiment in VR is so strong. The worry is not just that violence in VR might accelerate aggression, but that the sheer terror of the experiences will invoke the same neurological and physiological fear-responses that they might in real life, and with real-world consequences like PTSD, anxiety, or depression.
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