Easter the Norwegian way
Easter is right around the corner, actually here in Scandinavia many have started their Easter holiday already. We are a Easter loving bunch even though most of us are not that religious. For us Easter is more about meeting the spring or have our goodbyes with the winter. I’m more about the first really, but the ski loving people go to the mountains to ski. Here in Norway a lot of people have cabins in the Mountains where they love to spend the Easter holiday. Official Easter starts on Maundy Thursday for all of us, then all shops closes down and we are officially celebrating Easter for 5 days. Shops are open again a couple of hours on Easter eve, but apart from that all shops, even most grocery stores are closed until Tuesday. We are of course all hoping for beautiful weather, and many years we really get what we call a Dream Easter. A Dream Easter is when we can spend a lot of time outdoors in the sun, preferably somewhere with snow. Even I love that, as long as I don`t have to ski. We eat a ridiculous amount of chocolate and marzipan, which are hidden in Easter Eggs. Often we arrange Easter Egg hunts for the children.
The Ultimate Dream Easter. Sitting in “the Sun wall” (Solveggen in Norwegian).Even if this picture is probably from the 50`s our Dream Easter is still pretty much about this.
What Norwegians also love to do in Easter is to wear our cozy, home knitted, wool sweaters. So there we are sitting outside our cabins or houses, in what we call “the sun Wall”, wearing our home knitted sweaters and eating candy out of a cardboard egg. That’s the equivalence of a Dream Easter.
Of course Easter is also very much about spending time together with friends and family, but this year we are back in lockdown so that’s not really happening this year. Actually we are advised by our authorities to not have more than 2 visitors at the time, keep 6 feet distance and wear masks when we can’t keep the distance. So obviously dinners and parties with friends and family are not on the agenda this year either. I would so much love to arrange an Easter egg hunt for my granddaughters this year, but that’s not an option. Hopefully next year we will be able to do that.
For Odd and I Easter this year will be working in our yard when weather allows, we’re upgrading our entrance area with a nice deck, so we will start on this. I will work too, so not taking very much time off. We hope for some nice sunny days and a Dream Easter. So far the forecast is a mix of rain, snow and sun, let’s see what we get. No matter what, we will still do some traditional Easter meals, we always have lamb, (Påskelam) and watch the crime series on TV and read crime books (Påskekrim) For some reason we assosiate Easter with crime.
In my next blogpost I will talk about Yellow, as yellow is the color of Easter. Do you know which yellow is the best for you? If not a color analysis can help you with that. Go to my home page and read about color analysis.
What`s your traditions for Easter?
