Swedish Summer House

This sounds like a lovely tradition. I suppose it's very similar to those in the U.S. who have summer cottages and beach houses....I think many people would be much less stressed and so much more content if they spent time away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life once in a while!

source

By: Rob Hincks, freelance journalist

 

Midsummer in Sweden signals the start of an annual migration as tens of thousands of Swedes abandon towns and cities and head to their summer houses for rest, relaxation and, in some cases, work. 

 

Swedes have long been big on leisure time and small on the rigors of city life. Moving to the summer house is a ritual deeply engrained in the Swedish psyche. Before there was cheap and accessible international travel, many Swedes took advantage of something else cheap and plentiful: land.
All across this spacious nation, people built simple dwellings, often by the water, to retire to in the warm summer months; an idyll that for many still shapes their image of Sweden: red-painted cottages in an endless pastoral landscape broken only by a liberal scattering of beautiful blondes with flowers in their hair.

Traditions die hard in Sweden, and there are plenty of Swedes who still harbor that image. Despite the increasing number of foreign holidays sold in Sweden, 20 percent of the population still own a summer house. Many more have access to one through family or friends.

So what is it about the Swedish summer house that generation after generation still finds difficult to resist? 

The simple life Swedish-style.

Anna and PG Wiklund, a teacher and doctor living in Umeå in the north of Sweden, have their own reasons for coming back, year after year, to their summer house in the Hälsingland region of Sweden.
“It helps you to escape the daily obligations you have back home,” says Anna, whose grandfather bought the lakeside plot of land in 1942 and built the house that she and PG still use today. “And because you spend such a long time here, you feel that you live here. If you travel abroad for two weeks, there are so many things to experience and do; it’s not necessarily that relaxing. Most people have some sort of relationship to their summer house environment, through grandparents or through their childhood, so they can completely relax there.”